Future soldier Fighting fit
Clothes make a person, or so the saying roughly goes, and the clothing used by militaries is no different. Testing and evaluating protective clothing and ballistic protection for soldiers is vital when outfi tting a modern military, affecting survivability, weight and ergonomic effi ciency. Nicholas Kenny speaks with Jon Russell, senior principal scientist, Physical Sciences Group at the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), to learn more.
and artillery, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – whether they lie in wait for approaching vehicles or delivered by remotely controlled drone – but also with the environment in which they find themselves. While shrapnel can shred flesh and shatter bone, heat and cold can also prove more than capable of incapacitating a soldier, or at the very least, hampering their efficiency. After all, the danger that extreme weather poses to military operations has been well-known for centuries – it’s not for nothing that the Russian Winter is often referred to as ‘General Frost’ or ‘General Winter’, given its role in foiling invasions across the ages, including that of Napoleon and Hitler. However, weather doesn’t have to reach extreme levels to pose issues for militaries, even modern ones, and it is imperative that the clothing soldiers are outfitted with can perform at the highest levels under all manner of challenges. Similarly, thick forest, moisture-laden tropics and hard-wearing mountainous regions all pose unique challenges for modern militaries, and these must also be borne in mind when developing combat clothing that will be used by armed forces across the globe. The British Army, for example, is deployed in countries as wide ranging as Iraq, the Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Estonia and Kenya, among others.
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The price of protection can come at a cost. Heavy protective systems can present new challenges for soldiers who until recently were climbing mountainsides in Afghanistan, and it can boil the ones who wear them in the desert. Ceramic plates have led to comfort issues for smaller soldiers, especially women, sitting down in vehicles for hours-long convoys. Helmets can snag bergens when soldiers hit the dirt and go prone, making it harder for them to turn their
16 Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
he battlefield is seldom a comfortable place, regardless of where it falls on the globe. Soldiers have to deal not just with the threat of gunfire
heads and thereby hampering visibility. At the end of the day, a balance has to be found.
In search of balance “Unfortunately, we can’t protect against all threats – it’s just not feasible to do so,” says Jon Russell, senior principal scientist, Physical Sciences Group at the UK’s Defence & Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl). “There’s a compromise between the level of protection both in terms of the actual threat level and the coverage to the individual, and the physical and thermal burden.”
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