Portable Plasma? Enter Entegrion’s Resusix

On the front lines

Your friend is on the ground, bleeding out. If you can’t replace the lost circulation volume, he’ll die quickly from shock. If the replacement you use hinders clotting, his odds to make it through the Golden Hour aren’t good. The bad news? Because of your location, frozen blood plasma isn’t available.

Entegrion, Inc. in Durham, NC thinks they have an answer, and the US Army is funding it with up to $43.8 million, to advance Resusix through phase II and phase III trials. What is Resusix?

Out of Whole Cloth: Tarian Rocket Protection

Tarian close-up

Working with Britain’s Ministry of Defense, a transatlantic firm named AmSafe has come up with a novel solution to anti-tank rockets: fabric panels mounted on the sides of trucks and armored vehicles. Now, that concept has been extended to a “Quickshield” fabric net that serves as a quick, front-line patch for damaged cage armors.

To address the front-line threat posed by Rocket Propelled Grenades like the popular RPG-7, BAE’s LROD Cage Armorsteel “cage armors” have been used, as well as BAE’s much lighter aluminum solution. AmSafe’s broader Tarian (Welsh for “shield”) solution has been deployed by British forces, remains in development for new vehicle types, and offers several advantages over cage armor. Not least of which is a 50% weight savings over aluminum, and 85% savings over steel cage options.

Rapid Fire 2011-10-10: AgustaWestland | Service Slowdown

• Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland, following in BAE’s footsteps, will cut up to 375 jobs in the UK. The company’s plant in Yeovil manufactures AW159 Lynx Wildcats for the MoD. However, while AgustaWestland’s license to manufacture Chinooks as ICH-47Fs that led to sales in Italy also covers Britain, it lost to Boeing when the MoD decided to get more helicopters, so the job cuts were predictable. ADS, the UK’s aerospace & defense trade association, warns that there’s potential for significantly more cuts ahead.

• Closer, but no cigar. UAW workers rejected Oshkosh’s latest 5-year contract terms on Saturday. They don’t see eye to eye on temps.

• Stan Soloway, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, reviewed US federal spending on services during the first half of the previous fiscal year (i.e. Oct 2010 to March 2011) and notes that for the first time in a decade, orders for professional, administrative and management services have been decreasing. According to Soloway the US Army alone accounts for a 3rd of the federal total and saw a 15% decline, at least based on preliminary data.