The Body Armor Battle Continues
much ballyhooed dragon skin armor fails testing
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (29) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
One of the most persistent allegations in the Iraq war is that troops are either provided with insufficient body armor or the armor that is provided is substandard.
This sort of thing seems to be part and parcel of the American psyche. The dominant themes being 1) somewhere out there is a savant who has found THE answer to the problem, 2) the government is too dumb to recognize genius, and 3) BIG MONEY is conspiring to suppress the invention. When the claim is that there are cars capable of 100 miles per gallon being suppressed by the oil companies and auto manufacturers it is pretty harmless. When the claim is that American soldiers are being sent into battle in gear known to be inferior the effect is pernicious.
The controversy on this reached a crescendo this week with the Army publicly taking on Pinnacle Armor's claim that its Dragon Skin body armor is markedly superior to the Interceptor body armor issued to US troops.
Read on.
Before I go farther here I want to acknowledge my debt to "Slab" at Op-For.com for doing a lot of the leg work on this. I met Slab at the milbloggers conference, he's an impressive young Marine captain preparing for his second combat tour in Iraq. His stories are here and here
The issue concerning Dragon Skin had sort of died down last year when the Army laconically announced that it had failed testing and issued a memorandum forbidding the wear of body armor not issued by the Department of Defense.
On Monday, NBC's Dateline waded into the fray with a claim to have independently tested Dragon Skin and Interceptor and pronounced
In our limited testing at a renowned ballistics lab in Germany, Dragon Skin was able to defeat more bullets than the Army’s Interceptor and did so with significantly less body trauma.
This prompted the Army to release the full results of military testing. The results were devastating.
As exposure to temperatures of 120 degrees (think foot or vehicular patrol in Iraq) the ceramic discs which constitute ballistic protection separated from the laminate grid holding them in place resulting in no protection but a nice jingling sound. When tested against the 7.62mm x 63mm cartridge (known to most of us as the .30-06) it 13 of 48 rounds completely penetrated the armor. For the same area coverage Dragon Skin is as much as 70% heavier than Interceptor (47.5 lbs vs. 28 lbs). When saturated with diesel fuel, something very likely to happen in conjunction with an IED explosion, Dragon Skin failed to stop first round penetrations from most aspects. It also failed to stop rounds fired into it after it had been dropped.
A poster at Professional Soldiers using the name "The Reaper," vouched for by Slab as a experienced active duty Special Forces officer, raises some interesting questions about the NBC tests.
Was the “Interceptor” ESAPI armor NBC tested government issued or procured independently? The markings on the armor seen in the video are unfamiliar and they appear to be independently procured non-issue plates from non-standard or non-qualified vendors. Wouldn’t a fair test use the fresh issue ESAPI plates, like the Pinnacle armor provided? Are the alleged ESAPIs NBC tested fresh and certified current production? Did they come from Pinnacle or a surplus store dumpster? There are six qualified vendors that have passed ESAPI first article protocol. The vendors deny providing plates to NBC. And none of them are Canadian.
NBC has not yet mentioned what model Dragon Skin was shot. Apples have to be compared to apples. You can wear armor that will stop .50 BMG, but you will not be mobile in it. I can test a stock appearing Ford Mustang that has twice the rated horsepower too, but it doesn’t mean the one you buy will perform like it does.
What was their sample size? Did they shoot up 30 SOV 3000s or ESAPIs?
Where did they shoot it? From the video, it appears to be on a flat surface. Do you see a lot of soldiers shaped like doors? Is there a problem with testing it on a torso shaped platform, replicating the soldier that NBC is so concerned about? Did they test single and multiple round impacts on all four impact faces of the vests?
What weapon, projectile, and impact velocity did NBC use? There is only one Army performance standard for ESAPI body armor testing. Was it the prescribed threat level for testing that is required in the acquisition documents? Are we counting on the enemy firing only a single round at the Pinnacle SOV 3000 level IV Dragon Skin vest? What happens if he has plenty of ammo that day and shoots twice?
Ironic, really, that after Dateline's sordid history of rigging tests to make a point that their methodology didn't follow the same protocols at the military testing.
