A preliminary investigation into the performance of a simple Time Encoded Speech (TES) isolated word recognition (IWR) direct voice input (DVI) system is described. Experimental conditions included evaluations with four untrained military speakers in severe acoustic background noise (c 80 - lOOdB SPL) with hand-held omni-directional microphones. The limitations of conventional "percentage recognition" scores as a measure of system performance for the military role are discussed.