Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CBS
June 9, 2008
CBS Evening News, 6:30 PM
KATIE COURIC: Now to a health concern involving American troops in Iraq. Head injuries from roadside bombs are among the biggest threats to frontline soldiers. But Pentagon officials may have found a better way to provide protection. Technology used on the football field could soon be adapted for the battlefield. Here’s Kimberly Dozier.
KIMBERLY DOZIER: It was one of those eureka moments. Army doctors home from Iraq and Afghanistan were watching NFL players pound it out and thought, that’s what our soldiers need, helmets like that. Because believe it or not, the effects on the brain of this can be a lot like this – blasts strong enough to shake and even bruise the brain often leading to traumatic brain injury known as TBI. Today an estimated 30 percent of troops who’ve served in combat suffer from TBI after repeated exposures to blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Researchers at three major Army hospitals put the idea to the test, and a marriage between football and the military was born.
DR. JOHN HOLCOMB [Brooke Army Medical Center]: Let’s just look and see if we take a football helmet who’s designed to prevent concussion and jerry-rig that into an Army combat helmet and then test it and see if we couldn’t decrease the instance of concussion.
DOZIER: Did it ever.
HOLCOMB: These pads perform better than those pads.
DOZIER: How much better?
HOLCOMB: Fifty percent better.
DOZIER: Fifty percent better?
HOLCOMB: Fifty percent better.
DOZIER: A blow to the head accelerates the skull inside the helmet and the brain inside the skull. The helmet’s multiple layers of special foam padding absorb most of the energy, especially along the sides of the helmet where the most dangerous blows occur. Current military helmets have only a fraction of that padding.
The army has sent out a call to NFL helmet makers like Riddell telling them apply their technology to combat helmets and we’ll buy hundreds of thousands of them.
THAD IDE [V.P. Research & Development, Riddell]: We’re going through an evaluation process right now just to see if we could bring some of our materials and design expertise to the combat helmet.
DOZIER: They’ve done it before. Founder John Riddell invented World War II’s classic web suspension helmet. A different war means different challenges.
LT. COL. ROBERT MYLES [Product Manager for Soldier Survivability]: We’re looking for a pad system that is compatible with the advanced combat helmet. We’re looking for pads that can meet our requirements of sustaining blunt trauma at 10 feet per second.
DOZIER: If they find the right one, military officials say they could field helmets in Iraq and Afghanistan in less than 90 days, tackling the challenges of modern warfare head on.
Kimberly Dozier, CBS News, Fort Belvoir, Maryland.
June 9, 2008
CBS Evening News, 6:30 PM
KATIE COURIC: Now to a health concern involving American troops in Iraq. Head injuries from roadside bombs are among the biggest threats to frontline soldiers. But Pentagon officials may have found a better way to provide protection. Technology used on the football field could soon be adapted for the battlefield. Here’s Kimberly Dozier.
KIMBERLY DOZIER: It was one of those eureka moments. Army doctors home from Iraq and Afghanistan were watching NFL players pound it out and thought, that’s what our soldiers need, helmets like that. Because believe it or not, the effects on the brain of this can be a lot like this – blasts strong enough to shake and even bruise the brain often leading to traumatic brain injury known as TBI. Today an estimated 30 percent of troops who’ve served in combat suffer from TBI after repeated exposures to blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Researchers at three major Army hospitals put the idea to the test, and a marriage between football and the military was born.
DR. JOHN HOLCOMB [Brooke Army Medical Center]: Let’s just look and see if we take a football helmet who’s designed to prevent concussion and jerry-rig that into an Army combat helmet and then test it and see if we couldn’t decrease the instance of concussion.
DOZIER: Did it ever.
HOLCOMB: These pads perform better than those pads.
DOZIER: How much better?
HOLCOMB: Fifty percent better.
DOZIER: Fifty percent better?
HOLCOMB: Fifty percent better.
DOZIER: A blow to the head accelerates the skull inside the helmet and the brain inside the skull. The helmet’s multiple layers of special foam padding absorb most of the energy, especially along the sides of the helmet where the most dangerous blows occur. Current military helmets have only a fraction of that padding.
The army has sent out a call to NFL helmet makers like Riddell telling them apply their technology to combat helmets and we’ll buy hundreds of thousands of them.
THAD IDE [V.P. Research & Development, Riddell]: We’re going through an evaluation process right now just to see if we could bring some of our materials and design expertise to the combat helmet.
DOZIER: They’ve done it before. Founder John Riddell invented World War II’s classic web suspension helmet. A different war means different challenges.
LT. COL. ROBERT MYLES [Product Manager for Soldier Survivability]: We’re looking for a pad system that is compatible with the advanced combat helmet. We’re looking for pads that can meet our requirements of sustaining blunt trauma at 10 feet per second.
DOZIER: If they find the right one, military officials say they could field helmets in Iraq and Afghanistan in less than 90 days, tackling the challenges of modern warfare head on.
Kimberly Dozier, CBS News, Fort Belvoir, Maryland.