dragon scale armour

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by jester

I know most bulletproof vests are given a life of 3 to 5 years. And some are considered "used up" when they do stop a bullet. So each time it does its job and you survive you need a new one. That of course is the civilian side which is dictated by lawyers.

However, how many hits could modern combat armor sustain before it looses its effectiveness? I hear the SAPI plates do crack when hit. So how long before your trauma plates are used up?

And then we also have conditions, the old Kevlar we were told was as usefull as carboard when it got wet.

And of course we have the issue of the system sustaining damage. So what happens when it is hit with schrapnel or bullet hits putting holes in it or sections of it get torn or sheared off? And I already mentioned items contaminated with chemical agents so to wear it would give you a constant dose of chemical weapons damage? Or you just have to abandon it, like falling into a river and having to ditch your gear and swim for it, or dropping your armor because you have to climb or do something requiring agility and you can't retrieve it.

serious manufactureres of these vests and plates (SAPI) sometimes state that they guarantee the plates fro say 3 hits from 7,62x39 125 gr .fmj at 2300 fps spaced more than 1 " apart .etc etc

I read somewhere on the web that some guys shot up a vest with sapi to see what it could take (pretty expensive proposition -mine plus plates cost like 700 US)

the vest itself stopped a few rounds of the handgun rounds it was supposed to deal with , but the plates took over 40 hits from a 9mm with fmj rounds at something like 50 feet , as well as 4-5 hits from the 7,62 x39 mm without being penetrated.

sadly I cant post a link - I dont remember where I read it .

But the short of it I guess means that if hits are grouped close , the later hits will have an increased chance of penetrating .

I suppose none of the tests were done with steel core chinese /eastern bloc type rounds..

[pmulcahy11b]

One thing that should also be remembered about body armor with ballistic plates is that the ballistic plates are made primarily of a ceramic/carbon compound -- they don't stop bullets, they shatter when hit and spread out the impact force so that they don't have enough power to penetrate the relatively light body armor behind them. A ballistic plate is good for maybe one or two hits from a high-velocity round like 7.62mm Nagant -- three if you're lucky. And, like most body armor, you're still going to end up with cracked or bruised ribs and a cracked or bruised breastbone.

[theDevil]

i have heard/read that the ceramic plate has a flaw of disintegrating when it is submitted to wet weater for a period of time (this was an argument against the interceptor plates), is this true?

also in the msnbc intervjue it was claimed that the dispearsel of impact the west(dragon skin) where so good that a soldier had been hit three times in the back without noticing it before he took it of at Basecamp and saw the holes, which again would suggest that the dispersal of impact is !highly reduced on the dragon skin, which again would make it an excellent west.

but again there are alot of conflicting information on this subject, some say it is lighter, some say it is heavier, which makes me think that there is more politics involved in the west then there are facts coming out... (sorry, do not mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, i am though, but anyway)

[headquarters]

the army tests were controversial as far as I know -big money involved in the contract -not easy to say what is fact here -politics as you say

Originally Posted by theDevil

i have heard/read that the ceramic plate has a flaw of disintegrating when it is submitted to wet weater for a period of time (this was an argument against the interceptor plates), is this true?

also in the msnbc intervjue it was claimed that the dispearsel of impact the west(dragon skin) where so good that a soldier had been hit three times in the back without noticing it before he took it of at Basecamp and saw the holes, which again would suggest that the dispersal of impact is !highly reduced on the dragon skin, which again would make it an excellent west.

but again there are alot of conflicting information on this subject, some say it is lighter, some say it is heavier, which makes me think that there is more politics involved in the west then there are facts coming out... (sorry, do not mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, i am though, but anyway)

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by headquarters

serious manufactureres of these vests and plates (SAPI) sometimes state that they guarantee the plates fro say 3 hits from 7,62x39 125 gr .fmj at 2300 fps spaced more than 1 " apart .etc etc

Assuming that is fact (and I don't doubt it), that would make such gear very very rare in T2K. Regular supply would have dried up years ago and those still available could almost only come from forgotten storages.

However, some medieval-type protections (similar to the one used by the Italian "Arditi" in WWI trenches) could very well be in use (from memory we already talked about that).