The Non-Maneuverable Canopy (T-11) Personnel Parachute System is the newest personnel parachute system to be adopted by the United States armed forces. The T-11 replaces the T-10, introduced in 1955. The T-11 includes a completely redesigned main and reserve parachute and an integrated harness assembly that is suitable for a wider range of soldier weights than the previous system.

The main canopy is a modified version of a cross/cruciform platform. The canopy has an increased inflated diameter of 14 percent and a 28 percent increase in surface area, when compared with the T-10D assembly. The T-11 main canopy utilizes a unique deployment sequence to reduce the opening shock and canopy oscillation. The T-11 is designed to have an average rate of descent of 19 feet per second (5.8 m/s) for the 95th percentile service member, compared with 24 feet per second (7.3 m/s) with the T-10C. This reduction is intended to result in significantly lower landing injury rates for jumpers.

The reserve canopy is a derivative of the British Low Level Parachute (LLP) aero-conical design that includes apex scoop pockets at the top of the reserve canopy and skirt assist lines at the system’s hem to promote fast opening of the reserve system during low-speed malfunctions. Unlike the current reserve parachute system, the T-11R reserve uses an omni-directional, center-pull deployment system. The T-11 harness is designed to displace opening shock forces of the reserve parachute equally along the long axis of the jumper’s body.

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory".

Shannon is famous for having founded information theory with one landmark paper published in 1948. But he is also credited with founding both digital computer and digital circuit design theory in 1937, when, as a 21-year-old master's student at MIT, he wrote a thesis demonstrating that electrical application of Boolean algebra could construct and resolve any logical, numerical relationship. It has been claimed that this was the most important master's thesis of all time. Shannon contributed to the field of cryptanalysis during World War II and afterwards, including basic work on code breaking.

Shannon was born in Petoskey, Michigan. His father, Claude Sr (1862–1934), a descendant of early New Jersey settlers, was a self-made businessman and for a while, Judge of Probate. His mother, Mabel Wolf Shannon (1890–1945), daughter of German immigrants, was a language teacher and for a number of years principal of Gaylord High School, Michigan. The first 16 years of Shannon's life were spent in Gaylord, Michigan, where he attended public school, graduating from Gaylord High School in 1932. Shannon showed an inclination towards mechanical things. His best subjects were science and mathematics, and at home he constructed such devices as models of planes, a radio-controlled model boat and a wireless telegraph system to a friend's house half a mile away. While growing up, he worked as a messenger for Western Union. His childhood hero was Thomas Edison, who he later learned was a distant cousin. Both were descendants of John Ogden, a colonial leader and an ancestor of many distinguished people.