Better body armor means more weight for troops

[David]

AP


WASHINGTON – Concerned that U.S. troops are already saddled with too much heavy gear, military officials will not require them to wear improved body armor until manufacturers cut the weight of the new protective plates.

The Army plans to buy 120,000 sets of the advanced bullet-blocking plates this year. This initial purchase of the plates, known as "XSAPI," will be stocked in Kuwait and be available if commanders need them, service officials said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

The quality of small numbers of the current plates, called "ESAPI," was questioned last week in an audit by the Defense Department inspector general's office. The audit said the ESAPI plates from one body armor manufacturer — Armor Works of Chandler, Ariz. — were tested improperly and may not provide troops adequate protection.

The Army disputed the conclusion. ESAPI is the best body armor available and a lifesaver in Iraq and Afghanistan, service officials insisted. Nonetheless, as a precautionary step the Army decided to withdraw nearly 33,000 Armor Works plates in question from an ESAPI inventory of about 2 million produced by nearly a dozen different companies.

The body armor used by most American forces consists of a vest with a series of inserts that protect most of the upper body from armor-piercing rounds. The specially hardened ceramic plates are the largest of the inserts; one is placed in the front of the vest and another in the back.

But making the roughly 6-pound XSAPI any lighter is harder than it sounds. The plate has to be thick enough to defeat new and more potent bullets finding their way onto the battlefield, says Joel Moskowitz of Ceradyne in Costa Mesa, Calif., one of the companies making XSAPI.

"A certain amount of thickness is required," Moskowitz said Wednesday in an interview. "You just need that to stop that first hit."

The Army's testing methods were backed by the Pentagon's director of operational testing, an independent office that assesses how gear performs.

But in an action separate from the ESAPI armor recall, the Army in December voluntarily withdrew just over 8,000 plates because of testing gaps. Those plates were made by Armor Works and other manufacturers, including Ceradyne.

Contracts potentially worth $6 billion for XSAPI and ESAPI plates were awarded in October 2008 to Ceradyne, BAE Systems of Phoenix, and The Protective Group of Miami Lakes, Fla. The work was put on hold after BAE filed a protest over the manufacturing schedule.

Overall, the military could acquire up to 1 million sets of XSAPI plates.

ESAPI plates range in size from extra small to extra large and weigh on average 5 1/2 pounds each. XSAPI plates come in the same sizes and weigh about half a pound more.

An extra pound may not seem overly burdensome. But when added to the combat loads the troops already carry — backpack, combat rifle, ammunition, helmet — it creates more strain, particularly in harsh environments like Afghanistan, the Army says. The elevation and rugged terrain there means troops must often track insurgents on foot and every pound counts.

"Over time, the body armor, it does wear on your body," said Army Staff Sgt. Fred Rowe, who has done two combat tours in Iraq. "I couldn't imagine doing what I did, carrying what I carried, in Afghanistan."

Rowe appeared at the hearing along with several senior Army officers, including Maj. Gen. Robert Lennox, who oversees operations and training.

Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, head of the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va., agreed with Army leaders who said that the vast majority of requests from commanders in the field, especially those in Afghanistan, ask that the troops' load be lightened.

"We must balance levels of protection in order to maintain the agility, mobility and lethality of our Marines," according to Brogan's written testimony.

[darrels joy]

Soldier Innovation & Invention Leads to New Lighter Better Body Armor

Now, this is the true nature of "necessity is the mother of all invention:"

U.Va. Biomedical Engineering Students Design Product Prototypes for the Real World

January 22, 2009 — When Jeff O'Dell was a soldier in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, he wore standard-issue "body armor" that could stop a single armor-piercing bullet. But a second shot to the same area could kill.

Today, O'Dell is a second-year biomedical and mechanical engineering student at the University of Virginia designing a new type of body armor that can withstand multiple impacts from armor-piercing rounds. His design also is more flexible and will weigh less than the current 30-pound vest used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

O'Dell began work on his idea last year while taking a biomedical engineering design course as part of his major. He formed a team with students Dan Abebayehu, Ann Bailey, David Holland and Adam Rogers and they tested their design at H.P. White Laboratory, a ballistics testing lab in Street, Md. The armor they've designed, made from a unique configuration of ceramic plates, has stopped as many as

eight of 10 armor-piercing rounds during tests.

"This could save lives on the battlefield," O'Dell said simply.

Biomedical engineering students at U.Va. begin to attack real-world problems in the first semester of their second year. They use design to address important problems throughout their undergraduate career, with their efforts culminating in a senior year "capstone" project that pulls together all of their training and analytical methods. The capstone project often results in a viable new product prototype.

"We emphasize and demand entrepreneurship and innovation from our students to solve real problems in the real world," said Bill Walker, associate professor of biomedical engineering and design instructor. "We teach the fundamentals and lab skills needed, and then place the students onto independent projects."

But the students are not alone. Besides their engineering professors, they work with non-engineering mentors, including physicians and nursing professors and researchers in other disciplines. They often find corporate support.

Among the 32 senior undergraduate projects in the biomedical engineering capstone program this year are a cell-based therapy for healing wounds, a new monitor for heart disease and a drug for targeting pathogens.

During the past four years, the results from 27 undergraduate biomedical engineering capstone projects have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Twelve projects led to provisional patents and three to full patents, and two have been licensed to commercial interests.

This year, the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance awarded two undergraduate design teams $16,000 each — one that is designing a device to improve gallbladder surgeries, and another designing a device for improving treatment of postpartum hemorrhaging following a Cesarean delivery.

"Students select their own projects and the problems they want to solve; they form teams and then brainstorm," said Timothy Allen, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and an advanced design instructor. "It is a highly creative and regimented process to complete and validate a project in engineering."

The capstone project requires about 12 hours per week of each student's time, outside of class, for the full fourth year.

"Our students really have to get in the lab, work with their hands, and build and test their designs," said Shayn Peirce-Cottler, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering who teaches the capstone design class. "They work side-by-side with doctors, nurses and even patients to get the kind of input that will carry their designs to a practical level."

The results can be amazing. One device, which is designed to allow obstetricians to practice certain medical procedures before working on an actual patient, has been complimented by a physician for "feeling just like a real uterus." The device can help doctors reduce medical errors.

The O'Dell team's body armor project is drawing the interest of the military. A team of experts from the U.S. Army will visit the H.P. White Lab in March to observe a ballistics test.

O'Dell, now a sergeant in a National Guard unit in Tennessee, is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan later this year.

"It would be cool if I could get to wear the armor I helped design," he said.

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