Unitech to design oxygen backpack

A Hayden company has won a federal contract to design a lighter, more effective oxygen tank-backpack used by military helicopter pilots and crews in survival conditions.

The Army will pay an undisclosed amount to Unitech Composites & Structures Inc. to develop about two dozen prototypes of the unit called an SEA – for Survival Egress Air system.

The company is developing the units after demonstrating it can reduce the weight of the current tank by 20 percent, said Al Haase, president of Unitech and AGC Composites Group, an Oklahoma parent company of the Hayden operation.

Once finished in a year, the prototypes will be tested by the Defense Department. The Army will then award a production contract for the tanks, said Haase.

The lighter units must also increase breathable air by about 50 percent. Their purpose is to help pilots and crews survive if a helicopter is forced down.

Haase did not disclose the amount the Army is paying. In late 2008 Idaho’s congressional delegation added a budget amendment for $2 million for a preliminary design of the new air tank. This new contract is for a later phase – a critical design review – of the same unit.

Unitech, which was acquired by Acorn Growth Companies in 2008, has earned numerous contracts involving designing and manufacturing carbon fiber and composite products.

Unitech will also compete to manufacture the SEA unit, Haase said. There are between 3,000 and 5,000 deployed today, he added. If successful, that will lead to hiring about half a dozen extra workers in Hayden, Haase said.

How fast the next generation of new SEA units will be needed is unclear. “The question will be, how fast will they want to make the transition to the newer unit,” he said.