Our soldiers today are a little bit safer, thanks to a protection system installed on the Army's Humvee vehicles. Previously, these vehicles were susceptible to a tactic that involved insurgents stringing steel wire or cable between buildings or trees where Humvees would run into it, damaging the vehicle and causing serious or fatal injuries to the occupants. This tactic was often used at night when the steel wire or cable was harder to see.

To deal with this threat, the Army Research & Development Command at Watervliet Arsenal in New York improved on a concept that protected Humvees in Haiti during the 90s, and tested it using a 3,000 lb LCB400 rod-end tension load cell designed by Futek. The cable cutter consists of a long piece of channel iron with a sharp blade at the top. The cutter is mounted on the front of the Humvee to catch any wire in its path. The wire rides up the channel iron and is cut by the blade. Of course, not every Humvee needs the cable cutter since only the lead vehicle in a convoy is at risk; therefore, the cutter was designed to be easily installed or removed, as needed.

The devices were produced by the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM), tested at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, and then deployed to units in Iraq that face this kind of threat. The Army reports that no units equipped with the new cable cutter have sustained damage from this type of insurgent attack.

Futek supported this test and evaluation program by providing the load cell that was installed inline with the cable to measure the cutting force on the cable. Initial tests were conducted in the drop-test facility at the Army's Research & Development Command at Watervliet Arsenal. A large weighted mass with the cable-cutting device attached was dropped across the stretched cable to simulate the Humvee running into the cable. The wide dynamic range of Futek's rod-end load cell (LCB400) enabled the lab to test various impact velocities and cable diameters.