The US military has millions of Avon Protection masks. (Photo: US Army)
Avon Protection has been awarded three contracts by the US Department of Defense (DoD)to develop a solution to optimise integration between currently fielded M50 and M53A1 protective masks and CBRN protective garment hoods on a CBRN suit.
The work is being performed under the DoD’s Advanced System for Protection and Integrated Reduction of Encumbrances Hood/Mask Interface (ASPIRE HMI) programme under the Joint Program Executive Office for CBRN Defense (JPEO-CBRND).
Steve Elwell, president of Avon Protection, said the purchase of individual systems as part of a CBRN solution created risk at the points where the systems meet.
“Our approach is to mitigate this risk by designing our equipment to integrate seamlessly together, and it is this understanding of the importance of interface optimization between systems that we will bring to our work on this contract,” Elwell said.
Justin Hine, product and strategy director at Avon Protection, also noted the integration issue earlier this year.
“What we are seeing is that the word ‘interface’ is arising frequently in procurement documents, reflecting the challenges being faced by efforts to ensure all the different parts of a CBRN protective system work together effectively,” Hine said.
“This is really key, because you can have the most technologically advanced mask, hood, suit, boots and gloves, but if the points where they meet each other are weak, the whole system risks being a protective failure.”
The contract follows news released in 2023 that a first customer had taken into service Pearson Engineering’s new Slice system enabling the interoperability of Front-End Equipment (FEE) between main battle tanks and dedicated engineering vehicles.
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