PASGT Helmet

Origins

American soldiers went through the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam in the steel M1 Helmet. By the 1960s the Army knew it could do better. Most battle wounds came from shell and grenade fragments rather than bullets, and new man-made fibers promised to stop fragments at less weight than steel. The most important was Kevlar, an aramid fiber developed by the DuPont company and put on the market in the early 1970s.

The Army's research laboratories at Natick, Massachusetts, began work on a new helmet and vest in the early 1970s. The program was called the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops, shortened to PASGT. The designers measured the heads of large numbers of soldiers and shaped the shell to cover more of the temples, ears and back of the neck than the M1 had. After trials in the later 1970s the helmet was approved, and troops began to receive it in the early 1980s. Its first use in action was in Grenada in October 1983. By the end of the decade it had replaced the M1 in the active forces.

Design & Construction

The shell is a single piece, molded under heat and pressure from many layers of Kevlar cloth bonded with resin. Unlike the M1, which had a steel shell over a separate liner, it cannot be taken apart, so it could not serve as a wash basin or cooking pot as the old helmet often had. Inside is a suspension of webbing straps and a leather-faced headband that holds the shell away from the skull, with a two-point chinstrap.

The helmet was made in several sizes and weighs roughly 1.4 to 1.9 kg depending on size, about the same as the M1 with its liner. It was painted olive drab and normally worn with a cloth cover in woodland or desert camouflage, held by an elastic band. The low sides and flared rim gave it a likeness to the German steel helmets of the world wars, and soldiers nicknamed it the "Fritz". The more common name was "K-pot", short for Kevlar pot.

The PASGT helmet was designed to stop fragments and did so better than steel. It could also stop many pistol bullets, but it was not proof against rifle fire at normal battle ranges. The matching PASGT vest replaced the nylon Flak Jacket of the Vietnam years.

Combat Use

After Grenada the helmet was worn in the invasion of Panama in 1989 and by nearly all American ground troops in the Gulf War of 1991, usually under a desert cover.

At the Battle of Mogadishu on 3 and 4 October 1993 the men of the US Army Rangers and the 10th Mountain Division wore PASGT helmets with desert covers. Many of the Delta operators fighting beside them wore light plastic sports-type helmets, chosen for comfort and for use with radio headsets, which protected against knocks but not against bullets or fragments. The experience of that battle was one of the reasons why special operations units later asked for a lighter helmet that still gave ballistic protection.

Soldiers had real complaints about the PASGT. It was heavy and hot. Its low back edge caught on the collar of body armor when a man lay prone to fire, tipping the brim over his eyes, and the sides interfered with hearing and with headsets. The webbing suspension did little to cushion blast and blunt impact.

American troops still wore it in large numbers in Afghanistan in 2001 and in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Legacy

The replacement came first from special operations. The Modular Integrated Communications Helmet, issued from about 2001, had a higher cut around the ears and a padded interior, and the Army adopted a version of it as the Advanced Combat Helmet in the following years. The Marine Corps chose the Lightweight Helmet, which kept the PASGT outline but used improved materials and, later, pads. By the late 2000s the PASGT had left front-line American service, though it lingered longer with some reserve units and aboard ships.

The design was sold or copied around the world, and helmets of PASGT shape remain in use with many armies and police forces. It established the aramid-fiber shell as the normal form of combat helmet, a change as large as the return of the steel helmet in 1915. It is the helmet worn by the Rangers in the film Black Hawk Down (2001). Other types are described under Helmets.