New first aid kit being developed at Natick

Maybe it looks like a camouflage money belt on steroids, but it could save Soldiers' lives.The new Individual First Aid Kit, or IFAK, being developed at the Natick Soldier Systems Center eventually will be carried by every Soldier in a combat environment.To get more news about ifak pouch army, you can visit rusuntacmed.com official website.

"We designed it literally about three or four months ago," said Rich Landry, individual equipment designer with the Load Carriage Prototype Lab, Product Manager Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment, at NSSC. "The medical community said, 'Awesome idea. Let's move out with it.' Overwhelmingly, they thought this was a huge improvement over the current IFAK."

As Landry pointed out, the current IFAK, developed rapidly in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom to fulfill a critical need, has proved rather unwieldy."This thing is just kind of a brick on your side that gets in the way of everything," said Landry of the current bulky IFAK, which was built into an existing Squad Automatic Weapon ammo pouch. "It was very, very quick, because they needed them right away."

More thought has gone into the new IFAK, a streamlined, two-piece system that features a pouch with an insert that slides out to allow easy access to medical equipment from either side.

"It supports all the critical items to the individual Soldier's medical needs," Landry said. "The beauty of this system, compared to the old one, is that it allows the Soldier to place it on (his or her) body in a spot where it can be easily accessible, which is the critical piece, but also not get in the way of other important tactical pieces of equipment."

Landry said 30 new IFAKs recently underwent evaluation at Fort Polk, La., where a platoon of Soldiers carried them through a training rotation. The early feedback has been positive, he added."We're very sure this is the direction the Individual First Aid Kit is going to go, hopefully, for all services, but you never know," Landry said. "That would be icing on the cake."

The new IFAK carries even more medical gear than the first version, including two Combat Application Tourniquets. Still, its lower profile allows a Soldier to wear it comfortably in the small of his or her back under the Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment, or MOLLE, Large or Medium backpack.

"And that's critical for us, because the big picture in load carriage is the backpack piece," Landry said. "That's where a large percentage of the load and bulk comes from. And it's critical that we still have to be able to carry that.

"All you do is reach back and pull (the IFAK) out, and it doesn't matter what side you pull it out from," Landry said. "So if this hand is injured, you can reach behind with this (hand) and pull it out, or your buddy can get to it."Such innovation is Landry's calling card at Natick. A former Pathfinder with the 82nd Airborne Division, he began tinkering with outdoor equipment at a young age.

"My sister taught me how to sew," Landry recalled. "Every backpack I got, every piece of equipment I got, was modified in some way, shape or form. That's just how my brain works. Nothing can be left alone. Nothing's perfect in my mind, as far as outdoor equipment, and that's a curse."

It's also been a blessing for Soldiers, who have worn equipment all around the world that Landry developed in his lab."The ability to know what they need, as opposed to what they want, is a little bit different," Landry said. "That's just what I do. It's what I love. I'm in a perfect place to do that."

Why Stopping a “Bad Guy With a Gun” Keeps Getting Harder

There is an inevitability to the pro-gun talking points trotted out after a major mass shooting. Guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people. This is a result of a mental health crisis—or spiritual rot—in America. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. To get more news about bullet proof vests, you can visit bulletproofboxs.com official website.

That last point has been particularly sticky, mostly because it gives pro-gun lawmakers something productive to push, other than prayer. After the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 and, with greater gusto, after the Parkland shooting in 2018, lawmakers responded by pushing for the arming of teachers. In 2019, in the wake of that second shooting, Texas passed a law that allowed more teachers to be armed. Already, after the massacre at Uvalde on Tuesday, state officials are again advocating for guns in schools.
We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Fox News on Tuesday. “We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”

There are many problems with the proposal. First, it is deeply unpopular among teachers. Second, studies have found there’s no evidence that arming teachers—or implementing other measures “hardening” schools to defend against potential shootings—is actually effective in reducing deaths. In fact, evidence suggests that guns in schools are often misplaced or stolen and can increase the risk to students and teachers.

But there is another, more basic problem with the “more guns in schools” argument: Shooters are increasingly wearing body armor. Bullets won’t always stop them.

The gunman in the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, wore a bulletproof vest. The gunman in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting wore tactical gear. The assailants in the 2015 San Bernardino, California attacks wore body armor. As did the gunmen in a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017; a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, last year; and in Buffalo, New York, this month, where ten people were killed and another three were wounded at a supermarket.

According to data from The Violence Project, a nonpartisan group researching gun violence, 21 mass shooters in the last 40 years have worn some form of body armor. Sixteen of those have been in the last decade. (The types of body armor included in the data range in efficacy, but a good number are bulletproof.) If you include the shooting in Buffalo, that comes up to 17—almost two-and-a-half times more than in the three decades before.

It’s hard to say how much body armor has worsened the violence. In at least one incident—the Sutherland Springs shooting—the first shots hit the gunman’s body armor and failed to take him down. (In Uvalde, it appears that the gunman was wearing a plate carrier vest without ballistic armor inside.) But body armor certainly has the ability to prolong these attacks.
In Buffalo, a security guard fired at the gunman. Because of the body armor, the shots didn’t stop him.

According to James Densley of the Violence Project, the idea of wearing body armor could be spreading among mass shooters themselves. “Wearing body armor may be another way of mass shootings conforming with cultural expectations about what a mass shooting should look like,” Densley said. “The fact the school shooting in Texas followed so soon after the shooting in Buffalo and body armor appeared in both suggests this may be the case.”