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As the military prepares for conflicts in harsher climates and more advanced battlefields, the US Army's Natick Labs invests millions to improve what soldiers wear, eat, and carry. From Arctic conditions to drone-heavy warfare, these innovations are built for the next fight, not the last one. We went behind the scenes to see the wild experiments that Natick's researchers put the military's gear and soldiers through daily.
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00:01Before the Army rolls out a new combat uniform, it sets it on fire.
00:08Here at the Natick Soldiers System Center, the mission is two-fold.
00:13First, put military gear through hell.
00:16And I like to say, if they make it, I try to break it.
00:19Second, do the same to the soldiers who wear it.
00:23We call him Randy over there, weighs about 180 pounds, dragging him a couple meters.
00:27You know, it's tough on the quads.
00:28For over 60 years, Natick Labs has helped invent some of the Army's most important gear.
00:35Like maternity flight suits for Air Force pilots.
00:38So that female aviators could fly longer into their pregnancy.
00:42And meals ready to eat, also known as MREs.
00:46Some of my favorite developmental rations have been the MRE pizza.
00:50But battlefields are changing faster than ever.
00:53Tiny drones make it nearly impossible for soldiers to hide.
00:59Army gear also has to perform in the Arctic, where melting ice is making the terrain wetter and more unpredictable.
01:06We know for a fact that the Arctic is becoming more important.
01:11We are so far behind other nations who have saw that coming.
01:15We spent two days inside the Army's design lab to see how it's fixed problems like food rotting in the
01:22jungle and gear freezing solid in the Arctic.
01:25And how it's trying to keep soldiers safe in future conflicts.
01:36Back in World War II, U.S. military gear kept failing in harsh terrain.
01:41Part of the problem is that you go to war with the stuff that you had for the last war.
01:46That's Mary Roach, whose book, Grunt, gets into the science of how soldiers are fed and equipped.
01:53In a 1943 operation in Alaska, more soldiers were injured from trench foot than by enemy bullets.
02:01During World War II, the Army brought in George Dorio, a Harvard Business School professor, to reinvent how soldiers gear
02:09up for the world's harshest environments.
02:12The Matic Soldiers System Center opened in 1954 and became the Army's mad science lab for developing better equipment.
02:20It is just a surprise to find out all the different things that go into something as seemingly basic as
02:27a uniform.
02:30Today, textile experts test gear for worst-case scenarios, such as uniforms catching fire.
02:37The test is designed to allow someone to egress from either a vehicle or an aircraft if there was a
02:44flash fire.
02:45So that's where the four-second burn comes from.
02:48Each one has 124 sensors distributed across the mannequin body,
02:54and it will give us the overall percentage of first, second, and third-degree burns that the mannequin receives from
03:01that test.
03:02But uniforms also have to be comfortable.
03:05Basically, everything is a trade-off.
03:08Is your shirt gonna protect you in a fire? Great.
03:12But is it so uncomfortable and sweaty and hot that you don't want to wear it?
03:17Over in the helmet lab, engineers like Chuck Hewitt have been dealing with this challenge for decades.
03:23Since the 1970s, Matic has turned heavy steel helmets into today's lighter plastic ones.
03:30It's also testing custom liners that prevent helmets from wobbling.
03:34We scan their heads and potentially fit them with a custom-fit pad solution.
03:40That matters now because gear like night vision makes soldiers' helmets weigh more than six pounds.
03:47Bulk is one reason Natick abandoned a project to develop a super-soldier exoskeleton.
03:53If you fell over, it was impossible to get back up.
03:56I mean, ultimately, we would love to have a whole-suit exoskeleton, right?
04:00But, I mean, the technology's not there yet.
04:04Natick also has to make sure soldiers can perform at extreme altitudes.
04:08By around 8,000 feet, decision-making starts to decline.
04:13By 12,000 feet, memory and alertness breaks down, too.
04:19This room, with the oxygen sucked out of it, simulates what it's like to fight at 14,000 feet,
04:25the maximum altitude a soldier might have to perform at.
04:28Knowing how they're going to perform at altitude is critical information for leaders and decision-makers
04:35in terms of the planning for those operations to include the time needed to conduct the operation,
04:40sustainment in terms of food, water, other supplies that are needed,
04:44as well as any sort of evacuation or movement in or out of altitude.
