Power and energy management, battery carry weight, and energy cost is a major issue for soldiers and airmen required to perform combat dismounted operations or domestic operations. Soldiers and Airmen require an intelligent power management solution to effectively and efficiently operate systems requiring batteries such as night vision equipment, radios, GPS, laser designators or range finders, video downlinks, rugged computers, dismounted blue force tracker devices, combat medical equipment, and power tools. A power management system which intelligently manages battery power usage, while dynamically monitoring remaining power depending on mission demands has been proven to reduce both battery cost and weight by up to 60 percent.

A solution for use by both the Army National Guard and Air Guard exists, and provides the following features: 1) Manpackable/Vest wearable/integratable; 2) Usable at the squad or small unit level; 3) Usable across multiple disciplines (Combate Controllers, TACPs, JTACs, JFACs, EOD, Combat Medics, Guardian Angel, and Military Police/Security Police, and Civil Engineering teams); 4) Intelligently manages multiple man wearable battery powered devices; 5) Automatically manages and prioritizes multiple alternative and traditional power sources; 6) Provides backwards compatibility with legacy battery powered devices, as well as new devices; 7) Harvests and optimizes power from solar/alternative sources; 8) Accepts and optimizes worldwide AC and DC power sources; 9) Dramatically reduces the number of proprietary batteries and battery chargers resulting in reduced weight; 10) Monitors power sources and loads while dynamically responding to mission needs and changes; 11) Usable in combat or joint domestic operations.

A jointly developed and fielded ultra small man portable, rugged, intelligent power management solution ( squad sized power manager and/or vest sized power manager) in use by the US Army and USMC should be part of the following CRITICAL requirements described in the Air National Guard 2014 Weapons System Modernization Book.