The Army has postponed its attempt to find a flexible body armor system similar to Dragon Skin after determining that the technology hasn’t matured enough to be fielded to troops.
While working on a story that will be the lead headline on tomorrow morning’s Military.com homepage, I queried PEO Soldier about the progress of ballistic tests on X-SAPI and F-SAPI armor submitted by manufacturers after the June 2007 solicitation asking for new armor concepts. As you all might remember, the Army postponed tests after I spoke with BGN Brown because manufacturers were short on materials (probably Dyneema/Spectra and B4C) and needed to do more testing of their own.
I then spoke with Murray Neal at an industry event several months later and he wondered where the testing stood as well, saying he’d submitted samples but heard nothing in reply. Brown had told me tests were supposed to start in March 2008.
Remember, the Army solicitation (which has been removed from their server but was described in a June 2007 posting) called for X-SAPI to defeat “future” AP threats — namely the M993 — and also asked for submission of “flexible” systems to be designated “F-SAPI?” This, in part, answered the mail after hearings in the House regarding the Dragon Skin tests by Army officials and the NBC program that broke it all wide open. These were supposed to be the “head-to-head” tests — or something loosely approximating that — Neal was asking for and lawmakers acquiesced to.
Well, the Army has deemed the technology too immature, telling me only E-SAPI and X-SAPI vendors qualified, including Ceradyne, BAE, Protective Group and Armacel, for the tests.
“An F-SAPI capability has not reached the level [of] technical maturity to protect Soldiers in combat,” PEO Soldier said.
Ooooh, really!? Wonder if Mr. Neal has anything to say about that? (And we’ll show you someone else who’d like to debate that point in our story tomorrow AM)…
– Christian
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Sigh. Sorry, I just can’t get worked up over this any more. I want to make sure I have everything straight.
1) Murray Neal trumpets that his revolutionary armor is better than anything else available. He supplies his own data to prove it.
2) The Army does its own testing, and says that Neal’s armor is substandard, weighs too much, and does not offer improved protection.
3) There is a long drawn out fight in the media and before Congress, eventually resulting in a new round of tests that no one could agree upon.
4) The Army asks for new suits of armor and we start again at #1.
Did I miss anything?
I can’t remember the guy’s name, but the advisor to Neal who helped administer the tests shown on Dateline also went before Congress and told them Dragonskin “wasn’t ready for prime time.” Speaking as someone who might fight in this tech someday, I don’t care if I can run through nonstop machinegun fire and not get hurt. If it weighs too much to effectively fight, then its too heavy. Period. I’ve tried on the current Dragonskin, and it weighs as much as my Interceptor, ammo, and water combined.
TB,
The guy you’re talking about isn’t an advisor to Neal, he’s the former director of DoD Operational Test and Evaluation office Phil Coyle. He was speaking for himself in both the NBC show and hearing. He works for the Center for Defense Information these days I think…
Brian:
Pretty much, yep…
I mean, I’d love for us to have a next generation body armor that offers significant improvements over the Interceptor, but this seems reminiscent of the endless debates over new rifles, and 5.56 vs 6.8 or 7.62 rounds. Lots of people arguing with little in the way of objective numbers to back them up.
Yea, it weighs more because it gives so much more coverage. That’s not making it into the arguments, I see. Just for driving around in circles until something goes boom or somebody shoots at you, I’d rather have the better protection. Replacing a couple discs instead of the entire plate is also a plus, certainly it keeps your costs down. As far as failures go, the whole plate will fail after so many hits, and pending the dispersion of the hits can fail locally much sooner. Discs do not allow total failure on quite so large a scale.
noseeum, if I spent all my time sitting in a vehicle and never had to move, sure I wouldn’t mind it so much. But when I’m on a foot patrol 20 extra pounds is 20 extra pounds, regardless of where it comes from.
As far as replacing the discs, the way they are setup now the discs are glued together underneath several layers of packaging and other materials. If my SAPI plate is damaged, I can pull it out of the pouch and replace it. Unless there’s a redesign, you have to do surgery to replace a dragonskin disc.
http://www.ccm.udel.edu/STF/index.html
I believe they’re looking into Shear Thickening Fluid (STF). Dragon Skin is awesome, but it’s heavy and that makes it “old hat.” Of course, STF is probably “old hat” compared to what the boyz in the back room have already cooked up. Who knows?
I think the idea is great but me being a dismounted 11B who is going to be walking everywhere I go an extra 20 pounds beside my saw and all the useless BS I have will be quite a bit I think the main thing they should be trying to do is slimming the wieght down, we dont have too much of a problem of our vests now not working but they are already too heavy allot of people dont even use all of there plates because they are so heavy now
As a Marine 0311 I will probably end up carrying this new body armor in a combat enviroment, and I can tell you that walking around with an extra twenty pounds is pretty much out of the question. Most of the people that I serve with do not carry all of the plates they have now because they make them so much slower. I have not worn this armor but even if it does offer more mobility I cant see wearing it if it adds an extra twenty pounds over the current vest with all the SAPIs and that includes front, back, and side. And if you are wearing all of those I don’t think that the new vest will offer that much more protection. Personally if you consider all of the weight in a vest containing all the plates, and the extra weight is only 5-10 pounds I would perfer it but an extra 20 would not be worth the added mobility. But then again what do I know I’m just a lowly E-3 and it’s the Generals who get to make those decisions.
I don’t know how we ever fought before we had all the body armor….oh, yeah, we got shot at and shot back. Now you practically have to get a field grade approval to return fire…..or risk a Congresscritter charging you with murder.
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