Not Just Hard Hats
HELMETS NEED TO PROTECT BUT YET STILL ALLOW SITUATIONAL AWARENESS. NEW DESIGNS CAN HELP.
The Army's Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) introduced a number of modern conveniences along with increased ballistic protection when it was introduced in 2002, and that protection continues to provide cover for the heads of special operations forces today. Indeed, the introduction of the ACH has encouraged top helmet manufacturers to continue to examine ways to make helmets lighter still while granting more ballistics protection. The ACH replaced the Personal Armor System Ground Troops Helmet (PASGT) for widespread use in 2003, introducing greater small ballistics protection, better comfort and improved suspension to soldiers. The results of an Army survey on the helmet upon its introduction revealed more than 90 percent satisfaction with the ACH among soldiers, according to Mine Safety Appliances Co. (MSA), one of the manufacturers of the helmet. However, the Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier, based in Fort Belvoir, Va., found in a separate survey conducted last year that about half of soldiers were not wearing their helmets properly. Therefore, the office released an advisory to remind soldiers of the proper way to wear both the ACH and PASGT.
“Results of a U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory photo survey indicate that roughly half the soldiers in the field are wearing the ground combat helmets improperly,” PEO Soldier stated in its safety-of-use message, then added: “In cases where the PASGT or ACH helmets are fitted or worn improperly, the soldier is exposed to increased risk of injury due to ballistic threats (fragmentation) or concussion. The majority of improperly sized/fitted helmets have been found to be too small.” Despite that problem, helmet manufacturers argue that the ACH represents a significant improvement for warfighters, and they hold out the possibility of more improvements to come.
COMFORT AND AWARENESS
MSA, Pittsburgh, Pa., held the winning design for the ACH when the U.S. Army first awarded a contract for the new helmet. Most major manufacturers now manufacture the ACH for the Army, but MSA originated the first batches of the helmet.
Mark Deasy, MSA director of public relations, told Special Operations Technology that the MSA design sprung partly from its acquisition of Gallet, a French company, in 2002. “Gallet was really the leading European manufacturer of protective helmets, primarily for the fire service as well as the police but they also did some military work,” Deasy explained. “We acquired Gallet primarily for the fire service business. The fire service is one of our largest markets globally. We make helmets for firefighters as well as thermal imaging cameras, and self-contained breathing apparatus, so it is a significant market for us.” But as it turns out, Gallet had a prototype design for a new military helmet that had not received approval from the U.S. Army. MSA brought its engineering resources and expertise to bear on the problem and incorporated input from the Army, which lead to the service’s eventual adoption of the helmet as the ACH.
“The helmet was first utilized by special ops forces back in late 2002,” Deasy said. “It was so successful that the Army started issuing contracts to provide the helmet to soldiers.” Large-scale use of the helmet began in November 2003, with a contract award worth $28 million for 80,000 of the helmets. The Army found the helmets an attractive option because of their comfort and stability and increased capability for situational awareness. “They were finding that soldiers couldn’t see and they were taking the helmets off. That’s not a good thing to do in a firefight,” Deasy remarked. The PASGT comes with a leather suspension system, a strap that holds the helmet to a soldier’s head but also allows the helmet to shake from side-to-side as a soldier moves. The ACH has a pad system, where soldiers can attach pads inside the helmet with Velcro to stabilize the helmet and customize its fit. Deasy estimates that the ACH is about a half an inch shorter in the back than the PASGT, in addition to being raised over the ears for the use of communications equipment. “One of the drawbacks of the older style helmet is if you were shooting from a prone position, as you went down to get into that prone position, your body armor would rise up on your body and knock the helmet forward, really to the point where it was covering part of your eyes,” Deasy said. Shortening the back of the helmet solved that problem, improving situational awareness. Situational awareness also is improved through the soldier's ability to hear better, as no helmet is covering his or her ears.
