Army Releases 'Black Box' RFI To Measure Blast Events In Strykers

Army Releases 'Black Box' RFI To Measure Blast Events In Strykers
17 May 2011

The Army is seeking to acquire data recorders, or "black boxes," to measure the impact of blast forces inside combat vehicles after they've triggered landmines or improvised explosive devices, according to a recent government solicitation.
The Army's program executive office for ground combat systems released a request for information for the off-the-shelf black boxes on April 20 and asked for responses by May 4.
"The primary purpose of the black box is to measure the blast and acceleration forces inside the driver's and troop compartments during an event," states the RFI. The "black box must be capable of measuring, recording and storing vehicle motions and its characteristics when the vehicle is exposed to kinetic energy, blast overpressures, shock, ballistic and impact events."
The service's plan is to integrate, test, field and install the black boxes on a number of Stryker vehicles some time within the next four months, the RFI states.
Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said last week that the service lacked an understanding of vehicle protection in relation to brain injuries incurred by soldiers riding in armored platforms that hit roadside bombs.
"With the majority of our injuries and concussions, there is no contact injury -- it is the pure force of the blast on the head," he told defense reporters May 12 at a breakfast in Washington DC. "That is what we don't fully understand. We need to understand that so we can understand the total range of protection offered by our vehicles."
The Army's testing community needs the boxes because it must adjust to evaluate vehicle safety and brain injury, Chiarelli said.
"The testers come in and they lay out for me, 'OK, given the size of this particular explosion, this is the damage we can see done to the occupants inside the vehicle.' Everything they show me is . . . broken arms, broken legs, missing limbs at different amounts of explosive power," he said. "I look at them and I say, 'Guys, that's 11 percent of my problem -- [most] of my problem is post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. How many folks inside that vehicle receive a concussion?'"
Chiarelli, who was recently presented with the Army's Hero of Medicine Award for his work with soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, said he wanted the black box data to potentially inform the creation of a new safety standard by which military vehicles could be evaluated.
"I want us to figure out a way to collect data on explosions [from] inside the vehicle so we have some kind of baseline so we can understand the effects of blast injuries," he said. (Source: Inside the Army)


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