PEO Soldier

Good article here on the work done by the Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier to support dismounted combat troops with enhanced systems. There certainly have been barriers to integrated soldier-focused R&D, as the article points out:

It may be surprising to some that we are still rushing new clothing and equipment to our troops some nine years after the conflict in Afghanistan began. One reason for this is that soldier clothing and equipment has rarely gotten the attention it required from the military in comparison to large, expensive weapons platforms. Another reason is that a different piece of clothing or equipment has been handled as a separate procurement item. Many are treated as commodities rather than as parts of a weapons system -- the soldier himself. Only recently has PEO Soldier initiated a program to treat the soldier as a system in which planning for all the clothing and equipment is cared for in a systematic fashion, at least in theory. A third reason is the lack of a line item in the base defense budget to support both R&D and procurement of soldier clothing and equipment. 

Despite the above noted challenges, there have been dramatic improvements. I think PEO Soldier is one of the most dynamic acquisition organizations within DoD right now, having quickly adapted to the daunting combination of assymetrical warfare (on two fronts) and severe budget restraints to field improved soldier systems in a streamlined manner that delivers new technologies directly into the battlefield. PEO Soldier makes a priority to incorporate as much commercially available technology as possible to speed fielding and to reduce dramatically the reliance on the long, narrow, and costly acquisitions cycles of conventional approaches to weapons systems procurement. 

Read more here about their Soldier Enhancement Program:

The mission of SEP is to identify and evaluate commercially available individual weapons, munitions, optics, combat clothing, individual equipment, water supply, shelters, communication and navigational aids which can be adopted and provided to Soldiers in three years or less.