Thursday, August 30, 2007

The bottom of the (inverted) pyramid

I was updating myself on MRAP news today and ran across a USA-Today story on manufacturers' efforts to develop armor protections against Explosively Formed Penetrators, the type of IED most lethal to U.S. vehicles.

Most of story was no surprise, as it stayed line with the narrative that MRAPs are unprotected against EFPs. Near the bottom of the story, where the traditional print-media story form stuffs the less-interesting and least-critical detail, I discovered something I didn't know.

"We have a solution that is made up of standard and new materials in a configuration that will defeat a number of the EFP devices," said Jim Tuten, director of research development and armor programs at Protected Vehicles, which is based in North Charleston, S.C. "We have tested it against a number of them at several different government facilities successfully."

Force Protection, a major Pentagon MRAP contractor, has anti-EFP armor in a vehicle called the Mastiff, which it has sold the British military.

(USA Today)

One of my favorite blogs, the delightful across-the-pond EU Referendum, had criticized the Mastiff version of the Force Protection Cougar because it lacked windows with which soldiers could make themselves aware of their surroundings before disembarking at the rear of the vehicle. Apparently, the EFP protections designed by Force Protection resulted in the elimination of the windows.

Linking back to EU Referendum helped me stumble across a blog entry from 2006 that I had missed, on IEDs, EFPs, and military vehicles. Pay them a visit.

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