Effects of Physical Impairment on Grenade Throwing and Weapon Loading Tasks

Physical impairment of a Soldier during a mission will inevitably change the Soldier's ability to perform various mission-essential tasks. This study examined the effects of an artificially impaired hand and arm on grenade throwing and weapon loading performance. The grenade task examined dista...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Swoboda, Jennifer C, Harper, William, Morelli, Frank, Wiley, Patrick
Other Authors: ARMY RESEARCH LAB ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND MD HUMAN RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING DIRECTORATE
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
Ammunition and Explosives
Human Factors Engineering & Man Machine System
*LOADING(ORDNANCE PROJECTORS)
*MILITARY PERSONNEL
*PHYSICAL DISABILITIES
ACCURACY
GRENADES
MAGAZINES(ORDNANCE)
MILITARY TRAINING
MODELS
PERFORMANCE(HUMAN)
REQUIREMENTS
UNLOADING
WEAPONS
WOUNDS AND INJURIES
PHYSICAL IMPAIRMENT
SHOOTING PERFORMANCE
GRENADE THROW
CAPABILITY DEGRADATION
ORCA(OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENT-BASED CASUALTY ASSESSMENT)
Orca
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA614895
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA614895
Description
Summary:Physical impairment of a Soldier during a mission will inevitably change the Soldier's ability to perform various mission-essential tasks. This study examined the effects of an artificially impaired hand and arm on grenade throwing and weapon loading performance. The grenade task examined distance and accuracy while throwing a grenade from the kneeling, standing, and supine positions, with and without physical impairment. The weapon loading task examined time to change a magazine on an already loaded weapon as well as loading an unloaded weapon under conditions with and without physical impairment. The grenade throwing distance data revealed (for each of the throwing postures) a significant main effect for the physical impairment condition (p less than 0.01, differences of up to 46 inches). There were no significant effects or interactions of the physical impairment condition relative to mean accuracy in any of the throwing conditions. Also, main effects for physical impairment were found for mean times to complete individual subtasks in throwing the grenade (i.e., pull grenade from pouch, pull pin, and throw grenade). In both weapon loading tasks, a main effect of physical impairment was revealed (p less than 0.01). The results of this study will be used to verify and validate capability requirements used in human performance modeling for grenade throws and weapon loading under conditions of physical impairment. The original document contains color images.

Similar Items