Discover US Army's Top 10 modernization efforts of 2016 22912161

Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are working on the first new lethal hand grenade in more than 40 years, which is designed to give greater flexibility to the warfighter.

The multi-purpose hand grenade design will provide both fragmentation and blast overpressure more effectively and safely than its legacy counterparts. Once fielded, Soldiers will be able to select and use a hand grenade with different effects simply by flipping a switch, said Jessica Perciballi, ARDEC project officer for Enhanced Tactical Multi-Purpose, or ET-MP, Army, Grenades & Demolitions Division.

Soldiers will not need to carry as many types of hand grenades, Perciballi said.

Another feature is that the new grenades are designed for ambidextrous use, meaning that they can be thrown with either hand. Current grenades require a different arming procedure for left-handed users.

"Not only will ET-MP provide additional capabilities and lethality to the warfighter, it will also be the first Army Fuze Safety Review Board and Insensitive Munition-qualified lethal grenade in the Army's portfolio," Perciballi added.

"With these upgrades in the ET-MP, not only is the fuze timing completely electronic, but the detonation train is also out-of-line," said Matthew Hall, Grenades Tech Base Development Lead. "Detonation time can now be narrowed down into milliseconds, and until armed, the hand grenade will not be able to detonate."

Hall said the current plan for ET-MP is to transition the new grenades to Project Manager Close Combat Systems in fiscal year 2020.

The first seven joint light tactical vehicles were turned over to the Army and Marine Corps in late September by Oshkosh Defense for testing at different sites around the force.

A total of about 100 of the JLTV "production vehicles" will be provided to the Army and Marine Corps for testing over the next year, at a rate of about 10 per month, officials said. The vehicles will undergo maneuverability and automotive testing at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, and other sites around the country.

The JLTV is a tactical wheeled vehicle with a chassis that offers protection from underbelly blasts and an "intelligent" suspension system that can be raised and lowered for off-road conditions. It also touts greater fuel efficiency than current tactical vehicles.

In addition to testing at Yuma, the vehicles will undergo testing for cyber integration of command, control, communications and intelligence at the Electronics Proving Ground on Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The vehicles will also be tested for automotive performance at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland and the Cold Regions Test Center on Fort Greely, Alaska.

"It's on schedule," said Scott Davis, program executive officer for combat support and combat service support, about the JLTV program. "It's doing everything we ever expected it to. It's just incredible."

To learn more: JLTV technical datasheet

At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, scientists are looking at new ways to exploit the most fundamental or "quantum" component of light -- the photon -- to enhance communications, sensing and cryptography, and anything else they can think of.

"We don't really know what all the applications are. But our mandate, in part, is to find those applications," said Michael Brodsky, a physical scientist at Army Research Laboratory.

In October, Brodsky was setting up a new lab at the ARL, located about 12 miles north of the Pentagon in Adelphi, Maryland. He has boxes there that generate entangled photons -- the smallest measure of light. It's entangled photons that are of interest to Brodsky and the Army. A pair of entangled photons exhibits a unique property that Brodsky and his team hope to exploit.

A single photon, on its own, can be captured in a memory unit -- or "quantum storage" -- and subsequently measured. The measurements can be recorded as well. But when two entangled photons are captured and measured in the same way, they yield the same measurements every time, Brodsky said.

Those same two entangled protons could be split up, on different sides of the lab, on different sides of a research campus, or on different sides of the country, and still, because they are entangled, they behave the same way, and so they yield the same measurements no matter where they are.

The results of those measurements are unpredictable -- completely random -- and can be converted to a string of zeros and ones, Brodsky said, but "you get identical strings of zeros and ones at two remote locations. Which, for instance, could be used as a key for secure communications."

A critical part of cryptography and secure communications is the use of random numbers. On both sides of the communication, both parties will need the same string of random numbers to encrypt that communication. If both parties had one half of an entangled pair of photons, then they would both have an endless supply of random numbers at their disposal, and those random numbers would be the same. So a pair of entangled photons, distributed to two parties, could be used to encrypt communications between the two parties.

Finding ways to distribute entangled photons, and using those entangled photons for secure networking are just two challenges that ARL is working on now. But they are looking at other ways to use entangled photons as well, such as enhancing sensors and quantum computing, for instance.