SACRIFICES AND FLEXIBILITIES
Once a design was improved and in full acceptance, other helmet manufacturers began making the ACH. One of those manufacturers, Gentex Corp. of Zeeland, Mich., had offered an alternate design for the ACH. That alternate design became the preferred helmet for the U.S. Air Force, explained Richard Long, Gentex ground equipment product specialist. “Gentex’s version of that was called the Tactical Ballistic Helmet II, or TBH II,” Long told SOTECH. “Ours has become the standard helmet for the Air Force. The Air Force likes the TBH II over the ACH. A lot of special ops communities do, too. It is also becoming a basic helmet for countries like Belgium and Sweden.” The TBH II helmet uses pads like the ACH, but those pads can vary in thickness. Warfighters can add or remove foam from the TBH pads, but the ACH pads have standardized pads. In addition, the TBH II uses an X-harness, which provides greater stability than the ACH H-harness as a retention system, Long contended. In addition to stability, special ops sought increased situational awareness through raising the helmet over the ears and also by eliminating the beak from the front of the helmet.
“For special operations applications, they determined that the beak in the front was a hindrance to looking upward, especially in urban operations,” Long said. “They basically said we will cut the beak off, trim the sides a little bit, and we save weight because we are using a high tenacity material. At the same time, they did get increased ballistics protection for certain types of projectiles.” Eliminating the beak is a trade off, Long noted. Increased situational awareness comes with reduction in coverage, and the U.S. Army reports that the ACH has 8 percent less surface area than the PASGT. “When you eliminate the beak on the helmet, you eliminate some blast protection from a blast that could occur above you. Not everything happens from the ground up. A lot of things happen from the top down,” Long said.
In addition to manufacturing the ACH and the TBH II, Gentex makes the helmet of choice for the U.S. Marine Corps, which is called the USMC Light Weight Helmet (LWH).“The Marine Corps wanted to stay with the original PASGT shape,” Long said. “They wanted the full area coverage, but they wanted the improved headband and suspension systems with the X-harness retentions.” When it comes to adding even more improvements to military helmet designs, a lot of attention has been focused on the aviation communities, Long added. “What it boils down to in the case of the frontline fighter jet pilot or helicopter pilot, he needs heads-up displays and he needs goggle capability and he needs a lot of things that 90 percent of the Army don’t need because they are support personnel,” he said. “Those support personnel need impact protection, eye protection, hearing protection, ability to communicate and penetration resistance—things that a basic helmet provides them.”
SURVIVABILITY AND ADAPTABILITY
Body armor giant Armor Holdings Inc., headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., also is working on new helmet innovations. For instance, the company announced last February that it had exclusively licensed a breakthrough in nanotechnology, called shear thickening fluid. The fluid, under license from the University of Delaware’s Center for Composite Materials and the Weapons and Materials Research Directorate of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, apparently has the ability to boost the protection levels of ballistic fabrics, including those used in helmets, without interfering with their weight or comfort. While the company may field prototypes later this year, Steve Motoyama, program manager for helmets at Armor Holdings, declined to discuss many of the “revolutionary changes” underway at Armor Holdings, except to note that some of them involve integrating features currently considered add-ons into helmets. “Right now, our main focus is ACH for the Army. We have a combat vehicle crewman helmet, which is a helmet that integrates a communications system in it. It’s cutaway around the earpiece,” Motoyama said. Motoyama explained that the improvement in ballistic performance for the ACH is tested by the Army through 2-, 4-, 16- and 64-grain fragment simulating projectiles (fsp), as well as a 17-grain fsp. Grain is a unit of measure for bullet weight (one pound is 7,000 grains.) Essentially, the Army shoots a projectile, which simulates shrapnel or small fragments, at the helmet to test its ability to protect a soldier during explosions and similar threats. The 17-grain projectile is essentially .22-caliber bullet. “They actually shoot them with a rifle with a circular cylinder in the 2, 4, 16 and 64 grain,” Motoyama elaborated. “It is what it says. It is a circular cylinder straight out of geometry class. The weight is the 2, 4, 16 or 64 grains. Now they have different velocities. The lower weight projectiles are a much higher velocity. They slow down as you increase the weight of the projectile.” In addition to the ACH, Armor Holdings manufactures its combat vehicle crewman (CVC) helmet.
“It's a tank helmet,” Motoyama said. “Any crewman in an armored vehicle cannot communicate just by talking because of the noise of the vehicle or his surroundings. A tank would have a large gun, obviously, and the noise from the turbine and all of the other mechanicals would make it difficult to hear. They have a communications system integrated into it. It is a technology that has been around for a while. It is pretty old and somewhat cumbersome. We are doing some things to improve on that.” ♦