04:51Soldiers wear masks that monitor their vital signs.
04:54The cardboard is over the treadmill because we don't want the participants to see how fast they're going.
04:59A lot of times we do time trials at altitude, and the treadmill speeds can influence their effort levels.
05:06Some studies keep soldiers here for 24 hours.
05:10Years ago, they did a stay, we called it the Everest study,
05:12where they stayed in for about 40 days for each exposure to mimic the ascent to the top of Everest.
05:19We don't do any studies that lengthy anymore.
05:22Soldiers are also deliberately sleep-deprived.
05:24Periods of four hours or less over multiple days, coupled with heavy physical activity.
05:30Staff Sergeant Joseph Weiss simulates a two-hour hike and is then tested on memory and decision-making.
05:37I've kind of gotten used to being tired, so it doesn't really make too much of a difference anymore.
05:45But some of the harshest conditions are created in this facility, called the Dorio Climatic Chambers.
05:50The extreme weathers that we can simulate are minus 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:56The wind fans can go up to 45 miles an hour. We can make up to 4 inches an hour
06:02of rain.
06:04It recreates conditions in the Arctic, which is becoming more important to the U.S. military.
06:10In 2025, the U.S. committed over $6 billion to build 11 new icebreakers to keep up with growing competition
06:18in the region.
06:20Journalist Kenneth Rosen, who spent years reporting on the Arctic, says the U.S. is playing catch-up.
06:26After the Cold War, our competency in the Arctic diminished. We had no reason to be up there.
06:31Russia and China have more icebreakers than the U.S. and are expanding shipping routes as Arctic ice melts at
06:39near-record levels.
06:41As Arctic conditions turn wetter and more unpredictable, Natick Labs is testing lighter uniforms that keep soldiers dry and improve
06:49mobility.
06:50We saw its current cold-weather suits put to the test at a training facility in Vermont, where soldiers spend
06:57two weeks preparing to become Army Mountaineers.
07:00They climb ice walls and trek mountains in frigid conditions.
07:07During training, these soldiers rely on another product developed at Natick, the MRE, or Meal Ready to Eat.
07:15They are the cornerstone ration used by all of the armed services.
07:20The MREs, you would have three per day. You would have one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for
07:25dinner.
07:26Military rations, especially in the United States military, have changed dramatically in the last 50 years.
07:33From World War II through the Vietnam War, soldiers carried heavy canned foods known as C-rations.
07:40Starting in the 1970s, Natick developed lighter weight packaging.
07:44This demonstration here shows the number of MREs that you would be required to bring with you on a seven
07:50-day mission.
07:51This is only MREs currently in this rucksack, not including ammo and all of the other things you need.
07:58It also developed meals in tube form for spy plane pilots.
08:03This one right here is a caffeinated chocolate pudding.
08:06We also have things like chicken tortilla soup.
08:09This would connect to the pilot's mask and allow them to consume the tube food without taking off their mask
08:17and without losing that oxygen high up in the atmosphere.
08:20This vacuum microwave dryer sucks moisture out of foods so they last longer and weigh less.
08:27So we're able to make items that might be refrigerated like a cheesecake actually shelf stable for a three-year
08:33shelf life.
08:33We retain a lot of the nutrients in the food.
08:36The food becomes lighter weight so it lowers the load on the soldier.
08:40And we can still deliver efficient nutrition.
08:43So this is what our final product will look like from our manufacturer.
08:51This is our dried lemon vanilla cheesecake.
08:55In the packaging testing lab, Wes Long's job is to ensure rations reach soldiers in one piece.
09:02And I like to say if they make it, I try to break it.
09:05A vibrating table tests how MREs hold up on trucks driving over rugged terrain.
09:10Food has to be in the pouch, the pouch has to be in the bag, and the bag has to
09:13be in the box.
09:14And collectively, all of that is protecting that for the warfighter.
09:19Wes also drops it for more than eight feet high.
09:22Three, two, one.
09:34But when Natick first rolled out MREs in the 80s, taste was the biggest challenge.
09:39MREs were jokingly known as meals refused by everyone.
09:43For quite some time.
09:45Originally, there were 12 menus.
