Personal Cooling for Military Vehicles

Foster-Miller has been involved in the development of microclimate cooling systems for military vehicles for more than a decade. Two types of systems are currently available. Both cool garments worn directly against the skin to enhance heat removal from the body. They are:

• Vapor compression systems for aircraft without their own environmental control systems (ECS).
• Non-vapor compression systems for use with platforms that have their own ECS system to provide supplemental cooling.

Specific systems developed by Foster-Miller include:

Air Warrior Microclimate Cooling Subsystem

Flight-qualified hardware developed for UH-60, CH-47D and OH-58D helicopters has also been installed on the M9Armored Combat Earthmover. This system provides 324W of cooling in an ambient temperature of 125°F; more cooling at lower ambient temperatures. The cooler weighs only 13 lb, runs on 28 VDC power, and draws no more than 12A under all conditions. The system began production in 2003. It was developed under contract to Program Manager, Air Warrior (PM AW), Redstone Arsenal, AL.

AH-64D Apache Microclimate Cooling Subsystem

This system uses cool air from the ECS system to cool both the pilot and copilot. Up to 360W of cooling is available. The cooling hardware weighs about 8.5 lb per crew member (total of 17 lb). This variant has also completed development and has been in production since early 2004. This project was also done under contract with PM AW at Redstone Arsenal.

Combat Cool ™ Microclimate Cooling Subsystem for Humvees

Adapted from technology developed for the Apache, this system also uses cool air supplied from the vehicle’s air conditioning system to chill up to four soldiers riding in ground vehicles. It runs on 28 VDC and draws less than 2A. This particular variant was designed around the commercial air conditioning system in the Humvee, although it can be adapted for other vehicles as well. A total of 500 systems were delivered for field trials in Iraq in 2005 under contract to PM TV at the U.S. Army TACOM.

For more information, please contact:

Dan Fischbach at 781.684.4321 or dfischbach@foster-miller.com

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