Halon Replacement Program (HRP) for U.S. Army Ground Combat Vehicles. Report to Halon Options Technical Working Group Conference

Abstract

Abstract : Halon 1301 has been used for decades as the primary fire and explosion extinguishing material for a multitude of industrial and military applications. However, halons have very high ozone depleting potentials and their production was stopped in 1994 in most of the world. The U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), the laboratory of the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armament Command (TACOM) that conducts research on issues affecting ground combat vehicles, initiated the Halon Replacement Program (HRP) to identify and develop replacement technologies to satisfy the performance and logistics requirements of fire protection for ground combat vehicles. Early investigations indicated that a universal solution would not be available to the fire protection community for all the systems that used halon. Hence, multiple agents would probably be required to address the wide range of military applications currently satisfied by halon 1301. This paper summarizes the results and findings of the HRP. It addresses the halon elimination efforts in three separate ground combat vehicle applications: engine compartment fire suppression, crew compartment explosion suppression, and hand-held fire extinguishers.