May 2004 IBEW Journal

The U.S. Armys idea for a new battlefield device that could help save lives in combat was as simple as it is revolutionary: build a quick-deploying, self-contained trauma center and operating room inside a standard shipping container. Make it easy to transport and transform into operation mode. A team at the National Nuclear Security Administrations Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has accomplished that mandate with the help of a half dozen IBEW Local 760 members.

Dubbed the Future Medical Shelter System (FMSS), the relatively light 15,000-pound container can be transported by truck, ship, cargo plane or helicopter. And it can be dropped, opened and ready to treat wounded soldiers within 30 minutes.

In April, following more than two years in development, a prototype of the FMSS was turned over to the U.S. Army for testing.

The nature of injury and death on the battlefield prompted the Army to seek an alternative to the medical delivery system in use today. Prior to Vietnam, a mobile hospital could be set up close to the front. But since then, the battlefield has become a much larger area. Soldiers can travel 15 or 20 miles in the span of four or five hours; no obvious place exists for a combat hospital. Most soldiers who die in combat die from blood loss within an hour of their injury, said Project Manager Duane Bias of BWXT Y-12.

"You have to get people help in the golden hour," Bias said. "Todays battlefield is very hit and move."

Today, medics treating wounded soldiers travel in a truck loaded with a tent, a couple of cots and 54 supply boxes, each labeled with a list of its contents. It takes three hours to set up. By contrast, it only takes the touch of a button to trigger the hydraulic mechanism that unfolds the FMSS. In a span of two minutes, automatic panels spring up to form the sidewalls and roof. When it is fully opened, the FMSS becomes a 20x20 foot surgical suite with room for a two-table operating room and support rooms complete with tables, lights and supplies in moveable cabinets that may be positioned as required. Moreover, its hearty construction of aluminum fortified with titanium and butyl rubber provides protection from nuclear, biological and chemical attack, as well as small arms fire.

"It was a challenge to me to be able to take something the engineers had drawn up and make it a reality," said journeyman wireman Roger Couch, an employee of BWXT Y-12. "I was working with extremely skilled craftsmen and we had to put all of our skills together."

With relatively few modifications, the system could be developed for other uses, such as a command and control center or a logistics or operation center, Bias said. "The potential use for homeland defense response activities is huge."

Local 760 members were instrumental in bringing the concept to reality by addressing design issues related to electronics and the heating and cooling system that creates the self-contained seal on the FMSS, Bias said. Couch said making the complex system work inside an extremely limited amount of space also presented a challenge.

If the Army decides to move forward with production of the FMSSand probably no sooner than 2006the Y-12 complexs manufacturing plant has the capability to produce it, said Garry Whitley, Local 760 shop steward.

"Its rewarding to me that weve done something that will maybe save peoples lives," Couch said. "I feel honored."

The $10 million project cost was developed for the U.S. Army Medical Research Materiel Command in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Y-12s portion of the project was approximately $7 million.