Search Results for: body armor

ShotStop: The body armor Batman would wear

July 23, 2019 by Alex Hollings Leave a Comment

The tactical industry isn’t getting any smaller. Every day, my Facebook newsfeed seems all the more inundated with companies selling you the “operator” fantasy, keen to convince you that you need the same kit Seal Team 6 used on the Bin Laden raid to clear your kitchen when you hear a bump in the night. The truth is, you do need good gear when your life depends on it, but I’m way past aspiring to be an operator. I already served my time in the Marine Corps and I’ve got lots of special operations veterans in my rolodex — and we’ve all got one thing in common. None of us are bullet proof. Not like Batman is.

While some guys may wish they could be more like the Navy SEALs they see on TV, I’d much prefer rocking the kit Batman wears into a fight. While there were times that I felt like I could barely breath in full battle-rattle, Batman’s mobility is never compromised in favor of ballistic protection. In fact, the only time a cinematic Batman has ever asked for a suit upgrade in a movie, it wasn’t armor piercing rounds he was worried about… it was dog bites. Granted, Batman is a fictional character that isn’t burdened by the realities of physics… but I still think there’s something to aspiring for more than just rocking the same JPC we saw Garand Thumb wearing. We should be looking for as much mobility as we can find in today’s market, and in order to do that, we’ve got to dive into what’s riding along inside the plate carriers we wear and talk about the plates themselves.

And if you want to get as close to Batman-level mobility, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better ballistic plate option than the Diritium series of plates from ShotStop.

Of course, the folks at ShotStop didn’t set out to make body armor for aspiring Bat-men like me — their customer base is more law enforcement and military professionals and less salty-old-vet turned journalist — but through their efforts to produce the lightest, thinnest, and most reliable armor on the market, they found their way into where a Navy SEAL’s Venn diagram overlaps with that of everyone’s favorite caped crusader. Their plates are among the lightest you’ll find and come in a variety of cuts and sizes for shooters of all sorts, because Batman may not carry a gun, but I sure as hell do.

All that weight savings doesn’t come at the cost of ballistic protection, however — and here’s the proof. In this video, ShotStop’s Duritium III+PS plate holds up to a full magazine of .223:

These plates are light, hold up to tons of punishment, and most importantly, will save your life. If you ask me, that’s about as Batman as you can get out here in the real world. You can get your own ShotStop ballistic plates by following this link to find your nearest dealer, or just go to ShotStop.com and check out their gear for yourself.

In the mean time, you can also check out our previous review on ShotStop’s ballistic inserts and some of their other great piece of gear that are worthy of their own Bat-monikers.

AR500 Body Armor Put To The Test

March 9, 2019 by Jens "Rex Nanorum" Hammer Leave a Comment

We here at Loadoutroom.com love our guns, armor and gear. We love using them, testing them, reading about them and writing about them. When we’re not doing all that, we’re watching funny videos online about people using them, testing them, et cetera. While FPSRussia was once the heavyweight champion of gun channels, sad events laid the channel low. While we wait to see if more fortunate events can bring it back in some fashion, their old videos are always worth revisiting.

While doing a little brushing up on the various material compositions and makeups of modern bullet repellants, I came across this video from 2015. In it, the channel’s “Russian” host (Kyle) walks us through an impressive litany of abuses against a Level IIIA soft armor set and (presumably, as he doesn’t specify) a Level III plate armor set. They take a considerable number of rounds from a variety of weaponry.

-Rex Nanorum

@Rexnanorum

Lifesaver: Army tests new body armor in search of lightness and better protection for soldiers

February 22, 2019 by Loadout Room Guest Authors Leave a Comment

An Army infantryman moves toward a mock enemy trench during a live-fire exercise at Fort Hood, Texas, February 9, 2019. (Department of Defense)

The Army is edging closer to fielding its updated body protection system. The Soldier Protection System (SPS) has been in the works for years, and it promises to better protect soldiers. The best way to describe the SPS is to compare it to a medieval knight’s armor. Its different subsystems (it has four) cover and protect the pelvic region, torso, upper extremities, neck, head, and eyes. The SPS is broken down in four components: Torso and Extremity Protection (TEP), Vital Torso Protection (VTP), Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS), and Transition Combat Eye Protection (TCEP). Each subcomponent has a different acquisition process.

All of them have met the Army’s ballistic requirements. Although the Army has already made a “Full-Rate Production” decision for the TEP and IHPS (respectively in September 2016 and October 2018), it still has to commit to a company and product for the VTP and TCEP. With respect to the VTP, which is essentially the body armor, the Army is seeking lighter options than the ones currently on the table. The plan is to test an improved version in the upcoming months before testing the whole SPS against additional threats in the fall.

What sets it apart from existing personal protection equipment is its ability to provide equal or increased levels of defense against small caliber weapons and fragmentation threats at reduced weights. For example, the IHPS weighs almost three pounds less than the previous version but offers 15% more protection.

In its annual report, which was just released, the director of operational test and evaluation describes and updates ongoing acquisition projects across the military.

The report recommends the Army do three things in order to improve the system:

Establish a credible correlation between threat-induced deformations in both the torso plates and combat helmet and the probability of injury.
Improve its free-field blast test methodology to enable a credible correlation between the blast pressure mitigation provided by the torso plate and combat helmet and the probability of blast-induced injury.
Improve its ability to model fragmenting threats against combat helmets and torso plates.

