Bulletproof vest
The vest can be either soft—as worn by police officers, security personnel, prison guards, and occasionally private citizens to protect against stabbing attacks or light projectiles—or hard, incorporating metallic or para-aramid components.
[2] During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Ironside cavalry were equipped with lobster-tailed pot helmet and musket-proof cuirasses which consisted of two layers of armour plating.
[11] Kazimierz Żegleń used Goodfellow's findings to develop a silk bulletproof vest at the end of the 19th century, which could stop the relatively slow rounds from black powder handguns.
The first official attempts at commissioning body armor were made in 1915 by the British Army Design Committee, Trench Warfare Section in particular a 'Bomber's Shield';[14] "bomber" being the term for those who threw grenades rather than grenadier.
A 'necklet' was successfully issued on a small scale (due to cost considerations), which protected the neck and shoulders from bullets traveling at 600 ft/s (180 m/s) with interwoven layers of silk and cotton stiffened with resin.
[17] During the late 1920s through the early 1930s, gunmen from criminal gangs in the United States began wearing less-expensive vests made from thick layers of cotton padding and cloth.
Five thousand sets were made and evaluated to almost unanimous approval – as well as providing adequate protection, the armour didn't severely impede the mobility of the soldier and were reasonably comfortable to wear.
The Surgeon General of the United States Air Force, Colonel M. C. Grow, who was stationed in Britain, thought that many wounds he was treating could have been prevented by some kind of light armor.
In the early stages of World War II, the United States also designed body armor for infantrymen, but most models were too heavy and mobility-restricting to be useful in the field and incompatible with existing required equipment.
[20] The Soviet Armed Forces used several types of body armour, including the SN-42 (from Stalnoi Nagrudnik, Russian for "steel breastplate" and the number denotes the design year).
Between 1957 and 1958, anywhere between 1500 and 5000 6b1 vests were produced, but they were subsequently put in storage and not issued until the early years of the Soviet–Afghan War, where they were used in limited quantities, and were able to resist shrapnel and Tokarev rounds.
Immediately Kevlar was incorporated into a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) evaluation program to provide lightweight, able body armour to a test pool of American law enforcement officers to ascertain if everyday able wearing was possible.
[citation needed] During the 1980s, the US military issued the PASGT kevlar vest, tested privately at NIJ level IIA by several sources, able to stop pistol rounds (including 9 mm FMJ), but intended and approved only for fragmentation.
[citation needed] During the early 1980s, body armor vests began to see widespread use by several countries in addition to more prolific users like the US and UK.
Kevlar soft armor had its shortcomings because if "large fragments or high velocity bullets hit the vest, the energy could cause life-threatening, blunt trauma injuries" [28] in selected, vital areas.
Since the 1970s, several new fibers and construction methods for bulletproof fabric have been developed besides woven Kevlar, such as DSM's Dyneema, Honeywell's Gold Flex and Spectra, Teijin Aramid's Twaron, Pinnacle Armor's Dragon Skin, and Toyobo's Zylon.
To counter this, some plates, such as the Ceradyne[42] Model AA4 and IMP/ACT (Improved Multi-hit Performance/Advanced Composite Technology) series,[43] use a stainless steel crack arrestor[44] embedded between the strike face and backer.
ESAPI ceramic plates have a green fabric cover with the text "7.62mm APM2 Protection" on the back and a density of 35–45 kg/m2 (7–9 lb/ft2); they are designed to stop bullets like the .30-06 AP (M2) with a hardened steel core.
A few years after the fielding of the ESAPI, the Department of Defense began to issue XSAPI plates in response to a perceived threat of AP projectiles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Actually laying hands on a bomb is only done in an extremely life-threatening situation, where the hazards to people and critical structures cannot be lessened by using wheeled robots or other techniques.
The transition from hard, dense clay-based Roma to soft low-density gelatin allowed all textile solutions to meet this attack energy requirement.
It is important for users to understand that the smooth, round tip of the ice pick does not cut fiber on impact and this permits the use of textile based vests for this application.
The starting point for this development were the ballistic-only offerings of that time using NIJ Level 2A, 2, and 3A or HOSDB HG 1 and 2, with compliant ballistic vest products being manufactured with areal densities of between 5.5 and 6 kg/m2 (1.1 and 1.2 lb/ft2 or 18 and 20 oz/ft2).
In Germany, Mehler Vario Systems developed hybrid vests of woven para-aramid and chainmail, and their solution was selected by London's Metropolitan Police Service.
[77][full citation needed] The vast majority of hard body armor plates, including the U.S. military's Small Arms Protective Insert family, are monolithic; their strike faces consist of a single ceramic tile.
Dragon Skin, composed of dozens of overlapping ceramic scales, promised superior multi-hit performance and flexibility compared to the then-current ESAPI plate; however, it failed to deliver.
When the U.S. Army tested the system against the same requirements as the ESAPI, Dragon Skin showed major issues with environmental damage; the scales would come apart when subjected to temperatures above 120 °F (49 °C) – not uncommon in Middle Eastern climates – when exposed to diesel vehicle fuel, or after the two four-foot drop tests (after these drops, ESAPI plates are put in an X-ray machine to determine the location of cracks, and then shot directly on said cracks), leaving the plate unable to reach its stated threat level and suffering 13 first- or second-shot complete penetrations by .30–06 M2 AP (the ESAPI test threat) out of 48 shots.
[112] In all Canadian provinces except for Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba, it is legal to wear and to purchase body armour such as ballistic vests.
Furthermore, a number of laws and court rulings during the years have rehearsed the concept of a ballistic vest being mandatory to wear for those individuals who work in the private security sector.
In other states, such as Kentucky, possession is not prohibited, but probation or parole is denied to a person convicted of committing certain violent crimes while wearing body armor and carrying a deadly weapon.
