Paratroopers assigned to the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, Italy's Folgore Brigade and the British Army's 16 Air Assault Brigade conduct airborne operations during Exercise Saber Junction 16 on the Maneuver Rights Area near Hohenfels, Germany, ...
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- When the Department of Defense needs scientific proficiency, it looks to the professionals at the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command. RDECOM program managers across seven research centers and laboratories provide the technical expertise for several DOD technology initiatives, including environmental, safety, occupational health and energy. Two such initiatives are being led by the National Defense Center for Energy and Environment and the Army Environmental Quality Technology Pollution Prevention Program with the support of the RDECOM team.
NATIONAL DEFENSE CENTER FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
NDCEE serves as a national resource for developing, advancing and transitioning technologies and processes that address high-priority environmental, safety, occupational health and energy challenges for military installations, ranges, weapons systems and warfighters. These projects are designed to enhance performance and efficiency, decrease costs and comply with regulations. The center, established in 1991, works with organizations across DOD.
The center reviews proposals submitted by DOD organizations for funding, said Jennifer Nicholson, an NDCEE technology transition manager. Among NDCEE's selections for fiscal year 2016 is a paratrooper "black box." The center will contribute $133,000 annually over the next three years toward developing and testing this new capability for the airborne community.
The Army's Combat and Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, is working with the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on a proof of concept Paratrooper Suite of Sensors under the newly established Army Airborne Board, which held its first meeting in January 2016.
USACRC provides the Army with safety and risk management expertise to preserve readiness. When a paratrooper suffers a fatality, the data available for investigators is limited to witness accounts and forensic analysis of the available evidence. To gain a better understanding of the accident and prevent future deaths, Army researchers and the airborne community began discussions on developing the "black box" device, which would be placed on a paratrooper, said Lt. Col. Phillip G. Jenison, ground director at USACRC, who previously as a battalion commander in the 82nd Airborne Division under XVIII Airborne Corps.
"How can we get to the root cause of what happened? You can sometimes get disparate information when you start doing accident investigations," he said. "How can we make sure we're getting the facts?"
The device would capture information such as body position and altitude during an aircraft exit. This data, in turn, would allow the Army to better understand what occurred during the fatality. It would also help determine which paratroopers require additional training and can be used in lifecycle management.
"We're looking how to help from a materiel perspective to clarify what happened and why it happened for accident investigation," Jenison said. "It would capture that data and use that to produce a re-creation on the sequence of events, such as an animation or a video.
"It has to be transparent and seamless. We don't want to add more weight to the paratrooper because he has enough already. It should be about the size of a flash drive."
The team is approaching academia and federally funded research centers to develop a proof of concept. Jenison said the technology exists; it's a matter of how to engineer the pieces to satisfy the Army's technological requirements.
Once prototypes are ready for demonstration, the Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center will begin testing. Subject-matter experts at NSRDEC, an RDECOM organization, work closely with airborne community to develop and test materiel capabilities through its Aerial Delivery Design and Fabrication Facility.
ARMY ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY TECHNOLOGY POLLUTION PREVENTION PROGRAM
EQT P2 integrates installation environmental sustainability issues, particularly those affecting the Army industrial base. The program provides technical support to integrate environment, safety and occupational health considerations into systems engineering activities. No single Army program manager has the role to fund or fix the similar environmental issues that weapons systems share, said Erik Hangeland, EQT P2 director. RDECOM's seven research and engineering centers execute the program.
The National Research Council published a 2013 study noting that workers at firing ranges and shoot houses are routinely exposed to unsafe levels of airborne lead. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency that no levels of exposure to lead are safe, generating the need for EQT P2's Airborne Lead Reduction Program.
RDECOM's Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center is qualifying a lead-free primary explosive that can be use in some percussion primers and stab, electric detonators and blasting caps, per Army Energetic Material Qualification Board guidance. The center will transition a safe process for producing this material to a manufacturing partner.
The initiative offers several benefits to warfighters, Hangeland said. The project will prevent future range closures, restrictions, personnel removal and the need to install costly pollution control equipment at firing ranges and shoot houses. The Army will replace lead-based primers, detonators, caps and rocket propellants found in 3,000 unique Army munitions.
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Note: This article was originally published in AMC Today, a quarterly magazine published by the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
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For information on the National Defense Center for Energy and Environment, go to https://ndcee.army.mil.
For information on the Army Environmental Quality Technology Program Pollution Prevention, go to https://eqtp2.army.mil.
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The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command has the mission to ensure decisive overmatch for unified land operations to empower the Army, the joint warfighter and our nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
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U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command
Army Environmental Quality Technology Program Pollution Prevention
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