The Pentagon has launched a new study to figure out how much soldiers and Marines should carry, and the tradeoff between the gear they carry versus speed and mobility.

Officials awarded a grant through the Navy Health Research Center to a Massachusetts research professor to determine the consequences of load and armor on a combat soldier’s ability to perceive and respond to threats.

Although a soldier’s weight carrying capacity has been studied before, Richard E.A. van Emmerik, with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said he hopes to break new ground.

Instead of studying the impact of load on a soldier’s gait and lower body, “we will for the first time look at how the upper body, trunk and head coordinate in a soldier who is burdened by a heavy load, which is a fundamentally different and a more complex situation,” van Emmerik said in a statement.

Photo by DEFENSE TECH/ military.com