What Is Dragon Skin Body Armor?
Dragon Skin body armor is a type of ballistic, or bulletproof, vest. Ballistic vests are worn to protect the torso of the wearer from gun fire and fragments from explosive devices such as hand grenades. Various types of personal body armor have been developed over the last few decades, often utilizing the synthetic fiber known as Kevlar. The key concept behind Dragon Skin armor was the creation of a more flexible, lightweight ballistic vest.
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Concept
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Dragon Skin armor is made by Pinnacle Armor, a United States armor manufacturing company based in Fresno, California. The founder of the company, Murray Neal, is an inventor and author in the field of personal ballistic armor. It was Neal's goal to develop a flexible and lightweight type of body armor capable of withstanding rifle fire. Dragon Skin armor was the result of these specific aims.
Construction
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Standard modern bulletproof vests generally utilize large ceramic plates in order to protect the wearer from gun fire. Dragon Skin armor, however, uses smaller circular discs that overlap each other to form the characteristic scale armor design of the vest. The individual discs are made from ceramics similar to those used in other ballistic vests. However, these smaller discs provide greater flexibility and range of movement for the wearer; they also make for a lighter all-round unit.
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Testing
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Every type of body armor on the market needs to be tested in order to become certified by various bodies. Due to its innovative design, Dragon Skin armor was a high-profile addition to the range of available body armors. Various televised demonstrations were performed, including basic testing by the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and NBC News. All the results were positive. Tests by a Fresno police department also proved positive. Academic and scientific testing was also carried out in 2006. Dragon Skin body armor was found to stop all the hits that it was subjected to, with no cases of bullet penetration.
Usage
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The initially successful testing of Dragon Skin armor saw it being bought by both private and public agencies. Civilian contractors working in Iraq were quick to buy the lightweight armor, followed by a number of special operations units working in both Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Secret Service operatives and a number of U.S. Swat teams also bought the new Dragon Skin armor. Having subjected the armor to its own private testing, Dragon Skin was also purchased by the CIA.
Certification
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Controversy has surrounded the testing and certification of Dragon Skin armor. In 2006, Dragon Skin armor was officially approved by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). However, tests carried out by the U.S. Army found faults with the armor, claiming that multiple failures had been found. Pinnacle Armor, the makers of Dragon Skin, strongly defended its product, as did many neutral sources. In 2007, however, NIJ retracted its approval of Dragon Skin armor. After the 2007 controversy, test data still remained a matter of contention.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit modern soldier image by Dumitrescu Ciprian from Fotolia.com
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Comments
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sde56sb3e
Dec 09, 2010
Don't forget the fact that neal came to Allan D. Bain in 1997 an established body armor manufacturer and accepted neal's financial help, but had already discovered how to make scalar armor stop a rifle round. Mr. Neal was mistakenly allowed to be a co-inventor was most valuable in following Mr. Bain's lead and in 2000 bought Mr. Bain out, and apparently spent the first 5 years of operating Pinnacle trying to make everyone believe he was the brain child. Certainly he helped, but lets not go to far with the attachment of brain child and genious labels.
