PerspectiveDARPA Wants Smart Suits to Protect Against Biological Attacks

DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, wants to accelerate the development of innovative textiles and smart materials to better and more comfortably protect humans from chemical and biological threats.

Brandi Vincent writes in Nextgov that

According to a recently published broad agency announcement, DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office launched the Personalized Protective Biosystem, or PPB program to rapidly produce wearable technology that prevents threatening agents from entering the body and cutting-edge barriers that can neutralize damaging agents when they come into contact with people’s skin, eyes and airways. 

DARPA says:

The current [chemical and biological] threat environment consists of broadly acting, highly pathogenic, and sometimes immediately lethal threats that are capable of entering the body via multiple pathways, including skin, airway, ocular, and the gastrointestinal tract,” officials wrote in the announcement. “Despite substantial financial investments and advances in the CB Defense enterprise over many decades, current personal protective equipment solutions add logistical, mobility, and thermal challenges to the warfighter/stability operations care provider, which place their missions at risk.

Vincent adds:

The program ultimately aims to boost protection against toxic threats of the present and future, while simultaneously eliminating bulky, cumbersome protective equipment that can limit military personnel as they combat unpredictable dangers. While protective products are generally thick and not-so-adaptable, the PPB program aims to modernize textile protection by taking “cues from natural systems capable of protecting against a diverse array of threats.”