Military Test Research Articles

Notes on A Record of Fear: On the Threshold of the Audible

The author considers the ideas behind her series of temporary audio (and video) installations collectively entitled A Record of Fear, made for the site of Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast. This remote shingle spit was a covert military testing site for much of the 20th century and is now owned and run by the National Trust. The author worked with three sound recordists to capture ambient and “performed” sounds subsequently used in three separate on-site installations. These pieces were a response to both the site's painful history and its current rich soundscape.

A Procedure to Extrapolate Vegetation Cover Estimates Over Large Arid and Semi‐arid Regions Using Multiple Spatial Resolution Imagery

Typically, land degradation on arid and semi‐arid military training and testing lands in the desert Southwestern United States is associated with a decrease in total vegetative cover. Long‐term field surveys have been established by the military to measure and monitor total vegetative cover over time. However, field methods are not cost effective due to the large area of training lands, nearly 3 million acres in the California deserts alone, that must be sampled. Measurements recorded at individual transects must still be spatially extrapolated to produce a complete census of the installation. Remote sensing has been used to spatially extrapolate such field measurements over larger areas, but in the past, imagery has lacked sufficient spatial resolution to accurately estimate total vegetative cover. In this study, nested, high resolution imagery was collected at different spatial resolutions for study sites at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in the south‐central Mojave Desert of southern California. Vegetation cover estimates derived from these multiple resolution images were examined as a possible surrogate for sampling total vegetative cover in the field. Results indicate that a high correlation exits between field measurements of cover and estimates of cover derived from imagery. However, similar to field measurements, if the intent is to estimate total vegetative cover across large geographic areas, high resolution imagery is also costly in terms of collection, processing, and interpretation because a single image generally covers a small geographic area. Therefore, a protocol to scale detailed observations of total cover from high resolution imagery to lower resolution imagery that covers a larger geographic area was developed and tested. The results of this study indicate that a relatively high correlation exists between vegetation cover estimates derived from high resolution imagery and image brightness derived from a nested, lower resolution image. This protocol now allows military land managers to sample site‐specific areas with high resolution imagery and extrapolate absolute estimates of vegetation cover across training and testing lands with more cost effective, lower resolution imagery that provides complete coverage of an installation.

A Peat Moss-Based Technology for Mitigating Residues of the Explosives TNT, RDX, and HMX in Soil

There is increased interest in how to balance military preparedness and environmental protection at Department of Defense (DoD) facilities. This research evaluated a peat moss-based technology to enhance the adsorption and biodegradation of explosive residues at military testing and training ranges. The evaluation was performed using 30-cm-long soil columns operated under unsaturated flow conditions. The treatment materials were placed at the soil surface, and soil contaminated with 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX), and octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX) was spread over the surface. Simulated rainfall initiated dissolution and leaching of the explosive compounds, which was monitored at several depths within the columns. Peat moss plus soybean oil reduced the soluble concentrations of TNT, RDX and HMX detected at 10 cm depth by 100%, 60%, and 40%, respectively, compared to the no-treatment control column. Peat moss alone reduced TNT and HMX concentrations at 10 cm depth relative to the control, but exhibited higher soluble RDX concentrations by the end of the experiment. Concentrations of HMX and RDX were also reduced at 30 cm depth by the peat moss plus soybean oil treatments relative to those observed in the control column. These preliminary results demonstrate proof-of-concept of a low cost technology for reducing the contamination of groundwater with explosives at military test and training ranges.

Social Protest and Policy Change: Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements in Comparative Perspective

Social Protest and Policy Change: Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements in Comparative Perspective. By Marco Giugni. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 320p. 32.95 paper.The same things that provoke social movements also promote institutional pressures for change, shifts in public opinion, and policy change. As a result, disentangling the effects of protest on policy presents an ongoing analytical challenge. If we look, for example, at the volatile and diverse movement against the American war in Vietnam, it is virtually impossible to track clear lines of influence between the volume or disruptiveness of protests covered in the news and spending on the war or casualties produced in battle. At the same time, by reviewing memoirs, archives, and the broader outlines of policy, we know that the movement had longer-term effects, including (minimally), ending military conscription and establishing much stricter political and military tests for long-term commitments of American combat forces overseas. The latter set of constraints, codified as the Weinberger, then the Powell, doctrines, held sway over American military policy from the end of Vietnam until, finally, violated by the current American intervention in Iraq. At the same time, politicians of both parties vigorously try to reassure nervous youth, many of whom are children of the protest generation, that the draft is indeed gone for good. Clearly, the protests against the Vietnam war mattered, though perhaps not exactly in the ways that activists hoped or as much as they dreamed.

