USA — New first aid kit being developed at Natick

NATICK, Mass. — Maybe it looks like a cam­ou­flage mon­ey belt on steroids, but it could save Sol­diers’ lives.
The new Indi­vid­ual First Aid Kit, or IFAK, being devel­oped at the Nat­ick Sol­dier Sys­tems Cen­ter even­tu­al­ly will be car­ried by every Sol­dier in a com­bat envi­ron­ment.

 -
Rich Landry, indi­vid­ual equip­ment design­er with the Load Car­riage Pro­to­type Lab, Prod­uct Man­ag­er Sol­dier Cloth­ing and Indi­vid­ual Equip­ment, Nat­ick Sol­dier Sys­tems Cen­ter, dis­plays the new Indi­vid­ual First Aid Kit being devel­oped there.
Click to enlarge

“We designed it lit­er­al­ly about three or four months ago,” said Rich Landry, indi­vid­ual equip­ment design­er with the Load Car­riage Pro­to­type Lab, Prod­uct Man­ag­er Sol­dier Cloth­ing and Indi­vid­ual Equip­ment, at NSSC. “The med­ical com­mu­ni­ty said, ‘Awe­some idea. Let’s move out with it.’ Over­whelm­ing­ly, they thought this was a huge improve­ment over the cur­rent IFAK.” 

As Landry point­ed out, the cur­rent IFAK, devel­oped rapid­ly in the ear­ly days of Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom to ful­fill a crit­i­cal need, has proved rather unwieldy. 

“This thing is just kind of a brick on your side that gets in the way of every­thing,” said Landry of the cur­rent bulky IFAK, which was built into an exist­ing Squad Auto­mat­ic Weapon ammo pouch. “It was very, very quick, because they need­ed them right away.” 

More thought has gone into the new IFAK, a stream­lined, two-piece sys­tem that fea­tures a pouch with an insert that slides out to allow easy access to med­ical equip­ment from either side. 

“It sup­ports all the crit­i­cal items to the indi­vid­ual Soldier’s med­ical needs,” Landry said. “The beau­ty of this sys­tem, com­pared to the old one, is that it allows the Sol­dier to place it on (his or her) body in a spot where it can be eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, which is the crit­i­cal piece, but also not get in the way of oth­er impor­tant tac­ti­cal pieces of equipment.” 

Landry said 30 new IFAKs recent­ly under­went eval­u­a­tion at Fort Polk, La., where a pla­toon of Sol­diers car­ried them through a train­ing rota­tion. The ear­ly feed­back has been pos­i­tive, he added. 

“We’re very sure this is the direc­tion the Indi­vid­ual First Aid Kit is going to go, hope­ful­ly, for all ser­vices, but you nev­er know,” Landry said. “That would be icing on the cake.” 

The new IFAK car­ries even more med­ical gear than the first ver­sion, includ­ing two Com­bat Appli­ca­tion Tourni­quets. Still, its low­er pro­file allows a Sol­dier to wear it com­fort­ably in the small of his or her back under the Mod­u­lar Light­weight Load-car­ry­ing Equip­ment, or MOLLE, Large or Medi­um backpack. 

“And that’s crit­i­cal for us, because the big pic­ture in load car­riage is the back­pack piece,” Landry said. “That’s where a large per­cent­age of the load and bulk comes from. And it’s crit­i­cal that we still have to be able to car­ry that. 

“All you do is reach back and pull (the IFAK) out, and it does­n’t mat­ter what side you pull it out from,” Landry said. “So if this hand is injured, you can reach behind with this (hand) and pull it out, or your bud­dy can get to it.” 

Such inno­va­tion is Landry’s call­ing card at Nat­ick. A for­mer Pathfind­er with the 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion, he began tin­ker­ing with out­door equip­ment at a young age. 

“My sis­ter taught me how to sew,” Landry recalled. “Every back­pack I got, every piece of equip­ment I got, was mod­i­fied in some way, shape or form. That’s just how my brain works. Noth­ing can be left alone. Nothing’s per­fect in my mind, as far as out­door equip­ment, and that’s a curse.” 

It’s also been a bless­ing for Sol­diers, who have worn equip­ment all around the world that Landry devel­oped in his lab. 

“The abil­i­ty to know what they need, as opposed to what they want, is a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent,” Landry said. “That’s just what I do. It’s what I love. I’m in a per­fect place to do that.” 

Source:
U.S. Army 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →