An Approach for the Enhancement of Military Combat, Performance and Personal Protective Equipment for Ground Troops

Abstract

From the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq, individuals in this country have stood in order to protect their family, friends and beliefs. Though there are no certainties in life, people are bound to protect their ideals and way of life and as Americans we leave this task to our soldiers. The soldiers that serve in the United States military are becoming overburdened with an ever increasing amount of equipment to use, maintain, carry and account for. This rise, however, leads to increasing weight with a greater complexity of use brought about by the number of individualized pieces of equipment, which decreases mobility, agility and a soldier’s range of motion. Unfortunately all of these problems stem from the equipments inability to appropriately account for human factors associated with the soldier. The purpose of this thesis is to create an approach that will be used to design, evaluate and re-design equipment with military applications. The approach will be designed to provide an effective method for re-designing or creating a new piece of equipment that centers around the Marine, with the intent of effectively increasing the soldier’s operational capabilities by focusing on superior human factor integration while unifying the individual pieces of equipment by simplifying the number of individual pieces of gear by addressing product semantics associated with the equipment. The information that follows will provide individuals, contractors and non or governmental agencies with the knowledge to design and create future equipment with military applications that offer our soldiers increased lethality without sacrificing protection.