User:The Founders Intent/Sandbox Survivability

Talk:Military_helicopters#AH-64_Apache

SURVIVABILITY ENGINEERING

Survivability Engineering is an engineering discipline that applies scientific knowledge to incorporate survivability into the designs of infrastructure, information technology and military systems. The concept of protecting people and materiel is at the heart of the discipline.

History

Survivability engineering can loosely trace its origins back to ancient times when men developed shields and personal armour for themselves and their horses. Castles were built as fortifications with thick walls and featured guard towers allow standing patrols to detect arrival of enemy forces. Modern survivability engineering is still primarily a military realm, however new areas of concern in the private sector have spawned concerns that are business related and related to property damage.

Military

The following summarizes the objective of survivability engineering:

The objective is to design the system to minimize losses when it operates in a manmade hostile environment. Designing to meet survivability requirements means considering an optimum mix of susceptibility and vulnerability designs for low susceptibility and low vulnerability. The goal is to develop and demonstrate protection technologies required to ensure survivable operation of warfighting assets in both the natural space environment and the hostile warfighting environment.

Notes

The Vietnam war was the first war in which the US Army utilized helicopters on a large scale as a mobile platform for inserting combat troops into hot zones. Consequently the ability of these aviation assets to withstand the combat environment was test as never before. Helicopter could easily be heard, shot down and aircrew deaths from crash landings and post-crash fires were climbing.

The Army put into action a bold initiative to reduce these losses by engineering improved survivability into its aviation fleet.

References

Improve Helicopter Survivability Against Small Arms Fire, http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/airforce/Improve_Helicopter_Survivability_Against_Small_Arm_712610007126.php
USMC Light/Attack Helicopter Program, http://pma276public.navair.navy.mil/pma276public/history.asp
How the Black Hawk Works, http://science.howstuffworks.com/black-hawk7.htm
Are Helicopters Vulnerable?, http://www.ausairpower.net/TE-Helo-Mar-05-P.pdf
SURVIAC, http://www.bahdayton.com/surviac/