Rapunzel
Abstract
Urban combat demands that riflemen also serve as combat engineers manipulating their local environment to gain tactical advantage. The urban environment creates unique challenges in providing solutions for mobility, counter-mobility, survivability, and concealment. Every pound that a warfighter wears or carries reduces their mobility and mission effectiveness, and, particularly in urban combat, reduced mobility paradoxically reduces their survivability. The Rapunzel program sought to enable warfighters to manipulate the urban environment through the application of novel materials research. Rapunzel envisioned soldier-borne or vehicle-borne utility-belt style packaged containers, reels, and spools of material that can perform urban engineering tasks such as create bridges between building rooftops, pull down enemy barriers, or provide false targets and concealment. The program identified those mass-manufactured materials, such as extremely high-tensile strength monofilament that can both provide novel mobility between buildings but also provide novel counter-mobility to enemy vehicles due to their electrical conductance properties. The Rapunzel program leveraged extensive existing research into early developmental materials and invest in the task-based development and packing to provide these materials at appropriate length and size scales for immediate tactical use.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2022
- Source ID
- f53ed0db688cf5743925c9cbb93bca51
Related Documents
- Root: TACTICAL TECHNOLOGY