New equipment being developed by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab is tailor-made to fit inside the service's most expeditionary aircraft — the MV-22B Osprey.
With the new Expeditionary Force 21 concept placing an emphasis on lighter units and more modular gear, small and compact is the latest trend. The common thread that united all the concept equipment the Warfighting Lab displayed at the Modern Day Marine expo in Quantico, Virginia, this week was that it was all small enough to fly by Osprey.
The squat Hybrid Energy Internally Transportable Vehicle trailer was a case in point. The trailer, which was used this summer during the Advanced Warfighting Experiment at Rim of the Pacific, can roll on and off an Osprey attached to a Jeep-like Internally Transportable Vehicle. It also carries a payload of eight batteries, a solar harvesting system, and a smart-design generator that runs only when the batteries need a recharge.
During the RIMPAC experiments, "it actually ran quiet 61 percent of the time," said HEIT project officer Dawn Dahn.
Dahn said future development of the system would focus in part on creating a system that stayed quiet on demand as Marines executed stealth operations. Snugly fit into a hollowed-out ammunition trailer, the whole setup weighs less than 2,000 pounds, she said.
"The MV-22 Osprey has got to be able to get it," said Lt. Col. James Richardson, head of the logistics combat element branch at the warfighting lab. "Again, we need mobile power sources in the Marine Corps, we need them light. And as we move forward with EF-21, being geographically dispersed and fighting, we've got to be able to power our stuff."
The Osprey-compatible vehicle was also the foundation for the Shock Trauma Section, or STS. The conceptually simple tent, equipment and litter setup is designed to pack all the components of a battlefield trauma center into modular cases that fit neatly into the vehicle. The vehicle would also support a power pack with generator batteries that would keep all the system's medical equipment running, said STS project officer Chelsey Lever.
"You can get a lot further in the Osprey," Lever said. "[The system is] designed to get doctors and their equipment out so they can drive to their patient sooner."
During Modern Day Marine, the Warfighting Lab also married its Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate self-driving technology with the ITV, demonstrating the possibilities of an autonomous vehicle that can travel via one of the Marine Corps' most expeditionary aircraft. The ITV itself will get special attention in the coming year, Richardson said, as the lab continues to explore the vehicle's potential.
"The ITV is extremely important to the Marine Corps," he said. "We want something light and we want something that can fit into an Osprey. So right now we're looking at doing some experimentation and [limited technical assessments] to help write a newer ITV requirement for the future."
