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Soldiers in combat often look to heaven for deliverance, which may soon be coming to them not on the wings of angels, but strapped to sophisticated, lightweight self-guided parachutes.

Effective and timely medical care is a crucial component of success in any long term military campaign, and quickly getting wounded combat Soldiers to field hospitals can be an extremely daunting challenge in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. But systems tested at YPG as part of the Joint Medical Distance Support and Evacuation (JMDSE) Joint Capability Technology demonstration (JCTD) project seek to help out by bringing medical care to Soldiers, wherever they are.

"This program is meant specifically to deliver medical supplies to Soldiers when they are down," said Sanjay Patel, a project officer for U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC). "The first hour when they are hurt is when they really need the help."

JMDSE uses a variety of GPS-guided parachutes of various sizes to drop medical supplies and equipment to Soldiers from both conventional cargo airplanes and unmanned aerial systems in a very precise manner. Whether it is a monitoring device, ventilator, medications, or units of blood, JMDSE aims to rapidly and accurately deliver the items to Soldiers in the field. Another goal of the technology is to make the process easy: testers believe the parachutes and equipment could be re-used as many as 30 times, and could be packed and rigged in a matter of hours by personnel with only a few days of training.

Using unmanned systems, especially for small payloads, has a variety of advantages, from obvious ones like being more economical and keeping pilots out of harm's way to less apparent ones, such as a rotary-wing unmanned aircraft being used to evacuate a sample in response to a biological attack on a remote village or forward operating base. Air superiority is the rubric of success, and it is measured in altitude: the higher a plane or unmanned aircraft can drop a payload with precision, the less likely it is to encounter interference from enemy forces. During previous conflicts, many air drops failed to reach their intended recipients. Today, sophisticated, multi-stage guided parachutes dropped from high altitudes from miles away can land within yards of their target and YPG is the premiere location for their developmental and operational testing.

"With air drops you can get materiel to virtually anywhere in the world," said Adam Goldenstein, test officer with YPG's Air Delivery Division. "It isn't always possible to truck items around."

YPG's nearly 2000 square miles of restricted airspace, favorable weather, and highly instrumented ranges make it an ideal location for air drop testing. The presence of a variety of unmanned aircraft testers working on a variety of test projects concurrently on YPG's vast range also provides unique opportunities to share platforms and equipment in a mutually beneficial way.

"YPG has the biggest range and highest altitude we can get for drops," said Kristen Lafond, an NSRDEC project officer on JMDSE. "We try to drop as high as 25,000 feet, and this is the only location where we can get that altitude with the offsets we must have for our systems."

Drops of medical supplies are also complicated by the delicateness of equipment and the precise conditions in which blood or vaccines must be stored to remain viable. Prior to a test drop, each payload is carefully prepared in conformance with exacting medical procedures and standards. If blood is being dropped, constant temperature readings are collected from the moment the payload is rigged to when it is recovered. Once in the air, the parachutes must deploy and land as softly as possible to protect glass vials and fragile medical monitors.

"Following test drops, the customer has had the blood analyzed," said Goldenstein. "The results have indicated the altitude, temperature changes, and landing shock has not had a negative effect and these products can be used safely."

This makes recovering the dropped items in a timely manner even more important than usual and YPG's range support workers are up to the task. Testing is expected to continue through next year and test personnel characterize YPG's support as second-to-none.

"YPG has a great deal of air drop experience," said Patel. "If you go somewhere else, the riggers, test officers and equipment aren't available, so you would have to build them up. Coming here allows us to focus exclusively on the test."

USAYPG Outpost