About man forgot
Man and combat vehicle. At different stages of the development of civilization, science in its own way interprets this combination, which forms a single anthropotechnical system. The catastrophes of the second half of the 20th century made us think about the interaction of people and the machines they created. It turned out that often in the design of the machine itself there is a need to adapt to its functions in spite of the physical and psychological capabilities of a person. This contradiction was especially clearly manifested in military technology.
Indeed, only the firepower, security and mobility of military equipment (military equipment) objects are still being evaluated. Some experts suggest adding a reliability factor. It is not difficult to notice that the person from this list “fell out”, turned out, as the saying goes, in the role of the fifth wheel in the cart.
It would seem that the general line of improving OBT confirms what has been said: electronic devices already perform many functions of a human operator, combat vehicles are being developed -Robots. However, the practice of daily activities of the troops and especially combat experience testify to the opposite. In modern warfare, the role of man is increasing, and ignoring this leads to disasters in peacetime and heavy losses in wartime.
It is no coincidence that when developing new weapons abroad, the most serious attention is paid to improving the habitability of the OVT and the protection of the crew. For example, in tanks third generation (M1 "Abrams", "Leopard-2", "Merkava"), these indicators are improved in comparison with the previous models several times.
In the Soviet Army, the “human factor” in words was always assigned a decisive role in the armed struggle. Dozens of scientific papers have been written on this topic. However, as often happens here, in practice, the interests of the people in creating military equipment were ignored. In particular, the requirements for habitability of COT were developed and adopted only in the 1980-s. They are set out in twelve medical and technical requirements of the Ministry of Defense (MP MO), 28 regulatory and technical documents, and 48 State Standards.As you can see, there are enough papers. However, in the samples of combat vehicles in service with the Ground Forces, their requirements are by no means fully met. As a result, a lot of occupational diseases of military personnel were obtained as a result of the use of dangerous equipment to health.
According to one of the documents, “the habitability of military equipment is the living conditions, combat activities and life of the personnel, created during the development (modernization) and production of the facility, ensuring the preservation of health and human health in order to effectively operate the combat weapons and technical equipment of military weapons in specified conditions and climatic conditions. zones (areas). " The above definition gives a general biological (more precisely, medical) presentation. The military-technical aspect of the problem associated with the implementation of medical requirements for the means of ensuring habitability (TSA) and life support (LSS), remained outside the framework of quotations, and the document as a whole. At the same time, it is precisely it that can be considered predominant. Let us try to analyze the main reasons that adversely affect the conditions of the activities of people in military equipment.
First and main can be called appearance weapons mass destruction. Today, despite a number of political statements, the idea of the possibility of using nuclear and chemical weapons is still vivid. This is reflected in the equipment, both here and abroad, of ground forces vehicles using anti-nuclear and chemical protection systems (ESD, PCP). They provide sealing machines, include filtering installations, display devices and automatic control.
In complete isolation from the external environment, the crew and the internal equipment are placed in a limited volume. Equipment whose elements are sources of intense emission of thermal, electromagnetic (including microwave), light and other types of radiation, as well as air pollution (powder, waste, battery gases). The impact on the body of noise, shaking, vibration, harmful impurities in the air, according to numerous studies, adversely affect the combat effectiveness of the weapons complex as a whole.
Tests have shown that with an unsatisfactory microclimate of habitable space, the driving speed decreases by 19 percent, the execution time of the firing mission increases by 35, and the number of misses - by 40 percent. Work in a sealed enclosure, devoid of access to natural light and having a high reflectance of sound, causes mental fatigue in people, which has further negative consequences of a different nature. According to the data obtained at the exercises, due to the deterioration of the condition of people operating in sealed objects, every day an offensive operation leads to a decrease in the combat capability of troops by 7-10 percent.
The second reason. Designers are constantly striving to reduce the vulnerability of military weapons on the battlefield by reducing the size and increasing the thickness of the armor. In particular, the Soviet tank builders brought these parameters to the limit beyond which a person is simply not able to be in a tank.
As the German magazine Soldat und Technik magazine, which analyzed the layout of the T-64 and T-72 tanks in one of its articles, “Russians will be forced to grow a special breed of stunted and strong people for their crews”. In fact, in the seventies, growth restrictions were imposed on the replenishment of tank forces.
There is an increase in the intensity of OBE with various instruments, which leads to a sharp decrease in the free space in the combat vehicle. According to S. Bogdanov, in a modern tank there are about the same number of controls and information display devices as on a spacecraft — more than 200. Only devices aiming and observation - dozens of items. Not easier and driver-mechanics. For example, 13 devices record only the current parameters of the power plant.
Small volumes of workplaces (see table below), prolonged forced stay in cramped conditions in a static posture lead to overstrain of certain muscle groups and nerve cells that innervate them - therefore, fatigue is rapidly progressing. For example, the limitation of mobility for three days leads to a decrease in the performance of the crew by 30 percent. After long marches, most drivers complain of general fatigue and severe pain in the calf muscles.
Third reason due to the growth of firepower (caliber and rate of fire) weapons. Gunpowder changed, and the concentration of highly toxic components in the composition of the powder gases increased. As a result, the crew was simply in an intolerable environment. Shooting from all types of weapons of infantry fighting vehicles in sealing conditions after a minute can cause poisoning of half of the personnel. Experience in hostilities in Afghanistan showed that after 10-15 152-mm self-propelled howitzer shots, some calculations were difficult to shoot because of the high concentration of toxic substances. According to our data, for the period from 1982 to 1984, the year in the Armed Forces there were 1225 only officially registered cases of poisoning with powder gases.
