Air Warrior Col. John W. Thompson - KMI Media Group

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Clean Water,
Sanitation
Systems
Avert Sickness,
Death Among
Troops
When you consider that 18.5 percent
of U.S. military personnel deaths in
Vietnam were caused by disease, not by
enemy fire, it becomes clear that clean,
safe drinking water is a vital necessity, not
a luxury. While enemy fire killed 47,424
personnel, disease killed another 10,785.
Often, the cause of death was in drinking
polluted water. But that doesn’t have to
happen again. Several contractors are
offering systems to provide potable water
to troops, helping to keep them healthy
even in combat zones filled with impurities
and polluted streams. Now, troops
heading out to clear an area can carry
ample drinking water with them.
For example, CamelBak makes a
backpack that can carry 70 ounces, and
another backpack carrying 100 ounces
of pre-treated sterile water, complete
with a hose that the soldier may drink
from in the field. Blackhawk also offers
a 100-ounce water storage backpack
with hose to ensure proper hydration
for troops.
Those systems take on water that
already has been purified. But Worldwater
& Solar Technologies Inc. makes a much
larger system that stores potable water,
and also purifies polluted or saline water.
It cranks out up to 30,000 gallons a
day, enough to fill an enormous number
of backpacks. Mounted on a trailer,
the system uses solar energy charging
batteries to power a mini-water treatment
plant that uses various systems to treat
water, including ultraviolet rays. Thanks
to the solar power and batteries, the
system works 24 hours a day, is silent and
doesn’t pollute the environment.
18 | SOTECH 8.9
L-3 VideoScout-MXR Gives Troops
Situational Awareness
L-3 has created the VideoScout-MXR that
can provide command center-level intelligence
from multiple sources, including full-screen
video, to dismounted personnel in theater. The
unit, much like a laptop, can pull in intel data
from multiple sources including manned and
unmanned aircraft. That could mean gaining
full motion video from a tiny unmanned aerial
vehicle, providing a panoramic view of terrorist
insurgents as they move. VideoScout runs
Microsoft Windows, and comes with analog/
digital radios.
“Our new VideoScout-MXR provides
warfighters with a compact, easy-to-use
tool, allowing them to exploit their
video anytime, anywhere,” said Larry
Vernec, senior director of marketing
and strategic business development
at L-3 IEC. “Users can better
leverage captured imagery, as well
as their own applications, to create
actionable video for on-the-move
mission execution, planning and
post-mission analysis.”
A new type of Kevlar helmet
gives forces 20 percent better
protection against enemy
ballistics while also weighing
20 percent, or half a pound,
less, DuPont announced. The
material, called Kevlar XP
for hard armor, uses DuPont
Jeep Hot Formed Armor Cuts Weight, Aids Safety
Jeep is offering a vehicle armoring process that
reduces weight while increasing protection and
cutting procurement and life cycle costs, according
to the company. The armor process will be used on
Jeep J8 4x4 utility vehicles, where molten ballistic
steel is pressed to the contours of the vehicle. Then
the armor steel is cut with lasers to create new body
panels. They then take the place of the original
body shell, which is removed to save 660 pounds.
Kevlar KM2 Plus fiber technology
and an advanced
thermoplastic resin. DuPont
says the material provides
20 percent better protection
for forces and lighter weight
without sacrificing durability
and backface deformation
Personnel can capture, display and record
live video with full DVR features, extract actionable
subset video, create JPEG and NITF image
files with metadata for reference and dissemination,
and annotate and archive video and
images search, retrieval and dissemination. To
allow INTEL operations to share a common
view of the battlespace, VideoScout-MXR can
be connected to a network, large monitors,
keyboards or peripherals to create a full, shared
workstation environment.
DuPont Kevlar Helmet Is Lighter, Tougher
standards. The hard armor
product will be used initially
for military and police helmets,
and for tactical plates used in
ballistic protective vests. DuPont
also makes Kevlar fiber (similar
to heavy thread) that other
firms use to make those vests.
When completed, the armored body has fewer
welds that might fail in the blast of an IED or
other enemy weapon, and the body affords greater
rigidity thanks to armored steel pillars and box
construction. The armored body, being hot formed,
doesn’t have many tell-tale signs of armoring such
as thick door frames, and the new body also affords
more interior room than conventionally armored
vehicles of that size.
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