00:01Before the Army rolls out a new combat uniform, it sets it on fire.
00:08Here at the Natick Soldiers System Center, the mission is two-fold.
00:13First, put military gear through hell.
00:16And I like to say, if they make it, I try to break it.
00:19Second, do the same to the soldiers who wear it.
00:23We call him Randy over there, weighs about 180 pounds, dragging him a couple meters.
00:27You know, it's tough on the quads.
00:28For over 60 years, Natick Labs has helped invent some of the Army's most important gear.
00:35Like maternity flight suits for Air Force pilots.
00:38So that female aviators could fly longer into their pregnancy.
00:42And meals ready to eat, also known as MREs.
00:46Some of my favorite developmental rations have been the MRE pizza.
00:50But battlefields are changing faster than ever.
00:53Tiny drones make it nearly impossible for soldiers to hide.
00:59Army gear also has to perform in the Arctic, where melting ice is making the terrain wetter and more unpredictable.
01:06We know for a fact that the Arctic is becoming more important.
01:11We are so far behind other nations who have saw that coming.
01:15We spent two days inside the Army's design lab to see how it's fixed problems like food rotting in the
01:22jungle and gear freezing solid in the Arctic.
01:25And how it's trying to keep soldiers safe in future conflicts.
01:36Back in World War II, U.S. military gear kept failing in harsh terrain.
01:41Part of the problem is that you go to war with the stuff that you had for the last war.
01:46That's Mary Roach, whose book, Grunt, gets into the science of how soldiers are fed and equipped.
01:53In a 1943 operation in Alaska, more soldiers were injured from trench foot than by enemy bullets.
02:01During World War II, the Army brought in George Dorio, a Harvard Business School professor, to reinvent how soldiers gear
02:09up for the world's harshest environments.
02:12The Matic Soldiers System Center opened in 1954 and became the Army's mad science lab for developing better equipment.
02:20It is just a surprise to find out all the different things that go into something as seemingly basic as
02:27a uniform.
02:30Today, textile experts test gear for worst-case scenarios, such as uniforms catching fire.
02:37The test is designed to allow someone to egress from either a vehicle or an aircraft if there was a
02:44flash fire.
02:45So that's where the four-second burn comes from.
02:48Each one has 124 sensors distributed across the mannequin body,
02:54and it will give us the overall percentage of first, second, and third-degree burns that the mannequin receives from
03:01that test.
03:02But uniforms also have to be comfortable.
03:05Basically, everything is a trade-off.
03:08Is your shirt gonna protect you in a fire? Great.
03:12But is it so uncomfortable and sweaty and hot that you don't want to wear it?
03:17Over in the helmet lab, engineers like Chuck Hewitt have been dealing with this challenge for decades.
03:23Since the 1970s, Matic has turned heavy steel helmets into today's lighter plastic ones.
03:30It's also testing custom liners that prevent helmets from wobbling.
03:34We scan their heads and potentially fit them with a custom-fit pad solution.
03:40That matters now because gear like night vision makes soldiers' helmets weigh more than six pounds.
03:47Bulk is one reason Natick abandoned a project to develop a super-soldier exoskeleton.
03:53If you fell over, it was impossible to get back up.
03:56I mean, ultimately, we would love to have a whole-suit exoskeleton, right?
04:00But, I mean, the technology's not there yet.
04:04Natick also has to make sure soldiers can perform at extreme altitudes.
04:08By around 8,000 feet, decision-making starts to decline.
04:13By 12,000 feet, memory and alertness breaks down, too.
04:19This room, with the oxygen sucked out of it, simulates what it's like to fight at 14,000 feet,
04:25the maximum altitude a soldier might have to perform at.
04:28Knowing how they're going to perform at altitude is critical information for leaders and decision-makers
04:35in terms of the planning for those operations to include the time needed to conduct the operation,
04:40sustainment in terms of food, water, other supplies that are needed,
04:44as well as any sort of evacuation or movement in or out of altitude.
04:51Soldiers wear masks that monitor their vital signs.
