By C. Todd Lopez, Army News Service
WASHINGTON -- Army researchers inwards Massachusetts are developing applied scientific discipline that may shortly yield a lightweight combat helmet that provides to a greater extent than protection than anything always fielded.
Representatives of the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development too Engineering Center, Natick, Massachusetts, had an array of combat helmets on display at the Pentagon, May 24-25, equally part of a "Close-Combat Lethality Tech Day."
Included amid that protective gear was the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops, or PASGT helmet, get-go fielded inwards 1981; the Advanced Combat Helmet, or ACH, get-go fielded inwards 2003; too the Lightweight Advanced Combat Helmet, or LW-ACH, which get-go appeared inwards 2013.
New Materials
All 3 of those helmets brand work of para-aramid fibers to protect soldiers, too each successive helmet weighed less than its predecessor. The LW-ACH for instance, is to a greater extent than than a half-pound lighter than the PASGT helmet for a size large.
Newer helmets on display made work of a dissimilar material: ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, or UHMWPE.
The Advanced Combat Helmet Generation II, for example, weighs 22 per centum less than the ACH too is designed to protect soldiers from fragmentation also equally from rounds upwards to nine mm.
The Enhanced Combat Helmet too the most-recently fielded Integrated Head Protection System, or IHPS, amongst ballistic applique render protection against rifle fire, equally well. That increased protection, however, comes at a toll inwards damage of weight.
The helmet display made clear the challenge posed to those responsible for designing gear that keeps solders safe.
Minimizing Helmet Weight
"There's variety of a contest betwixt increased threat too weight," said Richard Green, the manager of the Soldier Protection too Survivability Directorate at NSRDEC. "We desire to protect against increased threat, piece minimizing the weight. That's our goal."
The centerpiece of the NSRDEC helmet display, the NSRDEC epitome helmet, met the protection versus weight challenge caput on.
Weighing inwards at simply 2.5 pounds for the shell, too an estimated 3.5 pounds in conclusion weight, the NSRDEC epitome provides the same protection equally the currently-fielded IHPS.
But the NSRDEC epitome doesn't require the modular IHPS ballistic applique that attaches over the base of operations helmet. With that applique inwards place, the IHPS arrangement weighs over 5 pounds. The NSRDEC epitome weighs less than one-half that too provides the same protection. It protects soldiers against fragmentation, against nine mm weapons fire, too against what Green called a "prevalent rifle threat."
The NSRDEC epitome helmet is made of the same course of pedagogy of cloth equally the IHPS, the ECH too the ACH GEN II: UHMWPE. But what researchers at NSRDEC bring done is developed novel ways to procedure UHMWPE then that it volition live on stronger than it has been inwards the past.
"It's stronger, then you lot need less of it," Green said.
Improved Performance
The novel processing methods NSRDEC researchers bring developed for UHMWPE has improved the ballistic performance for that cloth inside a helmet. That way soldiers may i hateful solar daytime run across a finished helmet that weighs the same equally the ECH, but provides to a greater extent than protection.
"The processing of that cloth has enabled us to optimize its performance," said Kenneth Ryan, the Warfighter Protection branch main at NSRDEC. "Decreasing the charge helps optimize soldier performance, too that helps them to live on to a greater extent than lethal."
The NSRDEC doesn't manufacture helmets for the Army. Instead, it is the defence manufacture that ultimately provides that function, Ryan said. But when the fourth dimension comes, it'll live on NSRDEC-conducted query that manufacture volition work to brand the side past times side generation of helmets that volition assist locomote along soldiers prophylactic on the battlefield.
Ryan said he expects it volition live on almost 12 months earlier these advanced applied scientific discipline developments that yielded the electrical flow incarnation of the NSRDEC epitome helmet tin movement forwards to a indicate where the Army may asking manufacture to prepare mass-produced helmets for fielding to soldiers.
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