EmergencyTech.org

Pretty intimidating, huh? This is the XREP or eXtended Range Electronic Projectile. Fired from a standard 12ga. shotgun, the XREP offers stand-off distance capability. Once the projectile strikes the target it releases a 20 second (GAH!) burst of electricity.

As David Hambling points out, this weapon raises a lot of questions about where it fits within the force continuum, although I’m sure a few departments will whip together a policy and start sending big, fat Homeland Security Grant checks ASAP.

At present, less-lethals are seen as a supplement to lethal weapons. XREP might see the start of less-lethals being used as an alternative. In the example of room clearance — where insurgents, civilians, or friendly troops can be around the next corner — a shotgun round like XREP can mean the difference between firing first and getting shot. And it means that accidental shootings are a matter of apologizing to the victim rather than burying them.

On the civilian front, there is also the question of how dangerous such rounds are. Getting hit by XREP is not like getting hit by Taser darts. Rick Smith, Taser’s CEO says describes it as “delivering blunt impact similar to other impact rounds” – presumably he means the ‘bean bag’ nonlethal rounds fired from shotguns. These will bruise and can break ribs and cause other injuries; when Baton Rouge Police Department introduced them in 2005 for use against violent suspects, their press release said that “The bean bag round is designed to cause injuries in order to save lives.”

He also raises some interesting questions about the eventual transition of this technology into the civilian world. Will we be safer when criminals start using stun bullets loaded into shotguns?

At first XREP and its competitors and imitators will be confined to the police and military. But, like Tasers, they will branch out into the civilian world. Home defense will be a lot safer with non-lethal projectiles. And what about armed robbers? Are we going to do everything to stop them from getting hold of electric bullets…or would it actually be a step forward if they routinely used stun bullets rather than lethal ones? Should sentencing reflect this?

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Remote controlled simulation mannequins are nothing new to medical training. In EMS we’ve been using them for years and each iteration comes with a host of new features. The military’s new Medi-Man dummies, however, sound like they really hit the mark when it comes to accuracy:

The dummies are remotely controlled by the instructors to simulate particular injuries. Some have gaping belly wounds or spray blood – actually a red fluid that can be chemically tweaked to reflect different injuries – from severed limbs. Others might be breathing irregularly, their pump-activated chests rising on just one side. “A trainer can change a dummy’s behavior according to trainees’ actions,” says Staff Sergeant Glenn Gonzalez, noncommissioned officer in charge of the facility.

That’s only the beginning, though. The real breakthrough may be in the intensity of the scenarios. Over at Fort Bragg, it sounds like these dummies are getting the snot beaten out of them on a daily basis while the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division trains for deployments in Iraq.

Teams of six trainees race down a path in Fort Bragg’s forest. They must treat and carry any “casualties” they encounter along the way – usually two per team. Obstacles include barbed wire, trenches and holes filled with mud. Instructors throw training grenades to keep the medics’ heads down. “I guarantee you they’re exhausted by the time they reach this point,” Gonzalez says, standing near the barbed-wire obstacle. The idea, he says, is to make sure medics can make smart decisions about treating casualties even while scared and tired. Gonzalez and his fellow instructors have trained around 1,800 medics and doctors in the past year.

So, when these things make their way into the private-sector end of medical education they will have been well tested and, hopefully, most of the durability issues will have been worked out. The only people I know who beat on training equipment more than EMS folks? Military folks.

The proof, perhaps, is in the numbers:

“There have been around 2,400 soldiers killed in Iraq due to enemy action,” says Captain Earnhardt, division spokesman. “The reason that’s 2,400 and not 10,000 is this training.”

Via War is Boring

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Via Business Week:

Today’s versions of body armor are composed mostly of 20 to 30 layers of synthetic fibers. And while there is no question the death toll for American troops in Iraq would be far higher without it, the gear is bulky and can’t stop high-velocity bullets, for example, or all bomb fragments. Even as DuPont was field-testing the original Kevlar jackets in the early 1970s, researchers were hunting for lighter, tougher ballistic fabrics. Since then, companies have investigated a chemist’s kit of exotic materials, from cloned spider silk — a wonder of lightness and strength — to newfangled sheets of carbon nanotubes that are among the toughest structures in nature. Israeli researchers at one company, ApNano Materials Inc. in New York, have shown off a breastplate of nanometals said to be five times as strong as steel.

Armor Holdings’ product is different from all of the above. Developed by Norman Wagner, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware’s Center for Composite Materials, it’s a mix of polyethylene glycol, a polymer found in laxatives and other consumer products, and nanobits of silica, or purified sand. Together they produce a “sheer-thickening liquid” that stiffens instantly into a shield when hit hard by an object. It reverts to its liquid state just as fast when the energy from the projectile dissipates.

The liquid has other pluses. It’s lighter than Kevlar and other widely used fabrics. That means Armor Holdings’ new vests, in which the substance would be sandwiched between layers of ballistic fibers, might be lighter than current versions, which weigh four pounds or more. It also should be cheaper to manufacture, says Schiller. The Jacksonville (Fla.) company wants to continue to sell entry-level garments for $500 to $600.

It will initially be marketed towards corrections officers who face the constant threat of stabbings.

The concept of a “sheer-thickening liquid” is interesting to say the least; however, this program’s relationship to Armor Holdings and the Natick Soldier Systems Center makes me a bit nervous especially in the wake of the Pinnacle Armor SOV/Dragon Skin vs. Interceptor armor controversy that we’ll be covering soon. Until then check out Defense Review’s coverage of NSSC’s wrangling at the expense of U.S. soldiers’ safety.

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According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’Areth and the Israeli Defence Forces Medical Corps, soldiers may be able to carry dried bags of their own blood for emergency transfusions in the field.

“The idea is to take a soldier’s blood, freeze it in laboratory conditions, take out the ice crystals leaving only the blood components. It will look like freeze-dried coffee in a little bag,” said Lieutenant colonel Amir Blumenfeld, head of the IDF medical corps’ trauma unit.

Every soldier going to battle will receive a packet with his own freeze-dried blood as part of his mandatory personal kit, much like the staple personal bandage.

When necessary, if the soldier is wounded in battle and needs blood, a medic or doctor could take out the dried blood bag, mix it with physiological water and inject the soldier with a transfusion of his own blood.

I’m not sure if this is even possible or practical. The temperature extremes of combat life alone seems to be a big obstacle. If they can get the kinks worked out (especially by the two year deadline that they’re quoting) the ability to stock ambulances and wilderness paramedics with quality unmatched blood could change the face of shock management in the field forever.

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Here’s another tourniquet vying for the attention of military and civilian healthcare providers everywhere, Cybertech’s Mechanical Advantage Tourniquet. This tourniquet, like the Combat Application Tourniquet we covered earlier, is designed for easy one-handed application in under 10 seconds by both patients and providers and promises total arterial occlusion. It can also be released and readjusted easily using one hand.

According to gizmag:

In late 2003, American Special Operations Forces requested the urgent supply of a tourniquet with some special requirements including; operation by one-hand, application and occlusion in less than a minute, applicable to trapped limbs, no external power, quick release and reset, weighing less than 230 grams, and having a 10 year shelf-life. Within seven weeks, Cybertech Medical Product Development delivered the first prototype of the Mechanical Advantage Tourniquet (MAT) to the DoD that solved all of their desired requirements, and to-date is the only device to do so.

Via Medgadget

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