04:54The cardboard is over the treadmill because we don't want the participants to see how fast they're going.
04:59A lot of times we do time trials at altitude, and the treadmill speeds can influence their effort levels.
05:06Some studies keep soldiers here for 24 hours.
05:10Years ago, they did a stay, we called it the Everest study,
05:12where they stayed in for about 40 days for each exposure to mimic the ascent to the top of Everest.
05:19We don't do any studies that lengthy anymore.
05:22Soldiers are also deliberately sleep-deprived.
05:24Periods of four hours or less over multiple days, coupled with heavy physical activity.
05:30Staff Sergeant Joseph Weiss simulates a two-hour hike and is then tested on memory and decision-making.
05:37I've kind of gotten used to being tired, so it doesn't really make too much of a difference anymore.
05:45But some of the harshest conditions are created in this facility, called the Dorio Climatic Chambers.
05:50The extreme weathers that we can simulate are minus 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:56The wind fans can go up to 45 miles an hour. We can make up to 4 inches an hour
06:02of rain.
06:04It recreates conditions in the Arctic, which is becoming more important to the U.S. military.
06:10In 2025, the U.S. committed over $6 billion to build 11 new icebreakers to keep up with growing competition
06:18in the region.
06:20Journalist Kenneth Rosen, who spent years reporting on the Arctic, says the U.S. is playing catch-up.
06:26After the Cold War, our competency in the Arctic diminished. We had no reason to be up there.
06:31Russia and China have more icebreakers than the U.S. and are expanding shipping routes as Arctic ice melts at
06:39near-record levels.
06:41As Arctic conditions turn wetter and more unpredictable, Natick Labs is testing lighter uniforms that keep soldiers dry and improve
06:49mobility.
06:50We saw its current cold-weather suits put to the test at a training facility in Vermont, where soldiers spend
06:57two weeks preparing to become Army Mountaineers.
07:00They climb ice walls and trek mountains in frigid conditions.
07:07During training, these soldiers rely on another product developed at Natick, the MRE, or Meal Ready to Eat.
07:15They are the cornerstone ration used by all of the armed services.
07:20The MREs, you would have three per day. You would have one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for
07:25dinner.
07:26Military rations, especially in the United States military, have changed dramatically in the last 50 years.
07:33From World War II through the Vietnam War, soldiers carried heavy canned foods known as C-rations.
07:40Starting in the 1970s, Natick developed lighter weight packaging.
07:44This demonstration here shows the number of MREs that you would be required to bring with you on a seven
07:50-day mission.
07:51This is only MREs currently in this rucksack, not including ammo and all of the other things you need.
07:58It also developed meals in tube form for spy plane pilots.
08:03This one right here is a caffeinated chocolate pudding.
08:06We also have things like chicken tortilla soup.
08:09This would connect to the pilot's mask and allow them to consume the tube food without taking off their mask
08:17and without losing that oxygen high up in the atmosphere.
08:20This vacuum microwave dryer sucks moisture out of foods so they last longer and weigh less.
08:27So we're able to make items that might be refrigerated like a cheesecake actually shelf stable for a three-year
08:33shelf life.
08:33We retain a lot of the nutrients in the food.
08:36The food becomes lighter weight so it lowers the load on the soldier.
08:40And we can still deliver efficient nutrition.
08:43So this is what our final product will look like from our manufacturer.
08:51This is our dried lemon vanilla cheesecake.
08:55In the packaging testing lab, Wes Long's job is to ensure rations reach soldiers in one piece.
09:02And I like to say if they make it, I try to break it.
09:05A vibrating table tests how MREs hold up on trucks driving over rugged terrain.
09:10Food has to be in the pouch, the pouch has to be in the bag, and the bag has to
09:13be in the box.
09:14And collectively, all of that is protecting that for the warfighter.
09:19Wes also drops it for more than eight feet high.
09:22Three, two, one.
09:34But when Natick first rolled out MREs in the 80s, taste was the biggest challenge.
