The National Defense Strategy - The Need For Hoist Stabilization Technology

Written by Lt. Col. Bryce Anderson (Ret.), Previous Program Director of US Army MEDEVAC

As the Army looks to the future one thing is clear.  A combined joint force operating across all domains is essential to our national security. “The future is designed around five core principles.  People, weapons systems, command and control and terrain”. (AFC 23SEP2020) Vita Inclinata provides a Load Stability System (LSS) that will get the right people to the wounded in any terrain, in any weather, and extract them quickly and safely with exact precision.  You can think of the LSS as part of a weapon system.  That weapon system being the vertical lift MEDEVAC aircraft.  The sensors at the point of injury will sense the need for emergency extraction, that request will automatically go through the Mission Command Node and routed to the appropriate decentralized killer / savior.  In this case the savior will instantaneously be tasked to the wounded in record time.  The Vita LSS will enable that savior to extract casualties using the full capacity of the MEDEVAC hoist because it will maintain perfect stability regardless of terrain or weather conditions.

This is a revolutionary leap in how the Army extracts casualties in difficult terrain and extreme weather conditions.  Today our MEDEVAC is dispatched through an archaic chain of radio calls to finally get to the MEDEVAC crew.  The crew flies to their casualty and typically makes the call “ok, this will require a hoist”.  The crew moves into position and begins the hoist.  Though the hoist is capable of lifting loads at 256 feet per min it can only do that for about 5 seconds at which point the load starts swinging and or spinning requiring the hoist operator to stop, apply pressure / counter pressure with his hands and feet all of which takes time.  The 75-year-old technology of a nylon rope tagline attached to a shoestring that will break with 100lbs of pressure will keep the load steady, but that tagline operator must be put in place which takes time. Time that the fading life of a casualty cannot afford.  Not to mention the exposure to enemy fire. 

When I was a MEDEVAC Commander at 10th Combat Aviation Brigade my sister MEDEVAC company was in Afghanistan and was called to rescue a double amputee and the platoon was still under fire.  The crew arrived in record time and inserted the medic.  The medic rapidly moved to the patient that was several meters up slope.  A good, intended infantry soldier grabbed the Jungle Penetrator (The hook end of the cable) and followed the medic up the slope.  The medic assessed the patient and the conditions so critical that the course of action would be to put this guy on his lap and get him out.  At night, in the fog of war and under tremendous pressure he did not notice he was roughly 30degrees off center from the aircraft.  He hooked himself and his wounded brother onto the cable and the hoist operator initiated the extraction.  When the medic and his patient left the ground, they entered an out-of-control swing.  As the operator raised them it only got worse.  The cable hit the aircraft twice cutting the sheet metal of the aircraft and on the third contact the cable was cut by the jagged edge created by the violent cable contact.  The medic and his patient died on impact.  

Vita’s Load System is a lightweight versatile system that would have prevented this tragedy by arresting the swing before it ever started.  

Vita brings an affordable solution to a real Army problem.  This is the right system to appropriately enable the MEDEVAC crew to insert and extract in any terrain to support the Joint fight.   

Please consider making LSS standard equipment on all current and future MEDEVAC aircraft.   

Authored by Lt. Col. Bryce Anderson (Ret.)