Military and aerospace test facility

Military and aerospace test facility

2.1.2 Predicting the Reliability of a Complex System Using an Artificial Neural Network

AbstractThe capability to predict the reliability of complex systems that must be deployed without overly prolonged or expensive testing is of increasing importance to the military test and evaluation community. The presentation of subsystem reliability data to an artificial neural network is a critical factor in the capability of such networks to produce accurate system predictions. By producing a matrix of values corresponding to subsystem reliabilities, using a zero (0) for a nonexistent parallel resource and a one (1) for a nonexistent series subsystem, it was possible to train an artificial neural network to accurately predict the overall system reliability.

Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century (review)

Catherine Lutz. Homefront: A and the American 20th Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002. pp. 328 The Military City of the subtitle is Fayetteville, North Carolina, location of Fort Bragg, one of the nation's largest military installations and home to the 82nd Airborne Division. Fayetteville and Bragg exist as more than simply a large case study in Lutz's examination of the military and American culture; their intertwined history serves as a cautionary tale about the harmful effects that military culture can infuse into the civilian world. This is not a book about the culture of the military, or its history. Instead, Dr. Lutz is writing about a facet of the military often neglected, the effects the military has had on the civilian culture which surrounds it. In war and peace, there are more than just soldiers-wives, businesses, politicians and civilian employees in towns like Fayetteville bear much of the cost of hot wars, cold wars and no wars. In her presentation of these people, Dr. Lutz presents an insightful, if limited, social history of civil-military interactions. Lutz is very critical of military culture, and she presents a large amount of data, from a dizzying array of sources-interviews, public records, primary sources-in support of her contention that America as a whole has been dependent on an oversized and insidiously influential military. Lutz does not restrict her examination or conclusions to Fayetteville, which is a plus, since saying that the military has a great deal of influence in Fayetteville is much like observing that the car industry is very influential in Detroit. Bragg dominates the town, as more than just its largest employer, and Lutz finds this relationship has been harmful to Fayetteville. By the end of Homefront we know that what has happened in Fayetteville is the most extreme example of what has happened all over the country. Since Pearl Harbor, America has looked to the military to do more than merely defend borders and ward off direct attack. The military has become an ideological tool, extending the role of the US abroad, and reshaping other nations in the process. The common view is that the military, and the men and women who serve in it, has been altered to fit this relatively new role. It's American society, however, that has undergone the larger change in order to accommodate a larger, more diverse, and far more politically significant military. Lutz finds that rather than imbuing the military with the basics of American Civil Society, the trend moves the other way as military doctrine and principles corrupt the nation which they serve. All of Lutz's observations are quite astute, and her passion for her subject comes through in many ways. Cold War America was one divided into two extremes, Us vs. Them, and this attitude has limited American culture's ability to think about the world as more than these two extremes. In a very stimulating passage, Dr. Lutz laments the loss of alternative modes of thought, a world of resources, a world of needs, or a world of freedom. Dr. Lutz's descriptions of Fayetteville are equally artistic, miles of strip malls and strip clubs dominate the landscape, once fertile farmland is ruined by military tests and trials. It is obvious that Dr. Lutz cares very deeply for what she feels has been lost to the military machine of Fort Bragg, and she can evoke these images with a style that makes it easy for a reader to share her vision. Unfortunately, Dr. Lutz's passion sometimes overcomes her objectivity in such a way as to reduce the value of this text for scholars of the military. Foremost among these very explicit assumptions is the belief that the military is corrupting influence on society. …

Canadian space psychology: The future may be almost here.

It has been just over 41 years since Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin of Soviet Air Force became first human to fly into space; 44 years since NASA established by an act of U.S. Congress; and 13 years since creation of Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Using Soviet/Russian and American space vehicles, more than 270 astronauts(1) from around world - including eight Canadians - have flown in space. final frontier has fascinated billions of people who only touched it through their reading or television watching. One of most frequently asked questions on websites of both NASA and CSA is, How do I become an astronaut?Aside from requirements of training, education, physical health and fitness, and a record of outstanding accomplishments in a variety of activities, one common answer to that question is: Pass psychological assessments. The Soviet space program pioneered these, as it pioneered human space flight itself. Gagarin, for example, was subjected to extremely rigorous training: physical, mental, and psychological. He underwent long periods in a sensory deprivation chamber, experiments with weightlessness, endurance in heat chambers and test flights under stress with every reaction monitored. One test to solve difficult mathematical equations while a loudspeaker blasted out answers (Russian Archives Online, 2002). Similar ordeals were faced by NASA's astronaut candidates (Santy, 1994). The process has also added a phrase to our everyday vocabulary, the right stuff, (Wolfe, 1978), which is that happy confluence of practical intelligence, emotional imperturbability, coolness under stress, physical toughness, rapid decision-making ability, courage, and indomitability that selectors were trying to find.The history of human beings in space is now in a gradual, but crucial, transition. It is evolving from Cold War competition to worldwide collaboration; from up-and-down missions, lasting a few hours or days, to weeks in Space Shuttle and months on a space station, and soon to years spent completing an expedition to Mars; from male astronauts with a background as military test and combat pilots to crews comprised of both sexes and a wide variety of occupations, nationalities, cultures, languages, and ages.The issues to be faced have shifted accordingly. With a few - although important - exceptions, we have answered most of questions about how to keep people alive and physically healthy in space, even for long periods. What we are less certain about is their psychological and social reactions to changed conditions of space flight, and relevant agencies are beginning to realize that this issue ranks with physical and medical dangers of space as a difficulty that must be overcome prior to extended human exploration of space. Changes in perceptual, motor, and cognitive functioning occur in microgravity; sleep is disrupted in almost all participants, leading to changes in mood and performance; prolonged, repetitive, and fatiguing physical exercise is needed to counteract muscle deconditioning and loss of bone density, but at same time exerts a price in mental and physical energy; and so on.There is considerable anecdotal evidence that problems have arisen as a result of prolonged confinement and other space capsule features involved in some missions and as a consequence of factors having to do with crew diversity. The former include lapses of attention, failures or refusals to carry out scheduled work, irritability toward crewmates and/or mission control staff, and a variety of individual mood and adjustment problems; latter have been manifested in derogatory comments and discriminatory behaviour on basis of other crewmates' sex, national origin, or professional specialty, and misunderstandings or negative feelings because of linguistic inadequacy or cultural differences. The interaction of two factors may exacerbate their joint impact. …

Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology: Northern Highlights

MALE SOLDIERS WERE TESTED with an indoor 6-station obstacle course (OC) and a repetitive boxlifting task (RBLT). Performance in the more-complex OC stabilized on the third dual-trial test session, whereas that in the more simple RBLT stabilized on the second single-trial test session. These can be reliable tests, but only after initial sessions have provided the participants with test familiarization. The same would apply to other occupational physical performance tasks or physical fitness tests in which performance depends considerably on skill. Pandorf, C.E., et al. Reliability assessment of two military relevant occupational physical performance tests. Can. J. Appl. Phys. 28(1):27–37. 2003.

The treatment: the story of those who died in the Cincinnati radiation tests

The Treatment is the story of one tragedy of medical research that stretched over eleven years and affected the lives of hundreds of people in an Ohio city. Thirty years ago the author, then an assistant professor of English, acquired a large set of little-known medical papers at her university. These documents told a grotesque story. Cancer patients coming to the public hospital on her campus were being swept into secret experiments for the U.S. military; they were being irradiated over their whole bodies as if they were soldiers in nuclear war. Of the ninety women and men exposed to this treatment, twenty-one died within a month of their radiations. Martha Stephens’s report on these deaths led to the halting of the tests, but local papers did not print her charges, and for many years people in Cincinnati had no way of knowing that lethal experiments had taken place there. In 1994 other military tests were brought to light, and a yellowed copy of Stephens’s original report was delivered to a television newsroom. In Ohio, major publicity ensued—at long last—and reached around the world. Stephens uncovered the names of the victims, and a legal action was filed against thirteen researchers and their institutions. A federal judge compared the deeds of the doctors to the medical crimes of the Nazis during World War II and refused to dismiss the researchers from the suit. After many bitter disputes in court, they agreed to settle the case with the families of those they had afflicted. In 1999 a memorial plaque was raised in a yard of the hospital. Who were these doctors and why had they done as they did? Who were the people whose lives they took? Who was the reporter who could not forget the story, the young attorney who first developed the case, the judge who issued the historic ruling against the doctors? This is Stephens’s moving account of all that transpired in these lives and her own during this epic battle between medicine and human rights.