Anyway, never having found an ambulance they couldn't chase for political gain some of the usual suspects have already weighed in.
After seeing the latest television reports, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., sent a letter to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey asking for more information and saying he's concerned that the Army may not be providing better body armor to the soldiers as quickly as possible.
And Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office, a government watchdog agency, seeking an investigation to assess the body armor being used by the military.
This incident is just one of many in this war where various enthusiasts and shysters have traded upon the wishes of the American public to keep American soldiers safe to push an agenda or a product. Some are obviously well meaning like the guys who insist the M-113 APC is in the same league as the Stryker.
They are aided and abetted by a coterie of self-annointed "reformers" who see the various brouhahas as a vehicle for self aggrandizement. Hopefully Pinnacle Armor will take the results of this expensive and exhaustive test, go back to the drawing board, and develop a superior product. One suspects from the way that they have conducted themselves thus far that we will see the military forced to purchase Dragon Skin by the military appropriations process.
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The Body Armor Battle Continues 29 Comments (0 topical, 29 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
First off, the weight differential claimed is not accurate. The full-torso DS model is compared with front-back Interceptor plate. Different coverage.
Secondly, DoD testing shows full performance to 170-degrees F. "conditioning" with ambient as high as 120-degrees.
Dr. Gary Roberts, LTCDR, USNR, Stanford University Medical Center. ..Both types of armor were conditioned 170°F ... as such, the armor was secured to a life-size curvilinear torso replica (with testing)...successfully stopped by both armor systems... even after receiving multiple hits.
DS is preferred for IED environments and for sniper environments.
Dragonskin uses materials developed more than a decade later than Interceptor. That's progress. The NBS report includes work by the original developers of Interceptor.
BTW: the M113 is best compared with Humvee jeeps, not Stryker. Israel Defense Force (IDF) used M113 and armored cars exclusively for troop transport in Lebanon, leaving the Humvees back home.
Humvee is not a combat vehicle. Despite Rumsfeld and the "light and fast" True Believers.
No flat-bottom jeep is suitable for threat environments with significant numbers of mines. Humvee was involved with 70% of American casualties in 2006. The Iraqis, now, want no part of Humvee; they want jto copy Israel.
Today's IDF version of M113 has Raphael upgrades, including a blast wedge. It is still not a Buffalo or Cougar -- a true MRAP -- but it is vastly preferable to any jeep. the more your forces look like IDF, generally, the better.
Holistically, the article and related links show the Interceptor to be much better and preferred over DS. But you may have missed that in an attempt to selectively represent DS data. I am also not convinced since the active duty folks I know don't want DS based not only on weight, but the fact it is not proven to provide better protection under combat conditions.
BTW, preferred by whom?
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report
the report is definitive. To get the same coverage requires at least a 46% increase in weight.
The "doctor" you quote is a dentist.
Testing shows catastrophic failure at 120 degrees. Read the report.
DS is not preferred for any environment because it is not authorized for wear. But to the point, one does not choose one's body armor based on a preference for a certain threat.
Makes no difference if the materials were developed later. The product they are used in is inferior.
I don't compare the 113 with the Humvee. Again, read the story before commenting.
No one is talking about vehicles in this story beyond the example of a few guys with a pretty silly proposition pushing that proposition.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
One Quible:
"This incident is just one of many in this war where various enthusiasts and shysters have traded upon the wishes of the American public to keep American soldiers safe to push an agenda or a product."
With all respect, when the MSM does a story like this, it is not out of concern for soldier safety. They do it to poke a sharp stick in the eye of the DoD and the President. The meme is that President Bush and the DoD don't care if our troops get killed or maimed, so long as their friends get the contract for the defective armor.
Kudos to the DoD for releasing their (no doubt) more realistic study - fat chance that you'll see it in the MSM.
Oops, wrong message board . . .
Personally, if I don't find it by the castle, I'll blow a wish on getting my blessed +2 GDSM which I'll pump up to +4 via blessed scrolls of enchant armour.
(Wait, this isn't a nethack thread?)
