Protective walls in a box
Günter Endres
The impenetrable walls erected at the main IDEX exhibition site and the Naval Berthing exhibition at Mina Zayed Free Port may not be visually exciting architectural features, but they provide vital protection to military personnel everywhere. In many places and in featureless desert conditions in particular, fortified walls to surround a base camp are few and far between, a situation British company J & S Franklin (Stand 2210 and OD630) a first time IDEX exhibitor, is addressing with its DefenCell Military Force Protection systems.
The DefenCell system allows for the erection of secure walls up to 10m high, which are impenetrable to bullets, but can also be used to create road blocks and barriers up to any height, while a transverse method is used for building traditional embankments and fortifications. The cellular design is lightweight, compact and made from strong geotextiles, and is simply and rapidly deployed using almost any available fill materials, even wind-blown sand, to erect barriers that cannot be climbed by attackers. One standard shipping container holds enough material to build a wall 2m wide and 2m high.The eco-friendly DefenCell systems are currently used by the British Army in Afghanistan.
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