NxTest augments legacy military ATE

Typical military automatic test equipment (ATE) usually consists of a number of single channel stimulus and measurement devices connected to the UUT with a switch matrix, providing; traditional serial, parametric test with its lengthy test times. Functional test methodology tests a unit by simulating its environment and verifying that the unit operates correctly in that environment. This requires simultaneous stimulus and measurement capability not usually found in traditional military ATE. Boeing Support Systems is currently in the process of augmenting an existing military test station to provide functional test capability through the use of NxTest technology. This paper will discuss our approach to adding functional test capability to an existing piece of equipment.

Assessment of Potential Environmental Health Risks of Residue of High‐Explosive Munitions on Military Test Ranges—Comparison in a Humid and Arid Climate

AbstractThe U.S. Army Developmental Test Command (DTC) manages active ranges in a wide variety of environmental settings where personnel fire munitions of all calibers. Over time, physical, chemical, and biological processes may distribute munition fragments and residue on the range. Estimating the human health and ecological risks of these residues is a challenge because little information exists for evaluating the health effects of military‐unique releases. A human health and ecological risk assessment at two DTC munition ranges (one in a humid, temperate climate (Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland), and one in a hot, arid climate (Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona) has been completed. The objective was to estimate health risks associated with exposure to munition residues. The scope included identifying the nature and extent of munition residue at firing points and in impact areas from firing munitions, analyzing exposure pathways, estimating the dose to living organisms and the response to the dose, and estimating risk from exposure. Where appropriate, water, soil, sediment, air, and biota samples were collected from the range area and reference areas. Samples were tested for explosives and metals. Risk to humans and ecosystem species was modeled. Results show that munition residue is not getting into the food chain or being transmitted by direct or indirect exposure in either climate despite low‐level detections in some media. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.*

Geomorphic Mapping Enhances Cultural Resource Management at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, USA

Provisions of the National Historical Preservation Act of 1966, particularly Section 106 of that Act, require the Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) to conduct archaeological surveys and assess cultural resources to evaluate potential effects of planned military testing activities on those cultural resources considered eligible or potentially eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Landscape reconstruction was performed using aerial photography and satellite image interpretations, ground verification including detailed soils geomorphology descriptions, and archaeological surveys. Geographic Information System overlay analyses were used to determine the preferential distribution of cultural resources in the study area. A vast majority of the 40 mapped cultural sites are located on Pleistocene age geomorphic surfaces. Few sites occurred on Holocene age surfaces. Spatial relationships between geomorphology and archaeology were supported by chi-square statistical tests, rejecting the hypothesis that culture is evenly distributed across the landscape as a function of the size of geomorphic surfaces comprising it. Ninety-two percent of cultural resources designated eligible for the National Register of Historic Places occur on Pleistocene age geomorphic surfaces. Results of this interdisciplinary study suggest that both differential preservation of geomorphic surfaces and human behavior act together to explain the spatial distribution of cultural resources at YPG.

Personality Type and Success among Female Naval Academy Midshipmen

There are relatively few studies regarding factors that predict success among female midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA). This study examined the personality characteristics of 1,568 women admitted to USNA between 1988 and 1996 to evaluate whether personality type was predictive of success vs. attrition. Participants completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as well as a demographic questionnaire upon admission. Indicators of performance were gathered at graduation. Results indicated that most women at USNA are extroverts. Extroverted-Sensing-Thinking-Judging types were more likely to graduate, whereas Feeling and Perceiving themes were associated with dropping out. Previous military service and higher Scholastic Aptitude Test Math scores were also predictive of success at USNA. In general, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was not a good predictor of academic or military success at USNA. Among women who graduate, Scholastic Aptitude Test (Verbal and Math) scores appear to be the best predictors of both academic and military ratings.

