The U.S. military has a problem—an ever-more-diverse group of adversaries and threats, creating an urgent need to speed development of tactics and responses to deal with those threats.
On Friday, General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) opened an $11-million facility in Sterling Heights that aims to address this problem. It’s called the Maneuver Collaboration Center, or MC2.
There’s an array of eye-popping virtual reality, robotic and other technologies at work in the MC2. But the thrust of this initiative is more simply seen in the collaboration between auto racing experts and a military contractor.
“We needed to improve driver safety,” said Sonya Sepahban, senior vice president, engineering design and development, for GDLS.
When the company recently began casting a wider net for ideas and suppliers, it was approached by Jack Roush’s auto racing team. The legendary Roush has an engineering firm, Roush Industries, in Livonia, and the Roush Fenway NASCAR racing team, based in North Carolina.
Roush’s people put GDLS in touch with Trevor Ashline, inventor of the Hutchens Device, a head-and-neck restraint that has helped many race car drivers walk away from horrific crashes, and led to the formation in 2001 of Safety Solutions, a Mooresville, N.C., firm headed by Ashline.
| 
|