Sorry, didn't have a link for this. Interesting shtuff....

The Weekly Standard


Future Shock
Why the military is interested in magnetic levitation.
by Victorino Matus
02/23/2006 12:00:00 AM


THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE has given millions of dollars to a company you've
never heard of in order to fund something called Project M, whose aim is
"The Use of Modern Sensing and Actuation Technologies Coupled With High
Speed Processing to Control Complex Dynamic Systems." In English, this means
three objectives: "active control of vibration, active control of mechanical
shock, and active control of magnetic fields."

But for what purpose? To create an army of Magnetos capable of hurling large
metallic objects at the enemy? Not quite. To find the answer, I turned to
the recently retired chief of naval research, Rear Admiral Jay M. Cohen.

I had an opportunity to speak with the admiral a few months ago when I first
heard of the possible military applications for magnetic-levitation
technology. Cohen, in a phone interview, explained how the Navy's interest
in MagLev originated with the need for silencing machinery aboard ships.
"Throughout history," he said, "we had used rubber mounts" to reduce noise
and vibration. "What all navies have traditionally done is put heavy, large
cables all around the perimeter of the ship. We then pass electric currents
through them to try and nullify the electromagnetic feature of the steel
hulls."

But what if you could drastically reduce the amount of noise a ship makes
directly at the source? One small company in Alexandria, Virginia, was
proposing just that. The result was Project M.

Vibration & Sound Solutions Limited (VSSL) suggested placing mag-lev sensors
at the source of the electromagnetic fields, such as motors. The idea was to
actually levitate the machinery with an array of electromagnets while using
a small amount of power. "The technology really worked," says Admiral Cohen.
"But, like other technologies, it was ahead of its time." He described the
innovation as a "disruptive technology" that goes "against the more tried
and true ways of doing things." And "for whatever reason, the decision was
taken to not pursue at that time that very promising technology." (Cohen was
quick to point out the decision was not his but, as he called it, "Big
Navy's.")

There would, however, be other opportunities. According to a recent study by
the Naval Health Research Center, "Boat operators and crew of U.S. Navy
Special Warfare combatant craft are routinely exposed to severe boat-wave
impacts as part of their mission training and execution." Since 9/11, there
has been a growing need for littoral operations--taking place on shores and
coastlines and requiring fast-moving transports and the deployment of SEAL
teams. But en route to missions, riding on high-speed vessels such as the
Mark V, said Cohen, "You find that we're bracing ourselves, either standing
and holding on to a bar or backbrace . . . or we're [resting] on passive
shock-mitigating seats. It occurred to me that we were doing damage."

Indeed, as a Mark V hits the waves at 45 knots, those on board can
experience up to 8 G's of pressure. "And that's vertical on their spine,"
notes the admiral. "You can imagine the tap-tap-tap. . . ." The successor to
the Mark V is the Sea Fighter (formerly the X-Craft), a 262-foot, 1,000-ton,
aluminum catamaran that travels up to 50 knots on the high seas. This led
Cohen to "look at decoupling the human from the impact of the craft using
this magnetic levitation, and that was sort of the genesis of the seats that
you see today."

THE SHOCK-MITIGATING SEATS were developed by VSSL, and fast-tracked under
the Office of Naval Research's "Swampworks" program. As Cohen explained it,
"the first seat we did was what we call a semipassive seat. It denses the
acceleration but then reduces it. It takes us from about 8 G's to 2 to 3
G's, and it has removed the rapid shock, the bang--and it worked well."
Secondly, "you have a wave-height sensor forward on the small ship and you
could anticipate what the reaction of the ship would be to its meeting that
wave. You could then pre-position that seat to get the optimum G-force
reduction."

Not only did I sit on one of the prototype shock-mitigating seats at VSSL's
facility--an unassuming 23,000-square-foot low-rise office that consumes at
least one block--but I also watched the company's "Six Degree-Of-Freedom
Motion Simulator" at work. The test rig is impressively equipped with
solid-state electromagnetic drivers and able to produce an effective shock
environment. That's not all they are working on.

ADMIRAL COHEN was eager to tell me about a project involving, among others,
Penske, Ford, and VSSL. It's called ULTRA: "We took, with Ford's help, . . .
an F-350 frame and diesel engine--now that's not the end product, but we're
just taking a stock frame that can carry the weight and we're adding a
four-passenger compartment that looks a little bit like the lunar module.
The reason we did that is that the bottom and top are sloped so if a
landmine should go off under it, it dissipates the blast and you deflect
incoming weapons like RPG's. But this is heavily armored and lighter than a
Humvee . . . and the four passengers sit with their back to a center post
and the driver is sitting facing forward between the wheels so the wheels
don't get blown into him. . . . And then we have a cupola for a turret
gunner."

What Cohen found most disturbing is that in Iraq, despite riding in
"up-armored" Humvees, "the passengers in some cases end up dying not from
shrapnel but from the lateral acceleration of the blast [of an IED]. It's
like shaken-baby syndrome." Cohen tasked VSSL to develop shock-mitigating
seats for this vehicle. He's also looked at the potential for such seats
aboard helicopters. "Instead of having these bench seats, we'd have a light
seat but have a battery pack like from a motorcycle, a squib, and an
acceleration sensor. What would happen would be as the helicopter were
falling out of the sky, and you sensed this high rate of acceleration, the
squib would fire and . . . the seat would pre-position, be levitated, so
that when you crashed, instead of having the instantaneous G-loading, the
seat would have a more linear G-loading, to reduce the G's on the passengers
or pilot."

(VSSL, meanwhile, has also developed a hydraulic knee-brace containing
sensors that would help ease the mobility of U.S. troops in mountainous
terrain. The brace would be worn to prevent blown-out knees and would act,
in effect, like part of an exoskeleton.)

TALKING WITH COHEN is a little bit like talking to "Q" from the James Bond
movies. Often times the admiral can barely contain his excitement about the
latest technologies. But he also understood the nature of his job and the
enormous challenges the modern battlefield presents.

Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.

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