In order to truly optimize soldier load and performance, there must be a concerted effort to understand and advertise the human performance implications of heavy loads. The Army should undertake an authoritative study to better assess the relationship between load and combat effectiveness, building on existing literature.
This study should detail the limitations and risks of excessive load. The results should be socialized throughout the Army to inform leadership decisions about load configurations by mission requirements.
Military doctrine on weight limits, changed if necessary based on the human performance assessment, should be enforced with the aim to improve soldier combat preparedness by decreasing the weight carried and adjusting to operational requirements. Part of this effort should be examining which supplies soldiers truly need on the battlefield and opportunities for resupply.
The Army should undertake a thorough assessment of necessary supplies and the fidelity of timely resupply, and educate leaders on the importance of minimizing loads. This means reducing equipment carried, such as ammunition, to only that which is mission critical and will be reasonably used.
In addition, the physical operating environment should dictate weight limits, as difficult terrain, such as mountains, limits the amount of weight soldiers can reasonably carry.
For every pound of additional equipment fielded, a pound should be removed. This is principally a leadership and training issue, but the problem is hard to resolve given the heavy burden of all the equipment that is assumed to be needed today. The historical recommendations to enable the best agility, cognition, and stamina on the battlefield, as well as protect from injury, all approximate 50 pounds. The weight of protective body armor makes adding necessary equipment and still meeting the weight limit essentially impossible, which highlights the importance of minimizing armor weight.
Current torso body armor weighs approximately 32 pounds, leaving only 18 pounds for additional equipment. An M4 carbine with optics weighs approximately 7 pounds, empty.
A camelback with ounces of water weighs almost 7 pounds. Night vision devices, a hand grenade, and one MRE add 3. Body armor itself is modular, and in theory allows commanders to tailor the level of protection to operational needs, reducing weight to increase mobility as needed.
Anecdotally, however, most commanders do not vary the elements used. The appropriate level of protection depends on a variety of conditions: the enemy threat, terrain, and mission, among other factors. Army doctrine teaches that commanders should take into account the mission, enemy, troops, terrain, and time METT-T when planning operations. For example, wearing heavy body armor may not be operationally practical on a long-range multi-day patrol in mountainous terrain, such as in Afghanistan.
In practice, the decision of which protective level to wear is usually restricted to senior leaders. On-the-ground commanders are rarely clearly delegated the authority necessary to adjust the level of protection to conditions on the ground, especially at the company level. Army leaders are justifiably concerned that that if they made a reasonable choice to balance the level of protection against the tradeoff in additional weight and mobility and a soldier was injured or killed as a result, their decision would be second-guessed by DoD superiors and Congressional leadership.
This unfortunate situation harms soldiers in the long run. An overly risk-averse approach that does not allow commanders to adjust the protection level based on specific conditions on the ground may hamper soldier mobility. This is not a technical or material problem but rather is primarily a cultural and policy problem. Commanders do not have the clearly delegated authority and backing from superiors, including DoD civilian and Congressional leadership, to modify the level of protection to specific METT-T conditions.
The Army should clearly delegate authority to company-level commanders to modify the level of protection as needed, based on the specific threat and mission. Near-term prospects for technological improvements that would fundamentally change the weight-mobility tradeoff are slim.
Despite rapid gains throughout the midth century in body armor, progress in better materials has been incremental for the past several decades. From the Persian Gulf War to the Afghanistan War, for example, armor areal density decreased by 24 percent, or roughly only a 2. As a result, body armor weight has actually increased significantly over the past 15 years.
Armor areal density pounds per square foot is shown for a constant level of protection over time. Improvements in body armor materials resulted in dramatic weight reductions throughout the latter half of the 20th century, but only incremental gains in recent years. Any future significant reductions in body armor weight are likely to come from areas other than material improvements.
Nevertheless, even given these limitations in materials, there are a number of steps the Army could take in the near term to reduce body armor weight and improve overall soldier survivability without requiring fundamentally new material advances.
