Senior executives of the French defense procurement agency DGA today briefed the media on their highly ambitious Scorpion program: an effort to transform France's land forces in a comprehensive, all-encompassing multi-year effort that will run through 2025.

The briefing, by Col. Jerome Perrin, the DGA's program executive director for armored vehicles, was accompanied by a spectacular video clip full of computer animations showing future French soldiers using all the network-enabled functionalities to be acquired as part of Scorpion.

One feature shown was that when soldiers got hit during an ambush by opposing forces in an urban battle zone, the medical injury report and the status of critical body functions of the injured men, measured by sensors on and perhaps even inside their bodies, was immediately and automatically transmitted to the command post.

There, the company commander could monitor his soldiers' heart function and blood pressure in real time as they were lying down on the ground multiple blocks away.

I asked senior officials from Sagem, the French company responsible for the army's Felin program of soldier modernization system, if this was science fiction or (near) reality.

The reply was rather surprising.

Technically, yes, one could achieve something much like this by 2015 or so, when Batch 2 deliveries of Felin are expected to begin.

But the Sagem executive I sat down with -- a former officer in the French Legion Etranger (Foreign Legion) -- was very dismissive about the concept. "The DGA, they can have their dreams, but the reality is that a remote command post should better not have detailed information about who is shot and what are the injuries," he warns.

"Key decisions on whether to press on an attack or to withdraw should be taken by the platoon leader, by the commander who is physically present in the fight. There are many examples of battles that were won against all odds because of determination and good judgement by the officers and NCOs on the ground," he says.

He recalls that one of the most remarkable victories in the history of the French Foreign Legion was in a 19th-century Mexican War in which thousands of Mexican soldiers were pinned down and fought back by a force of just dozens of Legionaires, or at least that is how the story goes.

But he admits that a real-time medical status report can save lives of wounded soldiers, for example if the information is used to prime the medics on board an inbound medevac helo or armored ambulance.

On the other hand, the Sagem executive may have a point. After all, if the gruesome details of soldiers' injuries can automatically and immediately be transmitted to the battle group command post, what's to stop that information from going all the way to the political leadership at home?

I leave it to your imagination to judge how that could influence a nation's will to win on a future battlefield.