USAARL developing standard for external personnel loads on helicopters

FORT DETRICK, Md. – Whether inserting Warfighters into the fight, delivering first responders to care for the injured, or rescuing civilians from a natural disaster, the Army relies on helicopters to get people into – and out of – dangerous situations swiftly and safely. A new standard being developed collaboratively between the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory and U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command will allow helicopters to safely carry more people externally, representing a force multiplier for Warfighter lethality and humanitarian responsiveness.

The Army is developing the Live External Attached Loads standard – the first of its kind for the service – to provide detailed guidelines and specifications for equipment used in operations involving personnel insertion and extraction. LEAL equipment will allow helicopters to carry more people externally. USAARL is working with DEVCOM – specifically, its Soldier Center and Aviation and Missile Center – as well as with the Utility Helicopters Project Office, the unit within the U.S. Army Program Executive Office–Aviation responsible for overseeing the delivery of multi-purpose transport helicopters.

“The current options for evacuating personnel are limited in capacity,” says Matthew Ballard, a biomechanical research engineer at USAARL who is helping draft the new standard. “The familiar hoist litter basket, for example, can only hold one patient at a time. However, as we've seen during recent natural disasters, often there’s an urgent need to move larger numbers of people out of harm’s way very quickly, sometimes just over just a short distance. That’s where the push for this new standard came from.”

USAARL is no stranger to developing, testing, and refining military standards designed to protect the health and safety of airborne Warfighters. Since 1962, its researchers have specialized in developing guidance on all aspects of aviation medicine including cognitive and sensory workload, displays and automation, unmanned systems, task saturation, noise, medical standards, crashworthiness, wearable sensors, head and spine injury, aeromedical transport, and MEDEVAC interior space.

Joe McEntire, a senior research mechanical engineer at USAARL, says that the new standard is still in the draft phase, which includes gathering and reviewing relevant literature on the subject to ensure that the standard reflects the current state of knowledge about external load carrying capabilities and requirements for military helicopters.

“The draft is being disseminated to people who have ‘skin in the game,’ so to speak, to make sure all the technical aspects are addressed,” explains McEntire. “Once the technical review has been completed, then it will be submitted to the next level of review for formalization and adoption as a military standard.”

McEntire says that once the standard has been adopted, the Utility Helicopters Project Office will be able to undertake developmental testing of existing commercial devices to determine their suitability for military applications, and draft requirements for new devices that could be designed to meet other unique needs.

Danielle Rhodes, a biomechanical research engineer who helped draft the standard, says that it was personally exciting as well as professionally satisfying to be involved in the creation of a new standard that will help make it possible to field a new capability that will improve the readiness and lethality of Army aviators and Warfighters.

“My dream is that one day I will see somebody get rescued off a rooftop and be able to say, ‘Hey, I contributed to that,’” says Rhodes. “At the end of the day, that’s why I do what I do – the knowledge that our work will save lives.”