There may be opportunities to reduce weight without reducing soldier survivability. Legacy Army requirements for system design and construction may make hard armor plates over-engineered. According to research officials, updates would allow for weight reductions without increasing the ballistic risk to personnel.
According to the report, researchers may develop new reduced-weight hard armor plates in fiscal year , pending approval from Army senior leaders. Tailored body armor that was specifically designed to fit individual soldiers could significantly improve area coverage and potentially reduce weight. Tailored body armor would also reduce unnecessary bulk and increase soldier mobility and responsiveness in dynamic engagements. Tailored body armor would require a different model for manufacturing and stockpiling body armor.
Depending on how uniquely body armor is tailored to each individual soldier, it may need to be manufactured based on the measurements of that soldier as he or she enters the force. Individually tailored body armor options are available for law enforcement, for example. While tailored armor would require some additional cost, the feasibility of adopting this approach at scale would depend heavily on the manufacturing model used. The Army should conduct an assessment of the feasibility of tailored body armor and potential advantages in reduced weight, increased area coverage, and improved mobility.
This assessment should include an evaluation of manufacturing methods to reduce the cost of adopting individually tailored solutions at scale. Download PDF. Prior to joining CNAS, He is the award-winning author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and th And they speak to Bob Work about the ongo By Martijn Rasser.
Executive Summary Body armor saves lives. Key Findings The heavy weight and bulk of body armor decreases soldier performance. Experiments have demonstrated that heavy loads affect mobility and situational awareness, leading to a measurable decrease in shooting response time. Because dismounted soldiers are limited by what they can physically carry into battle, soldiers face tradeoffs between mobility, protection, and lethality. Heavier loads also increase fatigue and can reduce mission performance overall.
A paradigm shift is needed from a narrow focus on protection to considering overall soldier survivability. The benefit of additional armor should be balanced against its effect on mobility, survivability, and mission performance. Additional weight reduces cognitive and tactical performance and mobility, but the Army has not commissioned an authoritative assessment to tie weight to measures of operational effectiveness.
Technology often increases, rather than decreases, the load of the soldier. Army and Marine Corps doctrine acknowledges the harmful effects of excessive weight, but in practice historical guidelines for weight limits are not followed.
One problem is that research studies frequently tie heavier loads to slower soldier movement, but often do not take the next step to link loads to measures of operational effectiveness, such as marksmanship, maneuver, or exposure to enemy fire.
Commanders do not have actual or perceived authority to change the level of protection based on conditions on the ground.
Current body armor is over-designed. Optimizing body armor requirements for injury criteria and threat could reduce weight. When it was Jessica's turn, I would go sit with her to keep her company so she wouldn't be alone. She would do the same thing for me when I was on security detail. I feel for anyone who has siblings in the military. We are lucky to have gotten stationed together, but most of the time siblings get split up and sent halfway around the world from each other.
Yost has an old set of dog tags, carried by his grandfather during the Korean War. The medal has been in my family for nearly 70 years and has been safely carried during various conflicts by three generations. It was given to my grandfather, John C.
LaCour, in by his mother upon his departure for Navy basic training. He returned from war safely. Two decades later, my cousin and uncle, both Seabees, carried the medal to Vietnam in and respectively.
Each of those men returned safely from the conflict and returned the medal to my grandfather. In the early s, my brother and I became the third generation charged with safeguarding this medal.
He returned unharmed to once again return it safely to my grandfather. In , I entered Army flight school and had my first opportunity to carry the medal. I returned the medal safely a year later to my grandfather upon completing flight school.
In I was deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom, and since my grandfather had passed away in , my grandmother placed the medal in my care for the second time. Last year, when preparing for this tour in Afghanistan, my mother put the medal in my hand and told me I was going to war and I needed to carry it to keep me safe.
It is the third time for me to carry this very important piece of my family's history to a conflict. My son has expressed interest in joining the military, and I look forward to passing the medal to him when he departs for duty to carry on the tradition, thereby adding another generation under its protection.
