How to mitigate the IED threat: Part 2

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Defence IQ was recently given a tour of Imperial College London’s IED blast research lab, known as the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies. In the final part of our interview with Professor Anthony Bull, the Centre’s Director, we learn what makes it the leading research hub of its kind in the world, how the research will evolve over time to develop commercial technology, as well the future plans for the £8 million funding.

“This Centre has been spawned out of a research group called Imperial Blast that’s been funded by lot’s of different people like veteran’s charities, DSTL, and government funded agencies,” said Bull, explaining where the Centre’s research may go from here. “That’s allowed us to get to this stage where we’re able to look at the vehicle deformation and the effect it has on the body. But the Centre has been funded to extend that reach, so it’s not just looking at musculoskeletal injuries for example, but to look at other injuries as well. So for example, the brain, nerves, urogenital system, lungs – these are all injuries that happen in blast and which we’re now able to start looking at as well because of the funding.”

Perhaps the most significant research offshoot is the work the team is about to commence on brain functionality. We were shown a new piece of equipment being engineered at the lab which is capable of creating large shockwaves similar to those seen with IEDs. There is a school of thought that low frequency blast waves can have an adverse effect on brain function, which is something Bull intends to investigate at the lab in South Kensington.

“There’s some experimental capacity we need to develop and some of that is to do with simulating not just the closed – or solid – blast environment, which ANUBIS simulates, but to also look at the free-field blast, which is the effect of a shockwave on the human body and the biological and physical response it induces. So we’re developing equipment to do that.” It’s the biologicial effects as much as the physical that is the focus of Bull’s work.

“There are some very significantly different scientific and technical questions associated with these injuries, but they’re all due to the same insult; a bomb, an IED, a mine.”

I was interested in what the centre’s findings could mean for the future development of counter-IED technology and whether the RBL lab itself may develop and commercialise the equipment.

“If you understand the effect of a severe physical insult on the human body – the physical but also the biological effect – then you can start looking at how changing that insult will change the effect. I think the first thing that will come out of this type of research, and that are already coming out in fact, are recommendations and engineering design specifications as to the maximum type of insult that a human body could receive and then survive, or that the biological result will be reduced. So although we’re not currently looking at designing the armour ourselves, what we’re actually doing is assisting in the future design by saying ‘these are the parameters you need to work within’ for example.”

“The funding model for the Centre is seed funding from the Royal British Legion but we do expect to be doing far more research than that £5 million, plus the Imperial contribution of £3 million, will buy us,” said Bull when I asked him to expand on the future direction of the Centre.

“Now, where we go from here on is very interesting. There probably are commercial applications for some of our ideas and some of our technology and so we’re obviously developing a strategy to look at how we interact with industry – vehicle and boot manufacturers for example. It’s very public that we’re doing quite a bit of work on the boots to deflect blast. But there are others things that we can do, for example the therapeutic interventions might suggest that we can look at pharmacology and pharmaceutical companies. We’re very keen to develop those but we’re also seriously investigating the science and technology now so that we have something to offer as well.”

“Something that somebody might ask is: ‘How unique is this, how different are we, what can we do that no one else can do?’ It’s very easy to answer that: No one can currently do the kind of experiments that we’re able to do. For example ANUBIS is able to stimulate this physical insult in a way that nobody is able to do.”

Why is this important?

“Well the first thing is that we are able to replicate the injuries that are seen on the battlefield. Other work that is going on using human specimens or surrogates, have not yet shown the types of injuries that we have been seeing through the clinical involvement of military personnel in the Centre, so I think that’s a key selling point and a unique aspect to the research.

“Another unique aspect is that military personnel are embedded here. We are involved in the analysis, the understanding of clinical data and what happens after a period of time with these types of injuries. Again, this is data that no one seems able to access, to be able to work with or use. It’s very important to us that the military strongly support us, and they do.

“The Surgeon General has for the past few years supported this group by embedding military personnel with us and that is continuing. We currently have four orthopaedic surgeons who are from the military, from the armed forces in general in fact, and who are doing their higher degrees in research here as well as contributing to the wider research activity.”

In case you missed it, part 1 of the interview with Prof. Bull is here.

Contributor:   Andrew Elwell

Andrew graduated from The University of Nottingham with an MA in History in 2003. After graduating Andrew started his career with a niche armour systems manufacturer, which provided ballisitic and blast armour products for the international defence market. His first major undertaking was to project manage a UOR up-armour programme for an in-theatre MoD vehicle. After completion of the contract, Andrew headed up the research and development department at the company. This involved designing, developing, testing and presenting new armour solutions to defeat customer specific threats to all major European and International ballistic and blast standards.

Following this Andrew moved behind the desk and became Senior Editor at a news and data provider, offering proprietary analysis, intelligence, market research and data on the global security and defence industry. The role offered the chance to write widely on the industry, exploring new technologies and getting to grips with corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and debt and equity fundraisings.

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