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MetroWestDailyNews.com - Printer Friendly: "High Tech chill for the heat
By Rob Haneisen / Daily News Staff
Wednesday, July 20, 2005

NATICK -- Flying missions over the baked desert dunes of Iraq, U.S. Army helicopter pilots know a thing or two about beating heat similar to what is cooking Massachusetts this week.
They can thank the scientists at the U.S. Army Soldiers Systems Center in Natick for a secret weapon hidden under their clothes.
A liquid-cooled vest, part of the Air Warrior Microclimate Cooling System, has been worn by helicopter pilots in Iraq for the last year and this summer will be part of a test program to keep roasting soldiers cool in armored Humvees.
'We flew 5.5 hours in 120 degrees and it worked awesome,' an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq wrote to Natick Labs in an e-mail June 18. 'The crew agreed this system is the best thing we've done for the helicopter since we put a rotor on it.'
Air crewmembers wear the vest against their skin and under body armor and their flight suits. The tubing in the vest connects to a hose, which plugs into the cooling and pumping unit that sends 65 degrees of relief around the pilot and crewmembers' torsos.
According to Natick Labs scientist Walter Teal, the vests were developed in Natick in 1996 anticipating the need to keep helicopter pilots cool in extreme heat situations. The 1996 study suggested that pilots would only be able to tolerate 1.6 hours of flight time before succumbing to heat stress. "