[_djo_]

You don't have to imagine every soldier having that, there are already armed forces doing that now. The technologies have improved enough and the costs come down so low that it's affordable for even a mid-level country's armed forces to do it.

I've seen one of these systems demonstrated, which uses a cigarette-box sized unit with a GPS sensor, GSM modem, satellite transceiver, military radio connector and battery inside. Positions were encrypted and transmitted via least-cost routing to a centralised command and control system, showing the position of each soldier in real-time.

Of course, in real operations it becomes difficult to maintain line-of-sight radio communications over long distances, cellular service is spotty in combat zones and satellite communications are expensive even with small data packets. So the related infrastructure requires careful thinking too.

So I agree with you, this seems a worthwhile investment for the military benefits alone. It's one of the main reasons to have an indigenous space programme in the first place.