Dragon Skin is a type of ballistic vest first-produced by the now-defunct company Pinnacle Armor, and was subsequently manufactured by North American Development Group LLC.

[1] The vest manufacturer claimed that it could absorb a high number of bullets because of its unique design involving circular discs that overlapped, similar to scale armor.

Pinnacle began producing Dragon Skin in the 2000s[9] and the armor was available to military members, law enforcement, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), U.S. Secret Service personnel, and civilian contractors.

On Test Lab, also on the History Channel, the vest withstood 120 rounds fired from a Type 56 (7.62×39mm) rifle and Heckler & Koch MP5 (9×19mm).

[citation needed] In 2007, NBC News had independent ballistics testing conducted comparing Dragon Skin against Interceptor body armor.

[citation needed] NBC also interviewed retired USMC Colonel James Magee, who was a developer of the Army's then-current Interceptor body armor, stated "Dragon Skin is the best out there, hands down.

"[14] The Defense Review website also published a positive article, noting that in their test and review of the Dragon Skin armor, they had found that it was "significantly superior in every combat-relevant way to U.S. Army PEO Soldier's and U.S. Army Natick Soldier Center (NSC)/Soldier Systems Center's Interceptor Body Armor".

This coupled with poor quality control (over 200 of the 380 vests delivered to USAF OSI were recalled due to improperly manufactured armor disks) and accusations of fraudulent claims of official NIJ rating (Pinnacle had not actually obtained the rating at the time of purchase) led to the termination of the USAF contract.

This exposed significant portions of the armor, resulting in Dragon Skin vests suffering 13 first or second shot complete penetrations.

[21] On April 26, 2006 Pinnacle Armor issued a press release to address these claims and a product recall instigated by the United States Navy.

[22] The company stated that although vests were returned due to a manufacturing issue, a test on the Dragon Skin Level III armor was conducted by the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Aberdeen Proving Ground in February 2006, which concluded that it "did not fail any written contract specifications" set forth by the Air Force,[22] which was further said by Pinnacle to require high ballistic performance due to the hostile environments in which AFOSI operates.

On June 6, 2006, Karl Masters, director of engineering for Program Manager - Soldier Equipment, said he recently supervised the retest and commented on it.

Army officials said the ban order was prompted by concerns that soldiers or their families were buying inadequate or untested commercial armor from private companies.

NBC News learned that well after the Army ban, select elite forces assigned to protect generals and VIPs in Iraq and Afghanistan wore Dragon Skin.

[36][37][38] The Air Force, which ordered the Dragon Skin vests partially based on claims they were NIJ certified at a time when they were not, has opened a criminal investigation into the firm Pinnacle Armor over allegations that it had fraudulently placed a label on their Dragon Skin armor improperly stating that it had been certified to a ballistic level.

[3] Pinnacle CEO Murray Neal responded that this move was unprecedented, political, and not about the quality of the vests, because the NIJ were not claiming failure of any ballistics tests.