The Lynx XM30 is Built for the Future Fight
During the Battle of Iwo Jima, six American servicemen raised the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi after days of brutal fighting. The image became one of the most enduring symbols of American combat, but for Jonathan Pope, Manager of Emerging Technologies at American Rheinmetall and a retired Army noncommissioned officer and Bradley Master Gunner, it also represents something fundamental about warfare.
“If I can give you an image for what the last 100 yards in warfare is, it’s that statue at Iwo Jima of them raising the American flag,” Pope said. “That is ground taken and ground held by the infantry.”
Pope was illustrating a point made by Nathan Greenough, Training Lead and Master Gunner at American Rheinmetall. “The last 100 yards will always belong to the infantry,” Greenough said, referring to the need for Soldiers on the ground to make decisions in real time that data alone can’t make for them, including decisions that require a moral lens.
More than 80 years later, that principle still holds. Even as unmanned vehicles, robotic systems and new technologies transform the battlefield, ground taken and ground held remains the mission of the human Soldier. What must change is the technology available to support Soldiers in carrying out their mission.
And American Rheinmetall’s Lynx XM30 was built to do just that.
Extending the Formation’s Reach
Pope describes battlefield depth as one of the capabilities the Lynx XM30 brings to the future fight. As the formation expands its forward line of sensors and robotic systems, the Lynx XM30 has the bandwidth and power growth to integrate those systems and the information they provide, extending the crew’s visibility and awareness beyond what the vehicle itself can directly observe.
Historically, much of a vehicle crew’s understanding of the battlefield has depended on what it can directly observe through its own optics in the terrain immediately ahead and what other Soldiers report over the radio.
Greenough sees a fundamental shift in how information needs to reach the crew. Traditionally, a Soldier who identifies a threat ahead of the formation reports it over the radio. That report must be received and understood before the crew can act on it—time spent away from the fight. With the Lynx XM30, information from sensors and robotics is delivered directly to the crew in real time.
“I don’t have to request the information,” Greenough said. “It’s already fed to me.”
Automation further reduces the physical burden of maintaining situational awareness. In a legacy platform, a gunner may spend extended periods with an eye against an optic, manually sweeping the turret across a sector. But the Lynx XM30 continuously scans the sector for the crew, who can instead focus on the information being presented and the decisions that follow.
In addition, the Lynx XM30’s third-generation infrared sensors provide greater clarity at distances beyond older optics, increasing the time available to identify a potential threat before it enters weapons range.
“For the first time, we can see farther than we can shoot,” Greenough said.
Designed to Adapt
The technology Soldiers rely on will continue to change throughout the service life of the Army’s next combat vehicle. Systems still emerging today will become essential capabilities years from now, while new threats will create requirements that can’t be fully predicted today.
Pope sees that constant change as one of the defining considerations for the Army’s next combat vehicle.
“Change is a constant,” Pope said. “Three to five years from now, the Army may want a new sight. It may need to integrate a more advanced counter-UAS system or a high-energy laser. The Lynx XM30 has the growth capacity to adapt and adopt those technologies along the way.”
Pope is referring to the Lynx XM30’s development using a Modular Open Systems Approach, or MOSA, which gives the Army an architecture for rapidly integrating new hardware and software, including third-party systems, without locking the vehicle into a single vendor or the technologies available today. Using MOSA standards enables the Army to introduce new capabilities without requiring major platform redesigns. The advantages of this versatility reach further than cost-effectiveness to accelerating technology deployment, allowing the Army to respond more quickly as new threats emerge.
Beyond the open architecture itself, the vehicle maintains growth margins in electrical power, computing capacity, and physical space to accommodate technologies that do not yet exist.
Keeping the Soldier Connected
The relationship between the vehicle and its six dismounted infantry Soldiers is central to the capability the Lynx XM30 provides. Once the rear ramp drops—and those Soldiers dismount—the crew maintains the location of the squad even as they separate from the vehicle and advance across the battlefield. Losing track is not an option. It can lead to fratricide and put the entire squad and vehicle crew in danger, as the crew must be able to move with confidence knowing it won’t run over or fire upon its own Soldiers.
Traditionally, crews have relied on grid coordinates reported over the radio to track dismounted Soldiers. But as the squad advances, those coordinates become obsolete moments later. Not the case with the Lynx XM30. The crew receives the squad’s location in real time.
“With our platform, it’s real time, up to date,” Greenough said. “I know exactly where they are. I know exactly what they’re doing, and I know exactly how to protect them if they need it.”
Today, dismounted Soldiers may also use smoke or flares, beyond radio communication, to signal or mark their location during an engagement, a process that can reveal their position to the enemy. With the Lynx XM30, they no longer need to rely on those methods because each vehicle in the formation already knows where the Soldiers are. But the information exchange goes further. Every Lynx XM30 shares data from its own onboard sensors with the Common Tactical Picture, available to every crew and fed to the dismounted Soldiers through a Remote-Control Display Unit.
“We’re all working from the same picture,” Greenough said. “Every crew knows what the formation is seeing.”
Cameras covering the area surrounding the hull also give the crew a direct view of Soldiers beside the vehicle or using it for cover before maneuvering or firing.
“It answers the question of, can I move? Can I pivot without hurting somebody?” Greenough said.
Surviving the Fight
On a battlefield increasingly saturated with drones and advanced sensors, survivability depends on reducing the signatures that can reveal an armored formation before visual contact.
Greenough recalled watching the vehicle maneuver with Pope several days before the interview for this article.
“I said to him, ‘Do you hear that?’ And he’s like, ‘Hear what?’ And I was like, ‘Exactly.’”
Battle-tested Soldiers know all too well that approaching armor alerts the enemy long before visual contact, from the sound of its engines to the heavy vibration that travels through the ground. On the Lynx XM30, continuous rubber track and suspension dampen the noise and vibration associated with movement, while its hybrid-electric propulsion system enables electric-only silent maneuverability.
Thermal detection presents another challenge as infrared sensing technology becomes more capable and more widely available to enemy forces. The Lynx XM30 addresses that threat on multiple fronts. Its active exhaust-cooling system lowers the temperature of the exhaust before it leaves the vehicle, reducing its thermal signature through enemy optics. Meanwhile, the exhaust itself is routed through the rear of the vehicle, away from the direction of the enemy.
And as Pope noted, every crew member knows the rule. “We don’t ever put our rear end to the enemy if we can help it.”
Upon enemy engagement, the Lynx XM30’s integrated vehicle protection system and passive armor provide additional lines of defense. Sensors within the vehicle protection system detect an incoming threat and determine its approach, allowing the system to deploy a countermeasure before the projectile strikes the vehicle. Meanwhile, passive armor provides physical protection against threats that reach the platform.
The vehicle was also designed with options for crews when individual systems are damaged or degraded. Redundant sight capabilities and backup power provide steps between full capability and a completely manual fallback. If a primary system is lost, the crew can transition to those backups and keep operating.
The Mission Remains
The Bradley has carried American infantry into combat for more than four decades. The Army’s next combat vehicle will serve through an even greater period of technological change, as advances in artificial intelligence, increasingly sophisticated automation, and more lethal weapons alter the character of warfare. The Lynx XM30 was built to meet that fight, today and into the future.
“The battlefield is going to keep evolving, and technology will have to keep pace,” Greenough said. “But the last 100 yards will always belong to the infantry, and they need a vehicle that can stand up to the future fight and give Soldiers every possible advantage to survive it and come home safely.”