U.S. Army Research Laboratory The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL) is the U.S. Army's foundational research laboratory. ARL is headquartered at the Adelphi Laboratory Center (ALC) in Adelphi, Maryland. Its largest sing ...

(ARL) research on MRAP Armor Weight Reduction Spiral (MAWRS) program resulted in armor technologies 40 percent lighter, with technologies fielded on more than 10,000 MRAP vehicles. Dozens of spin-out designs were provided to most major combat and tactical wheeled-vehicles program in production.

Purpose and plan

ARL monitored escalation in the lethality of threats encountered by forces deployed in Southwest Asia. For better and lighter protection from

improvised explosive devices An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mechan ...

(IEDs), ARL developed weight reduction goals and started to explore practical technology options by the end of FY08. A partnership was formed between

Research, Development and Engineering Command The Combat Capabilities Development Command, (DEVCOM, aka CCDC) (formerly the United States Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM)) is a subordinate command of the U.S. Army Futures Command. RDECOM was tasked with "creating ...

(RDECOM) and the MRAP Joint Program Office (JPO) that resulted in RDECOM accelerating the development of IED protective technology and JPO redirecting its set of original equipment manufacturers to add vehicle payload capacity. The overall requirement was that the introduction of armor production could not delay the deployment schedule of MRAP equipment to theater. The program's combined technical approach was to exploit computing and terminal effects experimentation to scale known technologies for the defeat of IED threats; understand the most viable armor mechanisms for efficient penetrator defeat; and then introduce light-weight composites, new materials and enhanced ballistic mechanisms to reduce the add-on weight of final armor packages. The technical challenge to RDECOM was that technology originally envisioned as high-risk for a one-year developmental program, was now required to be production-ready within five months. The MAWRS program generated dozens of armor designs to counter explosively formed penetrator threats, improving protection for a variety of ground systems.

Results

Improvements include the

Stryker The Stryker is a family of eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles derived from the Canadian LAV III. Stryker vehicles are produced by General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada (GDLS-C) for the United States Army in a plant in London, Ontario. It ...

family of vehicles. Using ARL's Defense Supercomputing Resource Center for supercomputing, materials research, on-site fabrication and live fire exercises at experimental facilities, expedient crew protection solutions for the Stryker were developed using advanced armor materials and improvements in energy absorption for crew seating. These technologies were transitioned to

General Dynamics Land Systems General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) is a manufacturer of military vehicles such as tanks and lighter armored fighting vehicles. History In February 1982 Chrysler announced the sale of Chrysler Defense, its profitable defense subsidiary, to Gen ...

for kit production and fielding. The MAWRS program was recognized by

United States Army Materiel Command U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) is the primary provider of materiel to the United States Army. The Command's mission includes the management of installations, as well as maintenance and parts distribution. It was established on 8 May 1962 and wa ...

as the “Top Ten Great Inventions of 2008.”

References

{{Reflist Armoured fighting vehicles