Advanced Vest Designs for Special Operations Forces

Special Operations Forces have a diverse set of needs and desires because of the wide variety of mission scenarios and conditions they undertake. This presents significant challenges for the design and manufacture of soldier garments to augment the performance of SOF operators in the field. Foster-Miller and its team have proposed a lightweight, dynamic vest design that will include and/or accommodate various advanced technologies such as integrated textile cabling, power systems, communications equipment, and various sensors. The basis for this vest will be electro-textiles, i.e., textile-based systems fabricated with advanced conductive fibers, that will form an integrated electrical backbone upon which other advanced body borne technologies can be interconnected, swapped, and/or custom configured. (P-030570)