The REF at work: New MicroDAGR GPS Coming in January

Rockwell-Collins’ new baby-DAGR finally drags the military handheld GPS into 2008 featuring a touch screen, built in camera and MP3 player.

“Designed in response to feedback from soldiers in the field, the
MicroDAGR also incorporates several new features including vibration alert, an MP3 player and a digital camera. These features will allow soldiers to record geo-rectified images of the battlefield for after-action review and analysis, listen to foreign language translations of important commands and phrases and get silent alerts from their MicroDAGR when they reach preprogrammed waypoints and/or danger areas”.

No word on price, but anything that uses the secure GPS bands is going to be on the Gucci end of military gadgets. With the original DAGR running about $1600 a pop for almost new millennium tech, it’s no wonder Rockwell-Collins has been pleading with soldiers not to use commercial GPS units that cost 1/10 the price and offer performance and features that soldiers value more than the military specific features of the clunky DAGR.

Looking at the press release, it looks like Rockwell-Collins and the Army have listened to soldiers and brought their new handheld GPS receiver into feature parity with the commercial market. But, there is a big difference between reality and marketing. We’ll have to wait until units start getting these early next year to hear how well they work in the real world. Regardless of the price, if the MicroDAGR is as easy to use as a Garmin, units won’t shelve them in favor of commercial GPS receivers.