Once all four components have been selected and the SPS is cleared, the Army plans to issue the new body protection to deploying units through the Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI), as opposed to issuing the SPS to individual soldiers. Some subcomponents have already found their way to the front lines. For instance, the 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB), which was activated in November and is about to deploy to Afghanistan, has already received the improved helmets.

When it comes to combat loads, efficiency and agility are everything.

Learn how to build improvised body armor

February 12, 2019 by Scott Witner Leave a Comment

If you haven’t checked out book 1 of 100 Deadly Skills then you need to remedy that NOW. This first book covers many skills for personal protection whether you’re a normal dude working a 9 to 5 job, a world traveler or you’re an operative for one of the 3 letter agencies. There are many practical skills found in this book and the new Survival Edition that we all can all learn and benefit from. You’ll learn to look at everyday common items around you differently and see them as assets to your survival. Take the following skill for example; Improvised Body Armor. It’s a damn good skill to keep in the back of your mind if you’re traveling. Hopefully, you will never have to use it.

Check out the following video as Clint Emerson demonstrates making Improvised Body Armor by using two of his books, two small ceramic plates and some duct tape. As you will see in the following video, this improvised body armor was able to stop both .22LR and 9mm.

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*Featured image courtesy of Clint Emerson @ 100 Deadly Skills

Women and Body Armor: What’s a busty girl to do?

December 20, 2018 by Loadout Room Guest Authors Leave a Comment

We as a community, have not really discussed the issues that women specifically have with body armor. It doesn’t necessarily affect a large portion of our community, right now. Yet, women are now allowed in combat roles in the military and make up an ever larger portion of our police forces. We live in a free-ish market though, if a woman wants body armor she can get some made for her, right? well, sort of. Before we get into specific issues though, we should do a brief overview of body armor, specifically hard plates.

Soft Armor

Soft armor is made from kevlar weaves and is pretty great for civilian security. It’s more breathable than plates, comfortable to sit in, you can get stab proof armor, and it generally fits against the body. For women, especially, soft armor is great in most cases. Unless you have to wear plate armor for work, or you just want some because this is a free country — I’m not judging. Plates offer a wide range of styles and possibilities as well. You can get ceramic, metal, and hybrid plates — in either curved or straight design. You can get plates designed to cover your heart and lungs, plates that cover your entire chest and stomach, and even plates that cover the sides of your body and your genitals. All these choices offer various benefits and costs in a fight: plates that cover the essentials offer +3 agility, while the whole plate set up lets you go in like kill-dozer, but you move slow like kill-dozer. It’s really up to the context of your job or situation to dictate which kind of armor set up you prefer, or can wear.

Hard Plates

My issue is that hard plate armor doesn’t offer the kind of body fit variety that soft armor can — mostly because I don’t think it can. Soft armor has designs geared towards women, and even gets in to specific bra sizes, but it won’t protect against higher calibers. Hard plates, though, leave something to be desired for women who can’t flatten their chest to their bodies. Plate armor is designed to both stop a bullet and disperse its kinetic energy along the plates, when properly fitted the plates should lie flat along the body so that the kinetic energy disperses along the plate instead of back into you. Here-in lies the issue, plates can’t form to the female figure and for certain women can leave pretty large gaps in between the plates and the body. This gap can cause all kinds of problems on bullet impact.

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Bottom

Options for women

What options do women have that gives them the same protection as hard plate, but fits as it should to offer the intended amount of protection? Right now, the outlook is not great. The U.S. Army tested the dragon scale armor, which honestly sounds like the most tactical-Gandalf shit I’ve ever heard, but I digress. Unfortunately, in that testing, they found that the adhesive used on the armor couldn’t stand up to hot or cold temperatures, and even the plate itself couldn’t hold up to multiple bullet impacts. So, while being a dragon-skinned operator isn’t viable today, I think we can all cross our fingers and hope this technology improves in the future. There is also talk of non-newtonian fluid armor around, but it’s still in heavy research phase and probably would cost my first-born to get ahold of. The concept though, is that some kind of superfluid like that green goop you made in middle school science class will fit like a body glove and stop rifle rounds. Honestly, for women, it seems like the only options are to wait until they can live in a science fiction movie.

Right now I’m running 8×10 swimmers cut, and it’s really the best option I have, but as you can see it leaves a lot of room open, both in the top and bottom. So the question still stands, what’s a busty girl to do?

Nicole is a veteran of the U.S. ARMY, Philosophy BA graduate, and a security contractor for DHS. She likes to shoot, camp, and read any book she can get her hands on. Her favorite writers are Sebastian Junger, Aristotle, and Kurt Vonnegut.

ShotStop Body Armor Defeats 30 Rounds of .223 from an AR-15!

December 16, 2018 by Loadout Room Guest Authors Leave a Comment

ShotStop’s Duritium III+PS body armor plate is a lightweight, thin (0.9″), affordable polyethylene (UHMWPE) amor panel. And, in this body armor review video, you’ll see how strong it is, too – successfully defeating 30 rounds of .223 55-grain FMJ from an AR 15.