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ALON (Aluminium oxynitride)

Aluminium oxynitride (AlON) is a transparent ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. It is marketed under the name ALON and described in U.S. Patent 4,520,116. It is 4 times harder than fused silica glass, and 85% as hard as sapphire. The material remains solid up to 1,200 °C (2,190 °F).

The material is used as for the crucial outer layer of experimental transparent armor being considered by the US Air Force for the windows of armored vehicles. When formed and polished as a window, the material currently (2005) costs about US$10 to US$15 per square inch (~ US$20,000/m²). Other applications include semiconductor substrates and retail fixtures.

Objects are usually formed from pressed, cast or molded powder. The formed objects are then sintered (i.e., densified by heating in an oven), and polished until transparent. The polishing substantially improves the armor's impact resistance.

The material is composed of three parts, an outer layer that's exposed to gunfire and made of baked aluminum oxynitride, a middle layer of glass, and a rear layer of polymer backing.

Not only can the aluminum armor deflect rounds from small-caliber weapons and still be more clearly transparent than bullet-resistant glass that's been shot, it also passes a much more important test -- it resists .50-caliber armor-piercing bullets and anti-aircraft weapons that typically use .30-caliber rounds. This is an impressive feat, especially since it's half the weight and thickness of traditional transparent armor.

This material is used for all and any transparent parts of the armor, including the face mask.




The armor is largely made of nano-ceramics, produced for the AMAP system. AMAP is also making use of new nano-ceramics, which are harder and lighter than current ceramics, while having multi-hit capability. Normal ceramic tiles and a liner backing have a mass-efficiency (EM) value of 3 compared to normal steel armour, while it fulfills STANAG 4569. The new nano-crystalline ceramic materials should increase the hardness compared to current ceramics by 70% and the weight reduction is 30%, therefore the EM value is larger than 4. Furthermore the higher fracture toughness increases the general multi-hit capability.

The ceramics are more powerful, harder, and substantially tougher than the standard zirconium ceramics. A thin layer of this ceramic, broken up into tiles, coats the soft armor, in order to serve as a hard surface before the round enters the soft armor. This fragments and deforms the bullet, as well as causes it to tumble and lowers the velocity, which presents a more ideal projectile to the soft armor. This combination allows for softer, lighter energy absorbing armor to stop rounds typically only suited to ceramics. The ceramic, despite it's high fracture toughness, typically shatters on impact, all the small tile size reduces the multiple shot hit chance in the same area, largely eliminating the problem.

The helmet is largely made from the nano ceramic, however, reinforced with the composite material. Impact gel is gel based sheer thickening non-Newtonian fluid designed to be capable of absorbing energy. Feats of thin materials include preventing energy from cars, hammers, and other materials. The helmet utilizes a mixture of similar British shock absorbing gel and impact gel to absorb the impact of bullets and explosions. Impacts and explosives often do a significant amount of damage to people, and according to the military at one point helmets were the cause of 60% of deaths, due to the inability for the helmet to prevent energy transfer to the skull and head. With the addition of impact gel and other energy absorbing materials, these helmets can prevent impacts and injuries that would ordinarily daze, harm or kill individuals.Serving as a backing for armor, it can absorb the shock of rounds, falls and explosives with relative ease, preventing deformation of the armor and energy transfer to the user behind.




Soft armor is used to reinforce parts of the ceramic plates, to help absorb energy and be more flexible. M-5 fiber, or polyhydroquinone-diimidazopyridine is a high-strength synthetic aramid fiber, similar to Kevlar, although it is retains the same strength at roughly 50% the weight and volume. This means that twice as much M-5 Fiber can be used in the same amount of space for the same weight, to provide twice as much protection with a higher degree of flexibility, and elasticity as Kevlar.

The M-5 fiber also incorporates liquid body armor, or a sheer thickening fluid designed to help protect against projectile impacts. The fluid used in the body armor is made of silica particles suspended in polyethylene glycol. Silica is a component of sand and quartz, and polyethylene glycol is a polymer commonly used in lubricants and as an industrial precursor to many material. Four layers of STF-treated Kevlar can dissipate the same amount of energy as 14 layers of neat Kevlar. In addition, STF-treated fibers don't stretch as far on impact as ordinary fibers, meaning that bullets don't penetrate as deeply into the armor or a person's tissue underneath, and thus increase the durability of the armor as well, increasing it's multiple hit round capabilities.

