Special ops helmet to be fielded Army-wide: lightweight MICH headgear so far well received by troops, officials said.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: Brief Article

A new lightweight military helmet already fielded to U.S. special operations forces and elite Army infantry units could, in the future, be distributed among conventional troops, officials said.

During the past three years, the Special Operations Forces Special Projects Team, located within the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center at Natick, Mass., spent $1.5 million to develop the Modular Integrated Communications Helmet (MICH).

The helmet has numerous advantages over the traditional combat headgear, said Richard Elder, project officer for the MICH.

Elder, a former U.S. Army Ranger, told National Defense that the helmet is not only comfortable and reliable, but also provides improved communications capabilities.

"First, the higher cut [of the helmet] allows a user to have complete range of motion while using the complete range of load carriage systems and body armor employed by our user groups, he said. "It allows a user to lay in the prone and engage a target. This is huge. This task was very difficult to impossible with the old PASGT (Personnel Armor System Ground Troops) helmet while wearing most body armor and load carriage," Elder said.

He explained that it was impossible to engage a target from the prone position while wearing night-vision devices, and the MICH provides a more solid platform.

The MICH has a six-, seven-, or eight-pad foam suspension system. The pads can be added, removed or changed, based on the soldier's comfort level. Pads in the crown portion of the helmet can be replaced by oblong or oval pads. The pad suspension is "universally tailorable to the users' head shape while affording greatly increased impact protection," Elder said. The pads within the MICH, after being worn for several minutes, loosen up and eventually conform to the shape of the soldier's head.

The MICH helmet only comes in two sizes, while past helmets have come in five sizes, Elder said. This is because the pads are adjustable and can be molded more accurately to the head. "They can accommodate a lot more," he said.

Elder said that the slow-impact protection is better than any fielded helmet in the Army or Special Forces inventory. "This helmet is the only ballistic helmet within Special Operations Command to be authorized for use with motorcycles, [and] all terrain vehicles."

The helmet also protects from flying bullets. "The ballistics are rated to stop a 9 mm bullet traveling 1,450 feet per second, from 0 degrees of obliquity (straight on, with no...