Source:New Cloth Market


Amongst all fighting personnel, the pace of technologicalchange is perhaps greatest for the dismounted soldier. Only a decade or so agothey might have counted merely a flashlight as their sole electrical device. Incontrast, the modern dismounted soldier may be carrying any or all of: anight-vision sight and/or goggles; thermal-imaging sight; personal role radioand combat net radio; laser rangefinder, laser designator and laser weaponpointer; noise cancelling unit; IR and visible beacons; electroniccounter-measures; global positioning and/ or blue force tracking. Not tomention their own personal mobile phones, or cameras, or iPods. And of coursethey still have those original flashlights.


The term Christmas Tree Effect is widely used to describethis state of affairs, where the soldier is festooned with many standalone,poorly integrated devices. The analogy is particularly apt when one considersthat a typical family Christmas tree will have had decorations collected piecemealover many years.


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Aboutthe Authors:


Stan Swallow and AshaThompson are directors of Intelligent Textiles Ltd, a small UK-based technologycompany that specialises in electrically active woven fabrics, or e-textiles,and which for over five years has been researching and developing e-textilesfor defence applications, predominantly as a replacement for conventionalcables in soldier systems, where they offer a radical solution to some of theburden problems facing todays dismountedsoldier and marine. In this article they describe the development ofelectrically conductive textiles and the significant advantages that theypromise.


Originally published in: New Cloth Market, July-2010