In accordance with the liquid body armor, the M-5 fiber composite is roughly 7 times as strong as Kevlar alone, in terms of absorbing projectiles. This means that smaller, looser fitting amounts of soft body can be used to achieve the same and even greater protection. Due to the high elasticity and toughness of the material, and particularly it's higher heat tolerance, the material is capable of deflecting more than one round, uncharacteristic of Kevlar, making it a more ideal armor source.

In particular, Nanocomp is working with the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Center to develop material for body armor, providing a laminate layer on the strike and back face of the armor to augment current materials. Laminate layers are typically about 2 mm/0.08 inch thick, with 200 layers on each side of the body armor. Tests have shown that Nanocomp body armor can stop a 9-mm bullet at just 2mm, a feat typically reserved for 6-8mm body armor. In electromagnetic shielding applications, the Nanocomp's CNTs help provide protection from electrical signals.

The armor, combined, allows for a high strength composite armor to be formed. The CNT's, on the outside, are much harder, and capable of withstanding multiple strikes; this layer, on the outside of the armor, combined with a gloss resistant high hardness ceramic, breaks up and fragments the bullets on impact. This combined mushrooming and fragmentation allows for a much harder, smaller round to mushroom before entering the soft body armor, thus spreading out it's load and absorbing some of the energy. A .44 magnum has approximately the same energy as a 5.56mm x 45mm NATO round from an M4 carbine, which a IIIA armor vest in use by the military, such as the Interceptor, can stop. However, a similar energy 5.56mm round, with it's much smaller diameter, and higher velocity bullet, can pierce this soft armor. By utilizing a harder material, the bullet expands or fragments, decreasing it's pressure and velocity, as well as the inherent durability of a high hardness projectile, such as steel. When the bullet finally reaches the softer armor underneath, it is more than capable of stopping the round, which is now a more ideal shape and velocity. Additionally, due to the high strength of the nanocomp armor, some of the energy is absorbed before hand, before reaching the M5 fiber.

This composite combined is 4mm thick, or weighs just over 26.4 pounds. In terms of fragmentation and energy absorption, the armor is slightly better than a standard EOD suit.

General Information

Land warrior is not a single unit, but a system, spread out among multiple units, and integrated directly into ground vehicles, aircraft, and soldier's armor. Intended predominately to provide intelligence to the user, the system allows for easier control and access to sophisticated smart technology present, and to offer these capabilities on every level of the battlefield.

The system not only provides soldiers with information, but commanders and other soldiers with information about them. From heart rate, to breathing, to general medical information, and updated information in the field, the system serves to integrate up to date information and rapid access to the field and commanders, to provide a method of interaction in both tactical and strategic never seen before without these installations.

The soldier now has access to all or most of the basic command and radio communications (assuming someone on their channel is hooked up to a primary radio system, which is of course transferred to a minor radio system). The user can either access various verbal radio channels or text based radio channels, in order to minimize their input of verbal sounds and prevent "Helmet Fire". This is hooked up to the EPLRS system, and allows near real time information on secure, jam free channels for quick available tactical data. It also has a GPS based IDFF "Identification friend or foe" system, that allows user to see relative distances between individuals with the GPS system on a motion tracker like grid, and as well as see their teammates relative positions on a map in a zoomable and outzoomable positions, with an appearance similar to google maps. This information can be relayed to various other units, such as mobile vehicles and aircraft, as well as command centers, to give a ,more accurate layout to commanders and support units, to prevent fire from assisted attacks other than infantry as well.