IS name is Wrinkles, and he was one of my son's first visitors after leaving the delivery room. One of the nurses laid him in my son Aiden's tiny crib, where he would remain until Aiden was healthy enough to come home with us. Born a month early, Aiden didn't seem much bigger than the tiny stuffed animal, and the sight of Wrinkles sometimes lightened the mood in the hospital room.
After a couple birthdays and Christmases, Aiden has amassed a large family of bigger animals, and Wrinkles is often found wedged behind his bed. When I asked Aiden if I could bring one of the animals with me to Afghanistan, he responded with a curt "no," but I was able to secure Wrinkles without him noticing. He may have forgotten Wrinkles, but I never will.
I wanted something that was going to remind me of my boys Aidan, four, and Colman, two to take with me to Afghanistan. We went to the mall to let the boys pick out a stuffed animal for me. Next up was a short message that I could replay. I waited until I got to Afghanistan to hear the message. When I heard the first part, "I love you Daddy!
Then I heard Colman's submission, something my wife taught him when they come to watch me play church-league softball. The only things left were to put some clothes on the dog and give him a name.
The boys donated a shirt they had both worn at some point but was too small for them now. Not a minute goes by during the day where I don't think about my Family, but it's nice to hear their voices whenever I want. In return for their gift to me, I take pictures of Chuck Ragan doing things around the base so they know he's staying busy.
MY youngest daughter, Madison, gave me this frog in when I came back into the Army. At the time, our home was in Washington state, but I had come down on orders to Fort Hood, Texas, and she and my wife were unable to leave with me. Madison had an assortment of nearly 1, frog toys, miniatures and other collectables. So as a way for me to remember her, she took this one out of her collection and gave it to me.
I put it on the dashboard of my truck and for the 2,mile drive to Fort Hood, it bounced from one end of the cab to the other. I carried the frog with me wherever I went, from our convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad, to the numerous missions I went out on in support of the 1st Cavalry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team.
Then there are grenades, food, and water, a poncho, and liner, plus personal items such as a flashlight, night vision gear, and medical kit. This personal equipment along can easily run to 70 lbs. We haven't even mentioned squad and platoon weapons, and let's face it: Someone has to carry the ammunition.
A single 60mm mortar round weighs four. A belt of ammunition for the squad's M machine gun weighs six lbs, and soldiers tend to carry all they can. And then there is the bane of every technology user: batteries. King estimates that the average soldier goes into action with a hefty 20 lbs of batteries. With its weight problem seemingly multiplying, the military is trying to find lighter solutions. The Pentagon already makes everything from Kevlar, carbon fiber, and other lightweight materials, though this trend has led to a widespread joke: A soldier carries lbs.
In the past, of course, armies used the low-tech solution of pack animals to move their gear. These days, tech companies envision robots becoming the modern military mule.
Although quadruped robots like BigDog from Boston Dynamics is no longer in the running it turned out to be a bit too noisy , there are numerous wheeled alternatives.
The U. Such robots can operate on their own either following a leader or plotting their own route cross-country using GPS waypoints. A key requirement is that no soldiers are taken out of the front line to handle the robots. But these robot mules primary objective is not to take the weight of its human counterparts, but instead to reduce casualties by eliminating the need to expose soldiers while resupplying. In fact, given a robot assistant, many commanders would carry even more weight, such as a.
There's another issue: Putting all your ammunition on a big, noisy machine that cannot take cover comes with its own inherent risks as well. Again though, increased carrying capacity, is an invitation to increase the load. An exoskeleton is an invitation to add more protection, meaning heavier armor, and potentially more powerful weapons.
Commanders and soldiers plan for the worst and expect the supply system to fail, which it rarely does. The Project Payne study cites the Battle of Long Tan in Vietnam where Australian soldiers fought for more than two hours with just three round magazines each, without running out of ammunition.
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