From the editors. There are even isolated cases of poisoning by the powder gases of the crews of the T-64 tanks when firing from a loose barrel.
Next reason associated with the creation of powerful engines and the further growth of the mobility of OBE. Technically advanced machines have the potential to march 1500 kilometers or more. However, the greater the pace of the march and its duration, the more intense the noise and shaking effect on the crew. The level of stable acoustic noise in armored vehicles exceeds the standards for 10-35, and in the cabs of engineering vehicles - at 20 decibels. Speech intelligibility in a tank intercom is reduced by 5-25 percent.
Quite unusual effect on the central nervous system is the fact of the movement of AHT in space. Under the action of inertial forces, alternating accelerations, vibrations, shocks, the organs and tissues of a person are subjected to displacements and shocks. Increases the load on the vascular system. Sometimes it causes changes in the regional circulation.
Workplace vibration may be close to one of the vibrational frequencies of our internal organs. 11 range ... 35 hertz (especially 16 hertz) people endure with difficulty. They have involuntary urination, pain in the internal organs, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, they lose consciousness, the rhythm is disturbed, or even the heartbeat stops. Here are the usual effects of low-frequency vibrations characteristic of tracked vehicles. With the systematic effects of vibration, individual soldiers form sand and stones in the kidneys and bladder.
Finally, the last of the reasons under consideration associated with the multifunctionality of OVT, the need to solve a large number of tasks in a short time. The development of built-in automated control systems has led to the complication of algorithms and the growth in the volume of functions performed by crews. There are information overload. The complexity of information models and the number of display facilities with which they are implemented are not always adequate to the capabilities of a person.
When there is an excess of information, emotional tension is exacerbated due to the need to quickly perceive it, recode it and implement response actions. As a result, attention is dulled, the functional mobility of nervous processes decreases, the effect on hormonal mechanisms and vegetative reactions increases.
Mental labor, which is today the main one for the overwhelming majority of military specialists, is characterized by hypokinesia, physical inactivity and nervous tension. This leads to functional disorders of the cardiovascular and central nervous systems, contributes to the development of coronary heart disease.
Of course, the above-discussed causes and factors of the negative impact of existing OBE samples on a person do not determine the whole list of issues to be studied on the problem of habitability. New harmful factors of military labor (radiation, non-ionizing radiation, fuel components, infrasound, seismic waves, laser radiation, etc. .), previously known are becoming increasingly harmful.
Unfortunately, these trends were not opposed to a targeted program to improve the habitability of military equipment. Designers seem to have forgotten that when creating specific samples, it is necessary to take into account the capabilities and needs of the human body.
Until now, in the sealed objects there are no elementary devices for heating food, boiling water, and sending natural necessities. It is not possible to rest lying down, there are no jobs in the reclining position. It should be emphasized that this is where many causes of occupational diseases of military personnel lie.
According to the medical service of the USSR Armed Forces, in the Soviet Army 1975 cases of occupational diseases were registered in 254, 1976 in 292, 1977 in 315, and 1978 in 340. During the period from 1975 to 1978, the number of retired people due to occupational diseases increased fivefold. Until now, a fatal outcome occurs in acute radiation injuries, accidents of military facilities, poisoning by technical fluids.
Obviously, the safety of military labor should become the dominant criterion in the development of habitable objects. It is for this indicator that domestic military equipment (especially ground equipment) is inferior to foreign models. So, although during two years of active military service tankers are only 12-15 percent of working time (and only 3-5 percent of the time is directly in the tank), the effect of negative environmental factors on the body often leads to such diseases as nephritis and cystitis, sciatica and myositis, diseases of the upper respiratory tract and the cardiovascular system.
In addition, the large potential capabilities of technology, achieved at the cost of enormous material costs, are not fully realized by personnel, and not by their fault. In particular (according to B. Borisov, I. Kudrin, M. Tikhonov), the effectiveness of using artillery guns is reduced by 40 percent, some types of anti-aircraft missile systems on 20-30, and tanks - on 30-35 percent. On average, the real rate of return of samples of AAT is precisely because of. the fact that human capabilities are not taken into account is 20-30 percent lower than the potential.
Scientific and technical progress in military affairs is only a material prerequisite for the improvement of military equipment. Its effectiveness is not limited only to the advanced level of installed weapons, control bodies, power plant, etc. The main thing is the person, his physical and mental health. Existing TSOO armored vehicles do not fully meet this requirement. The production of their promising samples does not go beyond the scope of individual experiments.
The implementation of medical-technical requirements for habitability of OVT is a complex problem that requires joint active actions of interested organizations. Practically, it can be solved only with the simultaneous elaboration of the whole set of questions of design, production, operation and repair. We consider it necessary to supplement the standard definition of habitability with the concept of normative habitability, i.e., the environment of AHT artificially created and maintained by special measures, means and systems. In a broad sense, it is a system of scientifically based norms, requirements and rules, unified methods and programs for the assessment, control, development, production, operation and medical-technical examination of SAT.
In our opinion, in order to ensure a unified approach to normative habitability, it would be worthwhile to develop a Regulation on medical and technical support of the life cycle of OVT that lists organizational, technical and sanitary requirements for all participants in the development, production and operation of military equipment. Regulatory habitability should be the same subject of attention of developers and customers, as well as fire power, security, mobility.
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