09:39MREs were jokingly known as meals refused by everyone.
09:43For quite some time.
09:45Originally, there were 12 menus.
09:47During Desert Storm, we discovered that a prolonged period of time, with just 12 different meals
09:54available, resulted in what we call menu fatigue.
09:59In the 90s, the Army adopted a new motto for its MREs.
10:03Warfighter tested, Warfighter recommended, and Warfighter approved.
10:06Its scrapped meals like ham and chicken loaf, and packages of beef frankfurters soldiers nicknamed
10:13the Four Fingers of Death.
10:16And to avoid menu fatigue, the military rotates the recipes annually based on soldier feedback
10:22and new studies.
10:25Natick spent two decades engineering a pizza MRE.
10:28To keep the crust crisp, and that the filling didn't make the crust soggy.
10:33A lot of work went into the military pizza.
10:36But not all troops rely on MREs.
10:39On ships and submarines, cooks prepare fresh meals for crew members.
10:44It's a 24 hour a day process, and then it's usually one cook, maybe two, in the galley
10:50at any given time.
10:51To save time, Natick is testing a fully automated bread maker, developed by a company in Washington,
10:57that can make 10 loaves an hour.
11:03This $50 million complex, about one and a half football fields in size, brings all soldier
11:10testing under one roof.
11:12In the combat maneuver lab, soldiers go through realistic conflict scenarios, while sensors and
11:19overhead cameras track their every move.
11:21This is an inflatable, modular shoot house.
11:24It allows us to actually configure this shoot house indoors and outdoors.
11:28What you see is a small team of soldiers performing a battle drill where they're going to enter and
11:36clear a room of friendly or not friendly targets.
11:39So we can actually use that to track their motion as they're moving through.
11:43In this exercise, soldiers like Leo Taylor use a weighted dummy to simulate a casualty drag
11:50when soldiers pull a wounded soldier to safety.
11:53We call him Randy over there, weighs about 180 pounds, dragging him a couple meters.
11:57You know, it's tough on the quads.
11:59Natick sends the data from these tests back to its labs to track how the gear impacts soldier performance.
12:05For an example, if we had a new rucksack and somebody was trying to climb over a wall,
12:11you could look at how different designs might allow them to climb over easier, faster.
12:16The complex also has a virtual reality simulator that tracks soldiers' decision-making across live-fire scenarios.
12:25The Army is rolling out more of this training nationwide, saying it's cheaper than using real ammunition,
12:31and lets soldiers train from pretty much anywhere.
12:34So we have a lot of scenarios, such as the one that's ongoing behind me,
12:38where, for example, you have potential threats moving towards you constantly.
12:42If they, for example, miss a target or they engage a non-target, they will receive a shock.
12:47When I felt the shock, it does really get into your body. You'll feel it.
12:51But advances in tech are creating new threats that Natick is still trying to solve,
12:57including how to design uniforms that hide soldiers from enemy drones.
13:01No one saw the proliferation of UAVs. I mean, these things are everywhere, right?
13:05And so who would have thought that? That that would have been a weapon with sensors on them
13:09that can see soldiers in different environments.
13:11And so we've got to be able to provide our soldiers with more capability than they have today in terms
13:15of how they hide.
13:18Demand for anti-drone gear continues to grow worldwide.
13:22In March 2026, the Marines requested more than 60,000 camouflage cloaks to mask body heat from infrared sensors.
13:32Ukraine has developed its own ponchos against Russian drones,
13:36but they work only when soldiers are stationary.
13:40Challenges like this highlight the balancing act at Natick,
13:43preparing for modern threats while anticipating what comes next.
13:48So thinking 5, 10, 20 years in the future.
13:52As the U.S. military prepares to fight in more extreme environments,
13:56like the Arctic, high-altitude mountains, and the jungles of the Asia-Pacific,
14:01the right gear and meals could mean the difference between life and death.
14:05We want to bring our soldiers home from any conflict safe.
14:08And we're the only centerless soldier in its name, so we inherently take that to heart.
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