Army's helmets outperform NFL's but could be improved, study finds

Military helmets used to be metal pots designed to ward off stray shrapnel, and they also worked as good wash basins when placed on the ground. Now they're key components of a high-tech system that the Army says still needs some tweaking to help prevent traumatic brain injury.

The Army's Advanced Combat Helmet consists of a protective shell woven out of synthetic fibers. It provides ballistics protection, as well as a foam-pad system to shield against the kind of blunt force trauma linked to TBI.

Last year the Army and the Joint IED Defeat Organization, which is concerned with improvised explosive devices, commissioned Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to compare the effectiveness of various military pads and pads used in football helmets to mitigate the severity of impacts.

The Army released an unclassified version of that report Tuesday, and Lawrence Livermore researcher William Moss told a press briefing that the helmet pads currently used by the Army outperformed pads used by the National Football League in computer simulations with software used by the auto industry to measure crash impact and the aerospace industry to simulate bird strikes.

Moss said the study showed significantly increased protection with modest increases in pad thickness. The current military pad is about three-quarters of inch thick, and a pad-thickness increase of an extra eighth to quarter inch could make a large difference in reduction of head trauma. Adding even an eighth of an inch results in a 24 percent reduction in force to the skull, Moss said.

Moss suggested soldiers could be issued larger helmets to accommodate the larger pads, which would offer increased protection. The Army combat helmet comes in five sizes ranging from small, which weighs 2.93 pounds, to extra large, which weighs 3.77 pounds.

Col. William Cole, the Army's project manager for Army Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment, noted that even a slight increase in weight does not go over well with troops, who easily notice an increase of a half pound. Helmets also are used as mounts for night-vision goggles, and an increase in helmet size can cause instability, he said.

Michael Codega, a helmet expert from the Natick, Mass., Soldier Systems Research, Development and Engineering Center agreed, adding that the solution to the problem lies with accurate sizing of helmets and pads to individual soldiers based on head size.

He said that the Army started an anthropometric study last October using 3-D laser scans to measure head sizes. The study is scheduled to be completed next March.

Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller said the Army still does not fully understand the physics of blasts and impacts to the head and needs to do further research before developing a next-generation helmet.

Cole said that to help with that research, the Army plans to install wireless sensors in the helmets of 18,000 soldiers deployed to combat. These sensors will measure blast pressure and head rotation and use Bluetooth wireless technology to download the data, which can be done in a minute while troops are in a common area, such as a mess hall, Cole said.

The Army also needs help from vendors and researchers and will hold an industry day next month in Springfield, Va., as part of its search for an improved helmet that does require added size or weight.

Fuller, who will deploy to Afghanistan later this year, believes the best helmet solution today is a helmet designed to fit his head, and said he has no plans to increase the size of his helmet.