Lightening the load
Modern warfare sees soldiers weighed down by a plethora of electronic equipment requiring heavy batteries. PE looks at “Intelligent” clothing solutions
- Published in Features.
Roke has looked at solutions for weaving power cables into clothing
The modern foot soldier is better kitted out today than at any time in military history. But while new electronic equipment such as scopes, night-vision gear, GPS, laser designators, map displays and other items brings welcome capability, it also adds weight and becomes a cumbersome burden to lug around.
Indeed, according to the Ministry of Defence, increased electronics means the average soldier now carries 4kg of batteries for a 48-hour rural mission, rising to over 10kg for some other roles. There is also little battery standardisation at present, with a mixture of different sizes and shapes, and primary and secondary (rechargeable) cells, and an assortment of connector types.
For critical systems, soldiers don’t want to risk losing power, so they often replace the batteries before they have run down. Patrols often return with a lot of partially spent batteries, which are often discarded without thought.
Little wonder, then, that engineers are thinking about how this situation might be improved. One concept under consideration is a wearable power system that would involve webbing or other gear made from textiles with electrical channels made of conductive yarn woven into them. These channels could transport data as well as power, and could form part of an advanced personal area network connecting numerous devices.
The wearable system could feature a main power unit which all the different devices would connect to, improving standardisation and reducing waste. The system could assign a priority to each device, so the most important kit would be the last to fail. It would also save the
40 minutes a day that the MoD estimates soldiers spend just changing batteries.
“Dismounted soldiers in current conflicts are massively overloaded in terms of the amount of weight they are having to carry,” says James Fisher – business development manager at Roke Manor Research, the Hampshire-based engineering consultancy that is leading work into lighter power systems. “That increased weight burden is accounted for by new equipment such as body armour, weapons and ammunition, but also to a huge extent by communication systems and force protection equipment such as jamming devices. Consequently there is an increasing requirement to carry batteries to power these systems. And it is likely to get worse in the future with a proliferation of devices that draw power.”
The Roke research effort is looking at the problem from two angles: reducing the power needs of the equipment soldiers carry, while also looking to reduce the weight of power generation equipment itself through the development of improved battery chemistry and advanced technologies such as fuel cells. In terms of the former, for instance, Roke is looking at advances in display technologies that have emerged in the civilian sector.