Army vehicles are too weighed down with gadgets and power sources, said Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the service's chief information officer and G6.

Situational awareness tools that each require their own hardware--each tool requiring its own box and mount--have lead to situations where "you get vehicles running around today with 1,000 watt alternators," Sorenson said. He spoke at an AFCEA Belvoir conference March 30.

Click here for an audio recording of Sorenson's keynote speech, and here for more coverage of the AFCEA Belvoir conference.

The cure, he said, comes in a solution developed for the canceled Future Combat Systems program that has nonetheless survived that program's demise, called Network Integration Kits.

"It was a good capability from the standpoint of standardizing the capability we put in these vehicles, so everybody does not have to bring a new screen, a new power source," he added. The kits are currently undergoing testing at Ft. Bliss.