TV report questions Army ban on Dragon Skin
PEO Soldier counters by releasing details of its armor test
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Friday May 18, 2007 20:05:16 EDT
A recent media report has re-ignited a long-simmering feud over the Army’s refusal to allow soldiers to wear a controversial body armor known as Dragon Skin.
The May 17 NBC News report questions whether the Army’s Interceptor Body Armor is the best at protecting soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news agency “commissioned an independent, side-by-side test of Dragon Skin and the Army’s Interceptor vest. The tests show Dragon Skin outperformed the Army’s body armor in stopping the most lethal threats,” according to the report.
Retired four-star Army Gen. Wayne Downing, now an NBC news analyst, is quoted in the report saying, “What we saw today ... and again, it’s a limited number of trials, Dragon Skin was significantly better.”
While the report provided no specifics about the test standards or ammunition used, it states that these “limited tests raise serious questions about the Army’s claim that Dragon Skin doesn’t work.”
Senior NBC investigative producer Jim Popkin declined to discuss details of the testing, noting that more specifics were to be released in a May 20 broadcast. He referred questions to an NBC spokeswoman, who was unavailable for comment.
The controversy over Dragon Skin began in early 2006 when the Army released a “safety of use” message banning soldiers from wearing all commercially purchased body armor, and singling out Dragon Skin, a particular type of armor manufactured by Pinnacle Armor Inc., in Fresno, Calif. Army officials said they released the message after testing of an early design of Dragon Skin failed to meet the service’s ballistic requirements.
More than a year later, Army officials from Program Executive Office Soldier contacted some media outlets, including Army Times, a day in advance of the NBC broadcast in an attempt to defend its position on Dragon Skin.
Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, the head of PEO Soldier, said the Army has not discussed the tests it performed on Pinnacle’s SOV 3000 Level VI Dragon Skin vests last May out of concern that doing so might reveal information about soldier body armor standards.
“There is a balance between operational security and our soldiers’ and their families’ confidence in their equipment, and we think now that the balance has tipped in favor of we can no longer withhold this information,” Brown said.
“We know with high confidence that we have the best body armor on the world.”
The Army tests on Dragon Skin, conducted May 16-19, 2006, at H.P. White labs near Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., subjected Pinnacle’s unique armor design against the same test protocols the Army uses to test its Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts and Enhanced Side Ballistic Inserts, Karl Masters, PEO Soldier’s chief engineer for body armor, said.
The vests were exposed to temperatures ranging from minus 60 degrees to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, and were immersed in diesel fuel, oil and salt water for extended periods of time. After each of these exposures, testers shot the vests with armor-piercing ammunition, the most lethal small arms threat on the battlefield.
Four out the eight vests tested failed after suffering 13 first or second shot complete penetrations with 7.62mm x 63mm APM2 Armor Piercing ammunition, Masters said.
“The number we are looking for here is zero,” Masters said. “That’s what we are fielding to soldiers is plates that meet these requirements for zero penetrations. ... Everybody who has fielded body armor to soldiers must go through and pass this protocol.”
Murray Neal, chief executive officer for Pinnacle Armor Inc., could not be reached for comment by press time.
The Dragon Skin vests also “suffered catastrophic failure” during the Army’s extreme temperature tests, which caused the adhesive that holds the ceramic disks together to deteriorate, Masters said.
The result was the disks slid to the lower portion of the panel, exposing the spine, vital organs and critical blood vessels to lesser ballistic threats, Masters said.
Brown said: “The bottom line is we tested this, it failed miserably. That test cost of us a quarter of a million dollars. The current Interceptor costs about $3,100. We could have bought lots of IBA for that quarter of a million dollars, but we did this to give [Pinnacle] a fair shake and see if there was something better out there.”
PEO Soldier officials also said a size large SOV 3000 Level VI vest weighs 44 pounds and offer less coverage than the 28-pound size large Interceptor vest soldiers wore in 2006. Since the tests, the Army has upgraded its design to make it 3 pounds lighter.
The NBC report criticizes the Army’s Interceptor’s reliance on four rigid plates that leave some vital organs unprotected.
“Dragon Skin — with discs that interconnect like medieval chain mail — can wrap most of a soldier’s torso, providing a greater area of maximum protection,” the report states.
PEO officials said they continue to look for improvements to soldier body armor to address this issue.
“We get the gap issue between plates, which is why we continue to look at these armors,” Masters said. “We are going to continue to try to evolve because our users are asking us for lighter and flexible armor.” |
