Hearing protection is becoming a priority because soldier protection - everything from boots to helmets now has much greater visibility. The initiative to provide a Service wide solution, across the US Army is known as the Tactical Communication and Protective Systems (TCAPS). Now in the latter stages of finalisation within Program Executive Office Soldier, TCAPS will provide tactical communications headsets with integrated hearing protection and “talk through” functionality.
Captain Jack Moore, part of the PM Soldier Warrior team working on TCAPS, commented, “With TCAPS, we now have the solution and a competitive pricing solution to be successful in addressing the issue of soldier hearing protection.”
Begun in 2007, TCAPS was originally developed by Army’s Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, to address the problem of hearing damage by both actively reducing damaging battlefield noise and simultaneously enhancing hearing and communication to deliver tactical advantage. Capt. Moore said, “Over the years, we have seen a large amount of dollars being spent to benefit soldiers who had lost their hearing, either in training or combat. We are now trying to address that problem in such a way that we can not only get enhanced hearing protection, but we can also get an enhancement of communication capabilities incorporated as well.
