Cold War

AMC Outdoors, January/February 2008

Army research helps us triumph over winter weather

Fifty years ago, when I was 11 and growing up in Appleton, Wis., our Boy Scout patrol in the depths of winter would head to nearby Center Swamp to camp. We carried lots of gear in canvas backpacks and on toboggans, down country roads and across fields, until we reached the woods, where we pitched tents in snow.

We wore “high-top” leather boots, cotton long johns, jeans, and layers of sweatshirts–all of which kept in more wet and cold than they kept out. Of course, we had fun, but we also spent too much time in front of steamy campfires just to keep warm.

We didn’t know better. Not too many people were winter camping, climbing, or cross-country skiing in those days. Our “Scout Field Book” in 1957 didn’t even mention winter camping as an outdoor-adventure option. It offered no warnings about poor clothing choices, hypothermia, or even frostbite. My sleeping bag also was cotton–flimsy at that–but I at least had the good sense to bring old army blankets that my father had brought home after the war.

The army blankets were a clue.

Sometime in my late teens I entered the local Army-Navy Store, which seemed to take winter survival quite seriously. On the shelves were the wool blankets but also waterproof mittens that reached well up the forearms; wool shirts and jackets; and rows of the white, rubberized, insulated “Mickey Mouse” boots (so named because the GIs thought they looked silly) that were a staple in Korea. I bought a down mummy bag, thinking it the ultimate in modern, lightweight sleep gear.

Army surplus stores in those days were the best places to shop for gear. There was equipment from both World War II and the Korean War, and with the Cold War in full bloom, American companies were cranking out the military goods. Ever since Napoleon’s defeat in Russia, military strategists understood how soldiers needed decent food and equipment to perform well in winter. That was the lesson in the Battle of the Bulge and in Korea in 1952–when the Army began developing its U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.

These days anyone who wants to venture out in cold climates has an array of winter-friendly equipment to consider: lightweight nylon mountain tents; aluminum-framed packs; “breathable” rain gear; polypropylene and fleece garments; freeze-dried food. The Natick center, the Army’s chief research center for the feeding, clothing, and sheltering of troops, has its imprint on virtually all of this.

Tour of Duty
On a sunny day late last fall, I pay a visit to the Natick base to learn about the history of its research program and glimpse what’s upcoming in the world of cold-weather gear and food. My guide is Jerry Whitaker, the base’s chief public affairs officer, who meets me shortly after I pass through a security checkpoint that requires advance notice of arrival and a full search of my car.

The 78-acre center, with a perimeter fence and other security trappings, is clearly a military base; but, truth be told, it looks more like a college campus, with lawns and oaks and myriad researchers (some with the slightly rumpled look of aging graduate students) heading in and out of dozens of buildings.

Whitaker offers some background before we get started. Before the Natick center opened, he says, the Army had food and equipment research facilities scattered across the country. This site was picked largely because of its proximity to colleges, universities, and research hospitals in the Boston area, and to Mount Washington in New Hampshire, highest peak in New England, home to some of the harshest weather south of the Arctic, and site of Army research in the past. (A wind gust on Mount Washington was once recorded at 231 mph, a world record.)

I soon learn that Natick has textile laboratories, testing pools, climatic chambers, and food-research kitchens, and that they all aim toward helping the soldier in the field. Some research, however, occurs well beyond the perimeter fence.

Tried, True, and Tested
“I can look through practically any outdoor magazine and see equipment that had technological origins at Natick,” says Jean Hampel, project manager for Natick’s Fabric Structures Team, which focuses on tents and their accessories. “A lot of our projects involve industry partners.”

Seated at a table in a tent the size of a conference room, Hampel mentions a few of the companies with which her team has worked: Eureka, Diamond Brand, Camel Manufacturing, Outdoor Venture Corp.—all known names in tent manufacturing. These companies develop a new design or an innovation, the Natick labs test it, and the companies hope for manufacturing contracts.

The “structures team” will do anything from putting fabric under the microscope to pitching a tent behind a jet engine to measure its stability in high winds. Occasionally, it’s the private sector that tests military equipment. Five years ago Eric Simonson, the renowned climber and mountain guide, took military tents to Mount Everest base camps at 17,000 and 21,000 feet for a durability check.

Hampel reports that her department in recent years has been doing much research in the field of photovoltaic technology, and she displays some lightweight portable devices, one small enough to fit atop a small tent, another small enough to carry on a backpack. “There is lots of interest in the military in renewable energy,” she says. With solar power, the military doesn’t have to cart heavy generators to war zones and depend on fuel trucks that can be easily targeted.

Military tents need electrical power; they also need insulation. Among the materials under review, Hampel says, is aerogel, a gelled-silica material that has been used as an insulator for years but that is now being reprocessed and reshaped to form lightweight insulation for tents. For now, aerogel is being tested for larger tents, not the kind your average hiker would take to the mountains, she adds. “For backpackers, probably the best application would be (someday) for an insulative sleeping pad.”

Aerogel also has other applications. It shows promise—perhaps too much—as fill for parkas. Hampel notes that Burton Snowboards Co., a leading manufacturer in snowboarding equipment, has tried it in a parka, “but it actually turned out to be too warm…so they are using less of it, trying it in patches, in specific locations of the jacket.”

Cold War, cont'd >>