The first armored multipurpose vehicle, or AMPV, was handed over to the Army Dec. 15 for testing.

The AMPV demonstrator rolled out of the BAE Systems plant in York, Pennsylvania, to begin a 52-month engineering and manufacturing development phase for the vehicle. At least 29 of the vehicles will be manufactured for this phase of the procurement process, officials said.

If the low-rate production option for the AMPV is approved, procurement officials said several hundred of the vehicles will be manufactured for testing over the next four years.

The AMPV will replace the armored brigade combat team's M113 family of vehicles. The AMPV addresses the M113's shortcomings in survivability and force protection, and size, weight, power, and cooling, known as SWAP-C, officials said. It is also designed to incorporate future technologies and the Army's network.

The AMPV has a brand new hull, but it maintains some of the Bradley legacy design, allowing for some compatibility efficiencies, according to Maj. Gen. David G. Bassett, program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems. In fact, about 60 to 70 percent of the parts are common with existing ground combat vehicles, Bassett said during a press conference in October.

The AMPV also has space inside to allow for the addition of new systems in the future, and it comes with an improved power train. The hull is stronger from a force protection perspective, too, he said.

Meanwhile, many Bradleys are still in service, "so we're building new capabilities in an incremental way over time," Bassett said.

"I'd love to have replacement programs today for Abrams and Bradleys," Bassett said. "We could get those plans [for replacements], but it just doesn't fit into this portfolio and budget requirement. Instead we're looking at, do you want to do an ECP-3 [engineering change proposal] on a Bradley or do you want to bridge to a new platform? We're making informed decisions."

To learn more: AMPV technical datasheet

The Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center and General Motors unveiled an energy-efficient tactical vehicle that could one day save lives on the battlefield.

The ZH2 hydrogen-fuel-cell electric vehicle prototype was rolled out Oct. 3, during the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting and Symposium.

Kevin Centeck, team leader for Non-Primary Power Systems, Ground Vehicle Power and Mobility Directorate, TARDEC, said the vehicle comes with several advantages for the Army and Soldiers in the field.

First, the ZH2 operates on hydrogen fuel instead of traditional diesel. It uses much less fuel than traditional tactical vehicles. At idle, it is "extremely efficient," Centeck said. This should reduce the logistics train.

Second, since the vehicle uses hydrogen with electric power, it has an extremely low acoustic signature, meaning it's very quiet. "It's silent mobility, silent watch," Centeck said. "You don't give away your position by turning on the engine."

Third, the ZH2 has a radically reduced thermal signature because it doesn't operate as hot as a diesel engine, which means the heat signature is harder to pick up by enemy thermal sensors, providing additional stealth for Soldiers.

A fourth, less direct, but nonetheless important advantage cited by Centeck, is that the ZH2 demonstrated that the Army could build such a vehicle rapidly, using mostly off-the-shelf parts. The ZH2 took just one year from concept to delivery. The vehicle itself is basically a Chevy Colorado platform.

Hemorrhage control is the No. 1 thing you can do to save lives on the battlefield, according to Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West.

"Stop the bleeding as soon as you can, and stop it as much as you can," said West, who serves as surgeon general of the Army and commander of the Army Medical Command. She spoke Aug. 18, at a meeting of the Defense Writer's Group in Washington, D.C.

One of the latest advances in treating hemorrhaging on the battlefield, West said, is what is known as the "junctional tourniquet," which can be applied to wounds in ways not possible with conventional tourniquets.

Traditionally, a medic or fellow Soldier can apply a tourniquet just to a person's limb, she explained. A traditional tourniquet cannot be used to stop hemorrhaging in the abdomen, chest, groin, waist, pelvis or armpit.

Developed at Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Fort Dietrick, Maryland, the junctional tourniquet is essentially a belt with one or more inflatable air bladders that can be puffed up, somewhat like a blood-pressure cuff, to apply pressure to a wound.

The device can be deployed to stop hemorrhaging in about 60 seconds.

The junctional tourniquet is now being fielded to Soldiers in harm's way, but it's so new -- just months since fielding -- that West hasn't yet been briefed on how many lives it has saved, though she believes the number will be significant over time.

The new tourniquet is currently being fielded only to medical personnel, though it may in the future become available to line troops, she said.