Protective Clothing and Life Support Equipment Applicable to a Desert Environment.

摘要

The Clothing and Life Support items listed in this report are the only items presently available that are applicable for use in a desert environment. The current Common Table of Allowance (CTA) 50-900, Clothing and Individual Equipment does not currently authorized the use of all these items in the desert environment. During the period 1963-1968, many new items of clothing and equipment entered the Army system to meet the needs of the soldiers in Southeast Asia. As a result of the urgency of the situation, many of these items were fielded without the benefit of extensive testing, and although there were shortcomings in some of the items, others became highly popular and are still in wide use today. Another aspect of this is that many of the items introduced for use in Southeast Asia may not be suitable for environments other than hot-wet. Today our attentions are focused on other parts of the world, some of which are characterized by the hot-wet environments similar to Southeast Asia, while still others are typical of hot-dry environments found in the desert areas of the Middle East. Our own experience in these areas, coupled with lessons learned from other nations which have had for conduct military operations under such conditions, has shown that there is considerable room for improvement in clothing and equipment items for these environments. Two other factors provided stimulus for the preparation of this report. One was the rapid technological changes occurring in industry. These changes are reducing our ability to depend on previous manufacturing technologies as pointed out in an earlier study performed at this Command. The second is the introduction of many new materials and fabrics in recent years which could be utilized to greater advantage by the Army.