Each year the Army runs a Soldier Protection Demonstration to take examine some aspect of armoring troops and take a look at the state of industry and see how they would solve that problem. Sometimes they issue a new piece of kit based on the results of an SPD and others they use the data to refine requirements.
For example, while 2009’s SPD 7 resulted in the fielding of the Soldier Plate Carrier System, you may not remember last year’s SPD 8 which evaluated scalable multi-threat body armor systems. That one seems to have went quietly into that good night although we hear rumors that TRADOC is using data from that experiment to work on a requirement for a scalable armor system.
Earlier this week the Army released the RFP for the the SPD under the name, “Weight Re-distribution System for IOTV“, not exactly beating you over the head that this is the RFP for the SPD, this has long been the manner in which SPDs are released so that you have to be in the know to look for the right announcement. Even then, the Fed Biz Opps announcement is pretty curt. If you want to see the real requirement you need to go here.
So, this year the theme is Weight Redistribution. Since industry has taken the materials side (woven aramids) as far as it can go at this time, they are now looking at how the load interacts with the body. For several years companies have been developing systems to move the weight of the armor to the hips in much the same manner as the backpacking industry did over 30 years ago. That’s right, 30 years.
Most notably, long time readers of SSD will remember Archangel Armor’s Internal Frame Load Bearing Armor. However, their system recently received a serious redesign shed weight and bulk. Additionally, last year Crye Precision introduced their Structural Kinetic Support System (StKSS) which pairs their armor system with a belt to transfer the load through two staves. London Bridge Trading Company has also thrown their hat into the ring with the Comfort Armor Suspension System (CASS). All transfer the load from the shoulders to the hips.
The Army has been informally looking at several commercial varieties of these systems for some time now and its good to see them finally do something more formal. But, in our opinion, until armor, fighting, and sustainment loads are all looked at as load problems and a common chassis is developed to support them in a modular and scalable manner, then we will continue to see increased weight due to to redundancy.
Specifically, the Army is interested in transferring the weight of the IOTV and SPCS (Plate Carrier) to the hips and sacrum. They are going to look at the tradeoff off between the device’s weight (less than lbs) and how much it increases comfort and performance as well as how increased bulk will affect the Soldier’s ability to move, shoot, and communicate.
Those interested have until April 11th to offer up their solution. Generally, three or four vendors are selected to produce 10 examples of their technology. Then, the Army runs them through their paces. Don’t expect to hear how any of these systems do though. The Army refused our requests for information last year for SPD 8.
