NOT SIMPLY ‘SMALL MEN’


A Soldier gets help adjusting her prototype Generation III IOTV from a fellow Soldier Aug. 21, 2012, at Fort Campbell, KY. Both women are with the 1st Brigade Combat Team Female Engagement Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). This prototype was designed specifically for the needs of female Soldiers, with shorter torso length and other improvements for a tighter and more contoured fit. (Photo by Megan Locke Simpson, The Fort Campbell Courier.)


1980 & 2012 F


or its Se iss issue, ma


sue, t magazine


September-October 1980 the Army RD&A news- (now Army AL&T


magazine) interviewed COL


Robert J. Cuthbertson, commander of what was then called the Natick Army Research and Development Command, for an issue devoted to protective cloth- ing for the Soldier. Cuthbertson noted


“that the Army system ‘buries’ the indi- vidual Soldier under the category of ‘combat support-other’; changing


this


approach would be a step in the right direction,” he said.


Fast-forward to 2012, when Time magazine named female body armor one of its Best Inventions of the Year for 2012. T at’s alongside self-infl ating tires,


the Tesla Model S sedan, the


Civilization Starter Kit and NASA’s Z-1 space suit. It’s likely that the body armor Soldiers use today was about as


impossible to imagine in 1980 as


an electric car with a body style and performance rivaling a Jaguar, a suit that will enable astronauts


to survive


in deep space, or do-it-yourself versions of “the 50 most important machines required for modern life”—much less an Improved Outer Tactical Vest (IOTV) designed specifi cally for women.


In its pithy write-up of the new body armor, which was designed in a collabora- tive eff ort of the Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center and Program Executive Offi ce (PEO) Soldier, Time noted, “Women are not small men.” T e new version provides a better, more secure fi t for female Soldiers.


MAJ Joel Dillon, the assistant product manager at PEO Soldier who is respon- sible for soft armor, noted that all of the female Soldiers


in the 101st Airborne


Division who tested it in a head-to-head comparison with the current IOTV chose the new version. “It was just really obvi- ous to me that the form, fi t, and function are defi nitely what we were shooting for.” T at kind of focus is a long way from “combat support, other.”


To see a video explaining the changes made to make the IOTV fit women bet- ter, go to http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XyDVcz2pvDM. For more information on the article in Time, go to http://techland.time.com/2012/11/01/ best-inventions-of-the-year-2012/slide/ all/. For a historical tour of AL&T over the past 52 years, visit the Army AL&T maga- zine archives at http://asc.army.mil/web/ magazine/alt-magazine-archive/.


164


Army AL&T Magazine


April–June 2013


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