09:47During Desert Storm, we discovered that a prolonged period of time, with just 12 different meals
09:54available, resulted in what we call menu fatigue.
09:59In the 90s, the Army adopted a new motto for its MREs.
10:03Warfighter tested, Warfighter recommended, and Warfighter approved.
10:06Its scrapped meals like ham and chicken loaf, and packages of beef frankfurters soldiers nicknamed
10:13the Four Fingers of Death.
10:16And to avoid menu fatigue, the military rotates the recipes annually based on soldier feedback
10:22and new studies.
10:25Natick spent two decades engineering a pizza MRE.
10:28To keep the crust crisp, and that the filling didn't make the crust soggy.
10:33A lot of work went into the military pizza.
10:36But not all troops rely on MREs.
10:39On ships and submarines, cooks prepare fresh meals for crew members.
10:44It's a 24 hour a day process, and then it's usually one cook, maybe two, in the galley
10:50at any given time.
10:51To save time, Natick is testing a fully automated bread maker, developed by a company in Washington,
10:57that can make 10 loaves an hour.
11:03This $50 million complex, about one and a half football fields in size, brings all soldier
11:10testing under one roof.
11:12In the combat maneuver lab, soldiers go through realistic conflict scenarios, while sensors and
11:19overhead cameras track their every move.
11:21This is an inflatable, modular shoot house.
11:24It allows us to actually configure this shoot house indoors and outdoors.
11:28What you see is a small team of soldiers performing a battle drill where they're going to enter and
11:36clear a room of friendly or not friendly targets.
11:39So we can actually use that to track their motion as they're moving through.
11:43In this exercise, soldiers like Leo Taylor use a weighted dummy to simulate a casualty drag
11:50when soldiers pull a wounded soldier to safety.
11:53We call him Randy over there, weighs about 180 pounds, dragging him a couple meters.
11:57You know, it's tough on the quads.
11:59Natick sends the data from these tests back to its labs to track how the gear impacts soldier performance.
12:05For an example, if we had a new rucksack and somebody was trying to climb over a wall,
12:11you could look at how different designs might allow them to climb over easier, faster.
12:16The complex also has a virtual reality simulator that tracks soldiers' decision-making across live-fire scenarios.
12:25The Army is rolling out more of this training nationwide, saying it's cheaper than using real ammunition,
12:31and lets soldiers train from pretty much anywhere.
12:34So we have a lot of scenarios, such as the one that's ongoing behind me,
12:38where, for example, you have potential threats moving towards you constantly.
12:42If they, for example, miss a target or they engage a non-target, they will receive a shock.
12:47When I felt the shock, it does really get into your body. You'll feel it.
12:51But advances in tech are creating new threats that Natick is still trying to solve,
12:57including how to design uniforms that hide soldiers from enemy drones.
13:01No one saw the proliferation of UAVs. I mean, these things are everywhere, right?
13:05And so who would have thought that? That that would have been a weapon with sensors on them
13:09that can see soldiers in different environments.
13:11And so we've got to be able to provide our soldiers with more capability than they have today in terms
13:15of how they hide.
13:18Demand for anti-drone gear continues to grow worldwide.
13:22In March 2026, the Marines requested more than 60,000 camouflage cloaks to mask body heat from infrared sensors.
13:32Ukraine has developed its own ponchos against Russian drones,
13:36but they work only when soldiers are stationary.
13:40Challenges like this highlight the balancing act at Natick,
13:43preparing for modern threats while anticipating what comes next.
13:48So thinking 5, 10, 20 years in the future.
13:52As the U.S. military prepares to fight in more extreme environments,
13:56like the Arctic, high-altitude mountains, and the jungles of the Asia-Pacific,
14:01the right gear and meals could mean the difference between life and death.
14:05We want to bring our soldiers home from any conflict safe.
14:08And we're the only centerless soldier in its name, so we inherently take that to heart.
14:13Third legislation.
14:14Third legislation.
14:18I'm either the transfer of bats at a 54,000 feet by the 69,000 feet by the 16,000
14:19feet by the 69,000 feet by the 76,000 feet,
14:19or the 16,000 feet.
14:19The Spoiler of S�ift Company.
14:29The capital laws affect my context.
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