Posted on 05/18/2007 2:50:24 PM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
The war between Pinnacle Armor and the Army went nuclear this week as NBC News claimed that Pinnacle's innovative "Dragon Skin" armor is far superior to the vest the Army currently issues to Soldiers.
The report shows test conducted by NBC that seem to prove the vest - as its proponents have claimed over the last several years - can take many more rifle shots than the Army's Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts.
But Army officials disclosed to Military.com that in a series of tests conducted by the service in May of last year, the Dragon Skin vest failed to stop bullets as well as the current Army armor. In fact, test results showed that bullets slipped through the vest as early as the second shot.
"The bottom line is that Dragon Skin by Pinnacle catastrophically failed to meet the requirement," said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, the head of the Fort Belvoir, Va.-based Program Executive Office Soldier, in a May 17 interview.
Pinnacle's president Murray Neal told Military.com the tests were flawed and that Army testers were unsure how to adequately evaluate his technology - which uses a series of small ceramic disk "scales" to cover the entire torso.
He called Army claims that his vests failed "a bold-faced lie" and said the service is embarrassed to admit its current armor isn't the best out there.
The Army's ESAPI is a rigid ceramic plate about 12-inches high and six inches wide. Soldiers wear front and back plates and two smaller side plates, all of which are designed to stop armor piercing AK-47 rounds found in the war zone.
The controversy went public last March when the Army issued a so-called "Safety of Use Message" that banned all store-bought armor, and specifically stated that Dragon Skin did not meet the service's requirement for ballistic protection.
At the urging of Capitol Hill, the Army bought 30 Dragon Skin vests in May of 2006 and put them through a standard "first article" test to see if the armor could hold up to the same ballistic conditions its current-issued ESAPIs must endure during certification.
According to Karl Masters, one of the Army's top ballistics experts, the Dragon Skin failed to stop a 7.62 x 63mm APM2 round on the second shot of the test.
"We ran this vest through the exact same test protocol that every ESAPI supplier goes through," Masters said. "Can you meet the ESAPI requirement or not? That's the question."
Neal argued in a release after last year's tests that Masters and another Army ballistics expert were dumbfounded by the "flexible armor system" and weren't sure where to place the shots for the test.
"Deviation from the ESAPI test protocols and procedures tool place by the selection of shot placements of APM2 rounds around the ceramics in non-rifle defeating areas," Neal said in a written statement.
But Army officials said the shots were aimed at the same areas for ESPI testing and that the first penetration would typically have been the end of the "sudden death" test.
Engineers agreed to continue with the evaluation, however, subjecting separate Dragon Skin vests to submersion in oil, salt water, extreme cold and extreme heat.
Army data shows 13 complete penetrations or unacceptable back-face deformations - where the bullet doesn't go all the way through but causes enough of a dent that it would result in serious trauma - on four failed vests.
The tests were held in mid-May at H.P. White labs, a respected ballistics testing facility in Street, Md. H.P. White is the same test lab where the Army evaluates all its armor components, preferring not to use the Army-run Aberdeen Proving Ground ranges to fend off accusations of bias.
More troubling to Army testers was the near complete delamination of the disks from the Kevlar backing within the Dragon Skin on several of the environmental tests.
After being subjected to 160-degree heat for six hours, the Dragon Skin vest failed on the first shot. X-ray photos of the vest show the disks slipped off their backing, exposing portions of the chest area without any ceramic protection.
"Certain areas of the adhesive hardened and become brittle and when that happened, they all dropped down," Brown said.
Further tests in minus-60-degree cold, immersion in oil and diesel fuel showed similar delaminations and shot failures.
Neal said the Army manipulated the x-ray photos, but admitted one vest had an adhesive "anomaly."
Perhaps the biggest Army concern is Dragon Skin's weight. An extra large vest is nearly 20 pounds heavier than the Army's current armor, though Masters admitted it did have more rifle protective coverage than issued vests.
"The Army continues to look at these types of armor," Masters admitted. "If we can ever eliminate this weight penalty, we may have an opportunity to go to gapless coverage."
The Army declined to provide details of the test failures when the controversy erupted last year, claiming operational security concerns.
But the NBC News investigation prompted officials to rethink their strategy in an effort to keep Army families from purchasing Dragon Skin vests for their loved ones in the combat zone.
"Soldiers must have confidence in their equipment when they go down range," Brown said. "They've got to know that they're wearing the best and their families have got to know that they're wearing the best."
I am suspicious of tests conducted by NBC (or any of the TV networks). Back in the 1990s, NBC's Dateline conducted tests that seemed to prove that GM pickup trucks were prone to fires in side-on collisions. Only later was it discovered that NBC had rigged the tests, using incendiary devices to set off the fires.
Before that, CBS's 60 Minutes had aired video purporting to show that Audis were prone to sudden acceleration. Later, it was discovered that the network's "safety expert" had altered the transmission to cause the sudden acceleration to occur.
Walter Olson wrote about these smears in an article published by the Washington Post: Exposing the "Experts" Behind the Sexy Exposés: How Networks Get Duped by Dubious Advocates.
You are correct. I think this company invested a lot of money and now they are pissed and trying to make the Army look bad in a tantrum.
Pinnacle must have a lot of Dem investors, or they would not even care. Follow the money, folks!
Who represents the district that contains Fresno California??
I remember an ancient quote that went something like:
There’s the right way and the Army way.
The Army will do it the Army way!
Isn’t this the same NBC of Nightline fame? After Ford’s saddle tanks and Food Lion’s unsanitary workplace fiascos I’d like to hear from a third source before coming to any conclusions.
Yea but to be fair it’s not that type of show.
I think the Army would be better off working getting a larger caliber infantry rifle than worrying about improved body armor. Varmint rounds were meant for dispatching prairie dogs, not insane Jihadis.
Strange.
Like 'proving' that you can't sink in quicksand by testing it in a container that gave it no room to expand..
A complete suit of Dragon Skin armor, at more than $5,000 per copy, currently costs about five times as much as Interceptor OTV body armor being issued to the troops. Inceptor armor is primarily produced by two giant companies, Armor Holdings Corporation, the current darling of the Defense Department that has more government contracts than a junk yard dog has fleas, and Point Blank Body Armor, the flagship company of DHB Industries that is currently in the dog house. They can both afford to make it cheap.
This sort of thing has become typical of small suppliers whose materiel is rejected by one of the armed services. They wage a small scale war in the media and then in Congress to try to force the military to take substandard crap.
I have a great idea. The Army takes twelve of its best snipers an places them overlooking a field. We want to use the best snipers because we want hits on the body armor not hits elsewhere. We place Neal in his Dragon Armor and have him run across the field.
My prediction is that Mrs. Neal (assuming there is a Mrs. Neal) will take out a lot of short term life insurance on her soon to be deceased husband.
20 lbs MORE is totally unacceptable.
Uh, yeah. Everything is about hurting the GOP. Just turn on the TV. It's insane.
Also, shouldnt equipment be fully vetted before it ever hits the battlefield? Kind of like computer chips on the space shuttle are never “state of the art”.
Abolutely.
After I posted this, I discovered there are lots of pro-military websites devoted to the Dragon Skin issue.
A good question might be, do these two politicians have a financial stake in this company?
Standard Army Interceptor Body Armor
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