All the information is hooked up the Liquid crystal display in the facemask, allowing for an uplink of the round counter, scope, text based radio chatter, notice on active radio channels, view of the volume of the radio, time (date, time of day, etc.), and GPS based map with the position of friendly units (with the GPS motion tracking devices active on their person or vehicle) and geographic area of the terrain. This can all be controlled by the neural computer interface, providing hands off control of all the system's computer capabilities. The device also possess the ability for customization, allowing the user view of all of the applications at varying degrees of transparency, and at any position on the HUD. The device also can be completely turned off, providing complete and clear view through the facemask.

The entire unit weighs approximately 10-15 pounds, although in conjunction with armor it can be lighter, the armor replacing some of the support functions of the device (such as the case for the battery or the head's up display). The individual soldier system also has an estimated cost of around 15,000 dollars.



Scope- The scope is essentially a low profile 4-10x zoom 60mm thermal scope design to be attached to standard picatinny rails. It is a low profile scope, with a rail on top of it, similiar to that of the G36; the picatinny rails rest on top of the scope, where iron sights are then placed on top. The rail then extends out on top of the scope, and the iron sights raise up above the scope, to provide accurate fire. A small circular plastic hole allows for view through the support structure for the raised iron sights. Thus, the iron sights are on top of the scope, providing both for combat.

In addition, an additional scope can be mounted in front of the thermal scope to provide additional vision increase. The two scopes can be stacked

Round Counter- The round counter is a device that is essentially designed to count the amount of rounds fired by the user, and document and log specific information about the rounds fired, including time, firing patterns, and amount. The device is based off of the Black Box, and can either be placed inside of the pistol grip of the weapon, or placed on some form of carrying device. The round counter is connected to the Land Warrior system, and allows for the user to see the amounts of round fired and remaining in their magazine, and if programmed correctly, their entire pack.

While this can be displayed on the helmet, it is also possible to display on the weapon, with an LCD device.

Laser range finder- The weapon utilizes a laser range finder with a range of up to 2KM, present on the weapon. The device can be utilized to measure the speeds of the target and find it's distance. The device uses a laser beam to determine the distance to an object. The most common form of laser rangefinder operates on the time of flight principle by sending a laser pulse in a narrow beam towards the object and measuring the time taken by the pulse to be reflected off the target and returned to the sender. Due to the high speed of light, this technique is not appropriate for high precision sub-millimeter measurements, where triangulation and other techniques are often used. This is similiar to the AN/GVS-5 laser range finder.

The same device can also be used to emit an ordinary infrared laser. This can be utilized with a thermal scope in order to see the laser, but keep it hidden from enemy view. This focuses as an ordinary laser sight, although it has a longer range and it hidden from enemy view, provided they don't have thermal vision.

Neural Interface- The system is essentially a non-invasive neural uplink to the land warrior system and is based off of the EPOC nueroheadset. The device uses 14 saline sensors for optimal positioning for accurate spatial resolution, while the integrated gyroscope generates optimal positional information for cursor and camera controls. The high performance wireless up-link gives users a total range of motion, although it can be hooked up through the use of wires. The device is USB compatible and requires no custom drivers.

The device allows for simple cursor moving as well as basic key commands. In addition, the device comes with automated programmable key commands, allowing easily customizable "quick commands" that the user can exploit for a much faster use of the available technology. The device can operate at the speed of the user's thoughts, allowing them to control their electronic uplink much faster in a hand off's environment. This device is also hooked up to the scope allowing for a much quicker zoom feature and is hooked up to the radio commands to allow quick, hands off text communication.

Processing core- The processing core of the unit is a highly modified Apple 6 iphone based computer system. The A6 is said to use a 1.3 GHz custom Apple-designed ARMv7 based dual-core CPU, called Swift, rather than a licensed CPU from ARM like in previous designs, and an integrated triple-core PowerVR SGX 543MP3 graphics processing unit (GPU). The A6 chip also incorporates 1GB of LPDDR2-1066 RAM compared to 512MB of LPDDR2-800 RAM in the iPhone 4S providing double the memory capacity while increasing the theoretical memory bandwidth from 6.4 GB/s to 8.5 GB/s.

Manufactured by Samsung on a High-κ metal gate (HKMG) 32 nm process, the chip is 96.71 mm2 large which is 22% smaller than the A5 and it consumes less power than its predecessor.