How to Succeed in Winning and Maintaining Public Support for Military Testing and Training in the United States

AbstractThe U.S. military cannot sustain its weapons testing and military training in places where the public is unified in its opposition to it. This article describes how the military can work with the public to maintain support for military testing and training by adopting a “sustainable test and training model.” This article describes the sustainable test and training model and what needs to be done to implement it. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Open systems architecture solutions for military avionics testing

Raytheon makes extensive use of open systems architecture methods in developing special test equipment (STE) for testing military avionics equipment. Such use has resulted in significant cost and schedule savings in the development of production test equipment for radar and infrared systems. With open systems architectures, a test system can be assembled using COTS products. This brings economies of scale to test equipment, which is normally built in very low quantities. Therefore, the potential cost savings due to COTS usage is proportionately greater in STE than in the higher volume avionics systems that are tested. A second major benefit of using COTS products is that test system development schedule cycle time is greatly reduced. This paper describes the application of Open Systems Architectures (OSA) to avionics testing. The following major architectures are surveyed: VME bus, VXI bus, IEEE GPIB, IEEE 1149.1 JTAG test bus, 1553 Military Bus, Fibre Channel, and COTS Test Applications Software. We describe how the benefits of OSA have been extended at Raytheon into achieving vertical test commonalities. The flexibility of OSA can be exploited to provide an overall optimum test solution, taking all levels of test into account. For example, test systems can be tailored with COTS products to provide integrated methods for avionics tests at the module, unit, and system levels. Test systems can be configured to maximize the reuse of COTS hardware over all test levels. Test software can also be programmed to optimize such reuse over levels of test. Additional test verticality synergies derived from such OSA usage are described, including: test false alarm avoidance; test cones of tolerance optimization; and efficient test of field returns.

An ecological analysis of leukemia incidence around the highest 137Cs concentration in Poland.

Cancer has long been known to be a hazard of exposure to ionizing radiation. However, the assessment of health effects from exposure to radiation is a matter of considerable controversy. This paper presents results of a retrospective study of leukemia incidence (203-207, ICD-9) around the highest 137Cs pollution in Poland (as an effect of the Czarnobyl disaster and/or military bomb tests). The data relating to all the registered leukemias in males and females originated from the Regional Cancer Registry in Opole. The information on 137Cs concentration rates in Opole province was derived from the state monitoring provided by the Polish Geological Institute in Warsaw. The spatial analysis--based on the random-effects Poisson regression model--was carried out via the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique (Gibbs sampling) using BUGS software. The model incorporated epidemiological data and an ecological covariate--isotope concentrations--and provided a framework for estimating the strength of a dose-response relationship. The differences in incidence levels were quantified by traditional standardized morbidity ratios (SMRs) and presented in thematic maps as well as in combined charts of distance-disease-dose relations. Additionally, to assess spatial disease clustering, a Tango test was adopted. The results of this ecological study suggest that the 137Cs concentrations did not have any negative influence on the exposed population.

How to Succeed in Winning and Maintaining Public Support for Military Testing and Training in the United States

How to Succeed in Winning and Maintaining Public Support for Military Testing and Training in the United States

ULM battery technology review and applications update

The Ultra Low Maintenance (ULM) battery technology and its historical performance validation programs are reviewed. Recent military flight test programs are discussed and the growing lists of both military and commercial aircraft flying ULM batteries are presented.

Predictors and outcomes of posttraumatic stress disorder in World War II veterans exposed to mustard gas.

Current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) associated with participation in secret military tests of mustard gas during World War II was assessed in 363 male military veterans who were randomly sampled from a registry developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Current prevalence was 32% for full PTSD and 10% for partial PTSD. Prevalence of PTSD varied as a function of risk and protective factors, including volunteering, physical symptoms during the tests, and prohibited disclosure. Prediction of partial PTSD was weaker than prediction of full PTSD. Veterans with full PTSD reported poorer physical health, a higher likelihood of several chronic illnesses and health-related disability, greater functional impairment, and higher likelihood of health care use than those with no PTSD. Veterans with partial PTSD also had poorer outcomes than did veterans with no PTSD in a subset of these domains. There is discussion of the traumatic elements of experimental mustard gas exposure, vulnerability to PTSD, and the relevance of these findings to understanding the broad range of outcomes associated with PTSD.