Easing the Load of the Battery-Powered Soldier

Batteries account for about 30 of the 90 pounds of gear carried by U.S. soldiers and Marines, Navy official Roger M. Natsuhara tells the Wall Street Journal. That’s because a lot of their equipment, from infrared viewers to communicators, is powered. The military has now developed unrollable photovoltaic panels for recharging batteries, so that fewer batteries are required and, thus, fewer have to be thrown away—an important security issue, because a trail of dead batteries shows the enemy where soldiers have been.