Information is scarce but the Swift core uses a new tweaked instruction set, ARMv7s, featuring some elements of the ARM Cortex-A15 such as support for the Advanced SIMD v2, and VFPv4. Analysis suggests that the Swift core has a triple-wide frontend and two FPUs, compared to a two-wide core with a single FPU in the Cortex-A9 based predecessor. A version of the A6 with higher frequency and four graphic cores is called Apple A6X and is found in the fourth generation iPad.

The device however, utilizes graphene transistors, a material with the best computation speed present in miniaturized electronics. A nano engineered material, it is capable of speeds up to 100 ghz, and thus is substantially faster than standard civilian processing units. Further more, these units are substantially more durable, having operating temperatures in the thousands of degrees and being 200 times stronger than steel. Combined with this, the system can operate at much higher speeds and has a much longer life over the standard armscale devices.

In addition, the device is specialized to work with a modified version of linux, of which the program is written in. It utilizes a slightly different version of the computing system, as to make it difficult for commercial devices to interact with it, therefore making it harder to hack or infiltrate.


GPS- A standard GPS is added to fit on the utility belt or in a pocket of the suit. The GPS has a rail attachment, so that it may be added to the gun and removed with relative ease. The GPS can send out both a broadcasting signal, or a small screen can be presented to present the position of the unit. Essentially, the GPS provides a map and a locations device, allowing the user to see the layout of the area through the screen. In addition to this, the gps may be hooked up with the land warrior system or to a scope.

Radio-frequency identification- The radio frequency identification chips are plugged into the armor, usually the soldier, to allow the easy identification of friendly troops without GPS positioning. These provide valuable information, ranging from name, rank, current position, and even medical information. The device is essentially an active Active Reader Passive Tag (ARPT) system (if the batteries wear our), and An Active Reader Active Tag (ARAT) which uses active tags awoken with an interrogator signal from the active reader, with battery assistance. They're mil spec design with a particularly owned frequency, that has a range of 2000 feet.

While these do not provide global positioning, they do provide more accurate readings and local readings if the GPS systems go out or are unable to work due to dense foliage or cover (such as in a building). More powerful radios can be carried with the crew, to allow longer range detection of the systems.

Sonar based Identification system- The system is essentially a sonar based identification system, similar to those used in advanced fish finders, but specialized for use in the air. While the quality varies, the ultra-sonar high kilo hzt variant allows for an accurate 3-dimensional rendering of a 100 foot radius area, given enough time. It can easily pick up motion, and generally can pick up the presence of humans or other living creatures. While it travels faster through solid fixtures, thus allowing it to essentially, see through walls, it is difficult and times time to render such an environment, and therefore additionally requires a unit to stay outside the facility for a given time, to make out what might be a small area. These systems are also hard to see without large computer screens, and may take proper analysis to figure out how to enter the facility.

Larger ones can be combined with the system to provide a larger area map out, and thus an easier stationary system to figure out the the layout of a facility or area.

Radio communication Network- The armor comes equipped with a standard AN-PRC-148, a Multiband Inter/Intra Team Radio (MBITR), which is the most widely fielded handheld multiband, tactical software-defined radio, in use with NATO forces around the world. The radio is hooked up to the headphones and standard speaker of the armor, and can connect with the land warrior software present. These can be linked to the vehicle radio systems, which are substantially more powerful than hand held variants.

Rather than carry large radios, these devices are generally carried by unmanned tracked vehicles, such as the RIPSAW. While the carried radios are much lighter and have a much smaller range, when connected to the larger radio unit, these unmanned vehicles can provide invaluable communication abilities, even at extremely far ranges, and they do not require a unit from the squad.

Power Source- The lithium–titanate battery is a type of rechargeable battery, which has the advantage of being faster to charge than other lithium-ion batteries. Titanate batteries are used in Mitsubishi's i-MiEV electric vehicle and Honda uses them in its EV-neo electric bike and Fit EV, which will be launched in summer 2012. A lithium–titanate battery is a modified lithium-ion battery that uses lithium-titanate nanocrystals on the surface of its anode instead of carbon. This gives the anode a surface area of about 100 square meters per gram, compared with 3 square meters per gram for carbon, allowing electrons to enter and leave the anode quickly. This makes fast recharging possible and provides high currents when needed.

