running on a Unix platform. In January 1999, under the direction of Bruce D. Jette, an attempt was made to reduce development costs and accelerate the program, and the development work was transitioned to a multi-company team that had been organized by Exponent (NASDAQ: EXPO), an engineering firm with headquarters in Silicon Valley. An intensive redesign of the system ensued, and both the embedded firmware and the application software were rewritten from scratch. Many of the COTS hardware components were purchased (literally "off the shelf") at Fry's Electronics, the Silicon Valley retail chain. Approximately 100 proof-of-concept Land Warrior units were built and successfully demonstrated in September 2000 by a U.S. Army platoon that was air-dropped into a large war-fighting exercise at Fort Polk, Louisiana. These initial prototype units, designated Land Warrior v0.6, were built around a PC/104 computer platform running Microsoft Windows. The system used the CAN-bus protocol on the wired PAN (personal area network). The communications subsystem was built using Windows CE running on a StrongARM platform, and the wireless network protocol was IEEE 802.11. During the Fort Polk exercise, preliminary interoperability with traditional military radio networks was also demonstrated for LW v0.6, using a two-way, SINCGARS-compatible gateway radio. The success of the Fort Polk exercise reinvigorated the program, and further funding was allocated for the next phase of LW development. A "Land Warrior Consortium" was formed by several of the contracting firms, with the goal of designing and building the first field-able LW system, designated LW v1.0, later LW-IC (Land Warrior – Initial Capability). The basic Windows and WinCE platforms were retained, and a new hybrid PAN was designed, which drew upon both USB and FireWire protocols. A modified version of the IEEE 802.11 protocol was adopted, which added various enhancements for COMSEC and information security, mobile ad hoc network (MANET) capabilities, and support for multi-hop packet routing. In 2003, a variant of the LW-IC system was developed to incorporate features of the CombatID System (CIDS) – a form of IFF (identification friend or foe) that is designed to reduce the potential for friendly fire incidents. This version, designated LW-CIDS, was successfully demonstrated in interoperational tests with several other CIDS-equipped units at Moffett Field, California. As the Land Warrior program matured, it became clear that its successful deployment would hinge significantly upon the key factor of batteries. The need to continuously resupply (or recharge) LW batteries was proving