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thedrifter
06-08-05, 04:55 AM
June 13, 2005

Suiting up against IEDs
New air-conditioned armor has 40 pounds of plating to protect Army turret gunners

By Matthew Cox
Times staff writer


Some Army turret gunners in Iraq will soon don suits of armor designed to counter an emerging trend in insurgent bombings — blast injuries.
The Cupola Protective Ensemble weighs 40 pounds and includes its own air-conditioning unit.

body armor experts say the CPE is an essential piece of gear for protecting soldiers and Marines riding in turrets from having their limbs blown off from the blast force of improvised explosive devices.

Troops in Iraq have suffered blast-injury rates that far surpass those of past conflicts, said Karl Masters, the lead engineer on the CPE for Project Manager Soldier Equipment.

“Blast injury has been running 2 to 3 percent in past wars, but with this one we are looking at 60 percent,” he said.

Of particular concern, he said, is the insurgency’s increasing use of car bombs, which suicide attackers often steer into Army vehicles.

“When you are talking about a vehicle full of explosives, the blast overpressure can cause extreme injury,” he said.

Body armor officials began developing the CPE in August 2004, after senior commanders in Iraq expressed concern about Marines and soldiers manning crew-served weapons in turrets mounted on Humvees, supply trucks and other vehicles. Turret gunners were suffering horrific injuries from car-bomb attacks.

“We looked at autopsy reports to do a trend analysis of IED injuries,” Masters said. “What we found in that analysis was that traumatic amputation is a significant trend of IED attack.”

While such injuries are not limited to turret gunners, the Marines and soldiers performing this duty atop trucks and Humvees are the most exposed to the threat, Masters said. The CPE was fashioned to protect against that.

To help counter this trend, the Army recently shipped 188 of the armored suits to Iraq and plans to issue at least 2,000 to Marines and soldiers in the combat zone by this fall.

The first 188 suits in Iraq will go through a “proof of concept” assessment for about 60 days, to determine if any minor improvements still are needed, Masters said.

“The assessment will look at further refinements that the users want, and then we will start kicking these things out the door,” he said.

Turret gunners from “gun truck” units in Iraq tested the first prototype of the suit last October. While they found the suit needed improvements, the troops said they wanted it, Masters said.

The suit consists of a thick jacket, pants and neck flap, which are combined with a clear face shield that connects to the standard-issue combat helmet.

The jacket has eight blast plates — two in each arm, one in front, one in back and one on each side. The pants have no plates, since the legs usually aren’t as exposed in the turret as the upper half of the body.

The see-through face shield is double-layered. The first layer is designed to absorb the blast energy and break up, leaving the second layer for additional protection.

The face shield is designed to work with the jacket’s collar to protect against “traumatic brain injury,” which often follows the jarring force of an explosive detonation. The two help absorb the impact to the neck and head that occurs when the wearer is propelled against another object during an explosion.

And the CPE’s Kevlar and Nomex material is designed to further protect troops against flying shrapnel and burns caused by liquid flame sometimes found in improvised explosives.

Heavy, but not hot

But the CPE isn’t for everyone. It’s far too heavy for soldiers to wear on dismounted missions, Masters said.

The jacket and neck collar weigh 26 pounds — and that’s on top of the 16-pound Interceptor vest and ballistic plates soldiers must continue to wear underneath. And then there’s an additional 11 pounds for the pants, 3 pounds for the face shield and about a pound for the neck shield.

Although it’s heavy, it isn’t hot. Troops wear a liquid-coolant vest next to the body to keep from overheating. A special compressor stowed aboard the vehicle pumps chilled water through the thin tubing that lines the vest. The system keeps the temperature inside the CPE at 65 degrees.

Shucks in seconds

The biggest concern among soldiers testing the suit in Iraq in October was that there was no way to get out of the CPE quickly.

“If I’m in a vehicle, I need a quick release on everything, so I can shuck this thing and become a dismount,” Masters said, describing soldier comments.

That’s been fixed. The current version has two toggle handles on the jacket. The wearer pulls one to detach the first Velcro-secured flap in front and expose the second toggle. Upon pulling the second toggle, the jacket comes open and can be shrugged off in less than four seconds, Masters said.

The suit’s pants are breakaway style with Velcro fasteners along the sides, allowing for a quick exit. They are modular, so they can be worn as shorts, depending on the amount of protection needed, Masters said.

Counters roadside bombs

Officials hope the suits provide some basic information on IED attacks. Despite all the data that has been compiled on IEDs, it is still a challenge to find out what individual soldiers were doing when each attack occurred, Masters said.

The medical community is setting up a Joint Trauma Registry where this type of information can be used to determine who is suffering the worst injuries in these attacks, he said.

“One of the primary reasons for getting [the CPE] done is to have a base line [that helps determine], hey, does this help us in reducing casualties?” Masters said, explaining that the CPE will be examined to see if it reduces the number of severe injuries suffered in IED attacks.

The prevalence of homemade bomb attacks in Iraq prompted the Army to set up a Joint IED Defeat Task Force in October 2003. Since then, senior Army officials have credited the task force with significantly reducing the number of U.S. casualties suffered in roadside bomb attacks.

“Casualties have gone down 40 percent since we started this,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said March 17 at a roundtable discussion with reporters.

“By the way, that’s not good enough. We know that,” Cody said. “We are working against a very adaptable and a very innovative and a very insidious enemy.”

Matthew Cox covers the Army.



Ellie