Armored Airbags to Protect Vehicles from RPGs and Roadside Bombs

This isn't much different from active armor already used so there goes another several million dollars down the tubes on a useless, unnecessary technology. Way to go DoD.

Agreed - Ablative armor is only like, what, 30 years old now??? Congrats on re-inventing the wheel folks....

So, you made the armor resistant to explosives but vulnerable to flashlights. gj

Millions of dollars is pocket change, it's practically nothing.

Blocking RPGs and blocking blast waves are two completely different things. An RPG-7 travels at ~115 m/s. The blast wave from a C4 explosion travels at ~8000 m/s. Assuming a typical airbag takes 0.04 seconds to deploy, and zero processing time, your airbag would deploy in 4.6m for an RPG, but 320 m for the blast wave... If you were 320 m away from an IED in an armoured vehicle, I think you'd be fairly safe even without the airbag...

this needs to be practical in the average family owned vehicle.

if radar detects another vehicle traveleing at a rate that cant be stopped intime, the airbags deploy on both cars at a certain given distance, minimizing damage to both cars and possibly drivers and passengers.

however, if u get hit by a train, i beg to differ.

Why not just get out of this war and you won't have to be concerned with adding more protection for our troops? It just goes on and on and on. Finally we will have the biggest and most ungainly vehicle to protect the troops and they will find a way to destroy that unit. Why can't you see that, or is the money aspect blinding you.

yeah i was just thinking that... i don't think this war is worth fighting anymore. we're spending billions every month... for what? we could've used that money to fix our economy, help the homeless, jobless, education, that's a lot of money. we're better off hardening our borders, build a super sophisticated fence on all borders, for way less than what we're spending now on both wars! these are different countries now compared to WWII Japan/Germany, which were world class 1st world countries even before the war, with smart people so it was easy to rebuild them. but afghanistannedsneashssehsh and iraqsh1@#$!@#... forget about it! what a pigsty!

i would just like to make a comment about the picture at the top of this page. it looks like a maximum security ice cream truck

"Why not just get out of this war and you won't have to be concerned with adding more protection for our troops?"

...and getting rid of police officers would reduce crime rates (sarcasm). -OR- We could realize that there will always be reasons to maintain a military, and out of appreciation for the soldiers risking their lives we could try to find ways of keeping them alive. Side benefit: the same advancements we see in military tech will make their way to civilian tech... like the Internet (originally a DARPA project).

"...we could've used that money to fix our economy..."

Nice try, please show me how government spending has "fixed" the economy. Cash for clunkers? Home buyer grants? Please don't make me laugh. I would rather keep my money and spend it how I want rather than having it taxed and then "given" back to me.

"...Nice try, please show me how government spending has "fixed" the economy. Cash for clunkers? Home buyer grants? Please don't make me laugh. I would rather keep my money and spend it how I want rather than having it taxed and then "given" back to me..."

that's the obama administration's idea of fixing the economy.
my idea, keep those billions of dollars instead of spending in the war maybe the government would have more money and stop taxing people to death. low interest small business loans to expand. lower the income taxes so people could keep more money in their pockets.

nothing against the military, grateful for the military for keeping worldwide peace. it's time for those people in iraq/afghan to take care of their own and pay the US for keeping their countries secure.

yeah we could reduce (not get rid) the police force here, just allow people to carry firearms (with proper training) to protect themselves against thugs/rapist/murderers. enforce citizens' arrest and vigilante justice, let see if crimes don't go down.

If there willing to spend a lot of money on something, why don't they spend on Dragon Armor, at least that will work, and not be as expensive, and protect our troops better, and cost less, and not be animated.

Also it sort of looked like the thing (in the vid) was shielding the blast, rather than the troops inside (the truck looked like it flew 6-7 feet in the air). scigeek96 is sort of right of it looking like a maximum security ice cream truck.

The new APC's coming out in the Army today are great! We have personaly seen the new apc get hit at point blank range from an IED and no one inside the APC was hurt. The problem with these new APC's are that they cost around 5 million a piece to make and take about a year to deploy.

Just do everything in war remotely and it will not matter.
we just need RPS's (remotely piloted soldiers), BAM problem solved! heck maybe we could subsidize people NOT to have wars.
The cost of wars these days may actually create "lets not go to war scenarios real soon... oops I am dreaming again!

Wait...? Just hook a patriot anti missile battery trailer to the truck... Problem solved! (we just need a nano version of it)!

The real problem to this is that it is too easy to circumvent and is patterened against a single threat source (RPG).

1) Attach a point to your RPG, and it punches through the air bag fabric, hits metal and BOOM. $2 of tin and some welding and your countermeasure is blown.

2) Aim low, fire twice. One shot deploys the countermeasure but does not stop an exsplosion headed for ground level. Shapnel, however, would tear the countermeasure, so a second shot goes home.

3) Continue to focus on undercariage RSBs. Blowing up has always worked better than blowing over.

4) Automation for cargo delievery gets the soldier out of the way. Remote control and autonomous vehicles make convoys fiscal, rather than personel, risks. An autonomous convoy with UAV air support to counterstrike becomes a low win, high risk, exchange for the enemy. That is demoralizing to the enemy, making assaults low, meaning that you could move soft assets (people) covertly with typical supply trains.

My vote is for Remote control and Autonomous vehicles. That is prolly why UAV's are very popular.