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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
I prefer SDSM, but then again, I play wizards in general so I have my pick of sources of magic resistance.
Run like Reagan!
He could make Robes of the Archmagi out of dragon skin (I'd go with blue or red, myself), and overenchant it. MR, sub-zero AC, and a host of benefits not even getting into the skin's natural resistances to boot.
Obviously, I'm a huge transmuter fan.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
As ol' Fikraag always finished me off before I ever got anywhere close to Red Dragon Mail.
what language are you speaking?
I guess this proves I'm just an old fa*t!
This is the usual result of somebody with a product to sell and producers looking to assemble content as cheaply as possible.
You can see the same thing in any trade magazine. There will always be articles about products that are written by the manufacturer or at the behest of the manufacturer. No notification that the only reason the article is there is that a quarter page advert was bought.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
There goes NBC again, making up their own information and probobly for ratings again. First they blow up cars and pass it off as fact, now they test body armor their way and pass it off as fact. I think the FCC needs to go in and review the broadcasting license of NBC, someone should be fired or their license should be pulled! They are a dangerous group of people when it comes to public safety. And of course the dumbocrats will agree with NBC, NBC is just one big liberal outlet for them and will never say anything bad about liberals.
Run like Reagan!
Your hulk contains enough ambergris that, when harvested and sold, we in the RS community will never be bothered with advertisements again. Shucks, they'll probably start paying Moe just because they've got so much cash on hand.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
Is 001658 the number of times you have re-registered after being zapped?
requiring the registrant to match words with their correct meanings? Then we'd fail anyone who thinks the meaning of "loose" is the opposite of "win."
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
No, that is my covert name. I don't want NBC or the NYT to give up my name to the enemy.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
Sir Moe is sharpening the +4 Vorpal Bastich Sword.
END
Trust me on this. The fuzzy guy would make no such concession. If he actually did, I'd bite off some body parts he holds dear. (His opposable thumbs, stupid.)
Dogs do the tough work. Thinking. Loving. Protecting. Killing & eating. Cats do the stupid stuff. Playing. Shedding. Making that stupid whining mmmmeeeeeooooowwwwww sound. Dumb. Really dumb.
Woof.
where they went after greeeeeeeeedy businessmen selling substandard body armor for use in Iraq?
In general, you don't want to recycle your own network's fiction as 'news'.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
I saw the Future Weapons episode where they demo the dragonskin armor and it looked pretty impressive. Multiple hits from large caliber rounds and no damage. They even taped fragmentation gernades to the chest of the test dummy, placed the dummy face down on the dirt and it survived intact with no visible damage to the interior fabric of the armor.
When I saw the episode I figured it just wasn't ready for general deployment yet. Now I know better. And yes, in the demos the armor was in an upright position when being fired at, not in a prone position on the ground.
While it's easy to get drawn into the P***n contest between the any DoD procurement agency and a vendor, and it's sometimes interesting to see what the vendor has to say. It's also important to remember that the Army or any DoD procurement agency is not the most nimble, or apolitical organization. There's always some Col, or some General or some Congresscritter leaning on the T&E community to validate the procurement of whatever they for what ever reasons think is the right product to buy and nobody's else.
http://www.pinnaclearmor.com/20060630-pr.php
By the way, a FAT is a Factory Acceptance Test.
It's also easy to jump on the Media at all times, especially NBC, but read a bit more that Army CYA documents and or watch some NBC hit piece before making up your mind.
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Fred...Fred...Fred..!
Military testing and standards are some of the most stringent around, period, full stop. That NBC thought they could come close to duplicating such tests, formulated and developed from real experience (exempli gratia, diesel fuel), is insulting and degrading to the soldiers involved in all aspects of testing and approving this protection.
Their fallacious nonsense is not meant to protect anyone and is more a political appeal than anything else. Anyone involved in assisting this is a dupe and partisan, interested in nothing more than politics and self aggrandizement. That includes Clinton and the company making "Dragon" who insulting implied the military was selectively giving the public data.
BTW, I will be looking for your piece on the M4 v. HK issue. Would appreciate an expert view.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Contributor to The Minority Report