ARMY AL&T
GIMME SHELTER:
COLLECTIVE PROTECTION FROM CHEMICAL-BIOLOGICAL THREATS
Military protective masks, or “gas masks,” appear in everything from news stories to Hollywood movies. Less well known is “collective protection.” This kind of chemical-biological threat protection is designed to protect a group of people inside a tent, building, armored vehicle, aircraft and even a naval vessel.
Instead of one carbon filter housed inside a protective mask, collective protection systems consist of a series of filters arrayed inside a much larger container that attaches to a vehicle or structure. Any air enter- ing the protected space must pass through it, and any toxic gases are captured by the bank of carbon filters.
The U.S. Army first started developing collective protective systems in the mid-1960s, and their use has steadily increased within the U.S. mili- tary since then. Now, virtually every combat vehicle being designed for future use includes some form of collective protection.
In 2015, the U.S. Army introduced the Joint Expeditionary Collective Protection tent. It is 43 feet long, 13 feet wide and 7 feet high erected, and can house 12 to 15 people. It can house command and control, aid stations or other critical functions. It is one of a family of chemical-biolog- ical protection shelters currently under development.
Protective masks will always play a crucial role in protecting individual warfighters in the battle space, but collective protection systems are likely to keep growing in capacity and find ever-new applications.
TEAM SEARCH DOD first assembled a team in 2012 to solve the problem. It launched a project it called Activated Carbon Capability Expansion, or ACCE, under the Defense Production Act Title III Office. The project’s mission was to qualify additional sources to supply military-grade carbon for use in gas masks and large-scale protec- tive filters. Te project’s first task was to set up a team consisting of carbon filter experts largely drawn from scientists and engineers at JPEO-CBRND who special- ize in this area. Once stood up, the team went straight to the DEVCOM CBC for its expertise in protective carbon testing. Te center had established the original qualifying standard for ASZM-TEDA in the late 1980s.
That standard is known as MIL- DTL-32101, and it was relied upon to test the sole supplier’s carbon from 1992 on. Te team of carbon filter experts had originally hoped to go on using it, without change, as the standard for qualifying any new suppliers. However, when they found a second supplier and awarded a contract to it in 2016, the experts at the center advised against it because the standard does not accommodate a second supplier.
WE’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER STANDARD “We had to tell them that, no, 32101 alone is not enough to qualify a second supplier,” said Lowry Brooks, acting deputy direc- tor of engineering at DEVCOM CBC. “Tat standard had been in use since 1992 because all the carbon came from the same supplier, mining the same material from the same mine, impregnating the carbon with the same metals in the same way.”
CRITICAL COVER
The U.S. Army’s Joint Expeditionary Collective Protection tent is 43 feet long and protects up to 15 occupants from a chemical-biological agent. (Photo by U.S. Army)
Brooks and his team persuaded the Title III Office carbon-filter team that with an additional carbon source, none of those steps would be performed exactly the
https://asc.ar my.mil 71
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