The disadvantage is that lithium-titanate batteries have a lower inherent voltage, which leads to a lower energy density than conventional lithium-ion battery technologies.

Toshiba released a lithium–titanate battery, dubbed Super Charge Ion Battery (SCiB).The battery is designed to offer 90% charge capacity in just 10 minutes. SCiB batteries are used in the Schwinn Tailwind electric bike. Toshiba has also demonstrated its use as a prototype laptop battery. Toshiba SCiB batteries are also used in Mitsubishi's i-MiEV and Minicab MiEV electric vehicles, and Honda uses them in its EV-neo electric bike and Fit EV model which will be launched in summer 2012. The batteries within the land warrior system are based off of these batteries.

Heart Rate Monitor- The heart rate monitor goes onto the wrist, like a standard watch, and can even tell time. The heart rate monitors comprises two elements: a chest strap transmitter and a wrist receiver or mobile phone (which usually doubles as a watch or phone). In early plastic straps water or liquid was required to get good performance. The units now use conductive smart fabric with built-in microprocessors which analyze the EKG signal to determine heart rate.

Strapless heart rate monitors allow the user to just touch two sensors on a wristwatch display for a few seconds to view their heart rate. These are popular for their comfort and ease of use though they don't give as much detail as monitors which use a chest strap; to get more detailed information longer time frames with the chest monitor are required. It can also be utilized to measure blood pressure; this information is particularly useful for medics or to determine the medical capabilities of a soldier.

Bone Conduction Headphones- Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull.

Bone conduction is the reason why a person's voice sounds different to him/her when it is recorded and played back. Because the skull conducts lower frequencies better than air, people perceive their own voices to be lower and deeper than others do. This also explains why a recording of one's own voice sounds higher than one is accustomed to.

Some hearing aids employ bone conduction, achieving an effect equivalent to hearing directly by means of the ears. A headset is ergonomically positioned on the temple and cheek and the electromechanical transducer, which converts electric signals into mechanical vibrations, sends sound to the internal ear through the cranial bones. Likewise, a microphone can be used to record spoken sounds via bone conduction. The first description, in 1923, of a bone conduction hearing aid was Hugo Gernsback's "Osophone", which he later elaborated on with his "Phonosone".

Bone conduction products have following advantages over traditional headphones:

• Ears-free, thus providing extended use comfort and safety
  
• High sound clarity in very noisy environments, can be used with hearing protection
  
• Can have the perception of stereo sound

Throat Microphone- Throat Microphone- A throat microphone, also laryngophone, is a type of microphone that picks up sound directly through sensors in contact with the neck. Because of this design, it is able to pick up speech in loud environments, such as on a motorcycle or in a night club, where other types of microphones would not function well because the speech would be drowned out by background noise. This type of microphone is also able to pick up whispers and works well in an environment where one has to keep quiet while communicating with others at a distance, such as during a covert military operation. Throat microphones were also extensively used in World War II-era aircraft, and by German tank crews.

Newer single-element designs are available that make the throat microphone much more comfortable to wear than earlier units. Additionally, this next generation of throat microphones provides varying outputs and frequency responses to accommodate a wide variety of communication devices such as digital and analog portable radios, Tetra & P25 systems, & cellular phones. Throat microphones are very useful in loud environments or when respiratory protection is required. Many full-face SCBA, SAR, SABA PAPR or re-breather masks do not have a provision for a microphone inside the mask. The throat microphone can be used safely as it is positioned outside the mask's face seal and as such does not compromise the respiratory protection provided by the mask nor does it violate mask approvals and certification.

Throat microphones are popular with paintball players as they allow competitors to insert communication equipment easily under protective masks and gear. Additionally the ability to whisper communications enables players to not give away their position during games.
does not feature whisper communications and requires users to speak at full volume. A throat microphone is available for iPhone.