U.S. Army Refutes Dragon Skin Claims

An ongoing feud between Pinnacle Armor and the U.S. Army went nuclear this week as NBC News made claims that Pinnacle's "Dragon Skin" armor is vastly superior to the "Interceptor" armor currently approved for troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The NBC News report claims, "In our limited testing at a renowned ballistics lab in Germany, Dragon Skin was able to defeat more bullets than the Army’s Interceptor and did so with significantly less body trauma."

In the admittadly limited tests, NBC News reports, "Dragon Skin repelled volley after volley of the most lethal types of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds, armor-piercing incendiary rounds as well as a “composite” round so deadly that the U.S. Army has asked NBC News not to describe it with specificity."

NBC News stated that they commissioned independent testing because body armor experts, combat soldiers and military families have charged that the U.S. Army has not fairly evaluated Dragon Skin.

In an official press release published today, the military made public information about Army testing that ruled out Dragon Skin a year ago.

“Force protection is the No. 1 priority of the U.S. Army. We value our soldiers very highly, and we do everything we can do to ensure that they have the finest in force protection as they go into the battle,” Army Brig. Gen. R. Mark Brown, Program Executive Officer Soldier, said at a Pentagon news conference.

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The tests were conducted May 16 to 19, 2006, at H.P. White labs near Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. The Pinnacle armor was subjected to the same tests Interceptor body armor goes through, first being X-rayed and analyzed and then undergoing a series of live-fire tests, Brown said. The live-fire tests included room-temperature tests, harsh environment tests, and durability and drop tests.

Of the eight Pinnacle vests tested, four of them failed the tests, with 13 rounds penetrating completely on the first or second shot, Brown said. After the first complete penetration, the vests technically failed the test, but the Army continued the testing to be fair, he said.

The Pinnacle vests also were subjected to extreme temperature variations, from minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which would be a realistic cycle if the equipment was loaded onto a plane and flown to the Middle East, Brown said. These temperature tests caused the adhesive holding the Dragon Skin’s protective discs together to fail, and the discs gathered at the bottom of the vest, leaving gaps in protection, he said.

Brown also noted that the Dragon Skin vests are significantly heavier and thicker than the Interceptor vests. Dragon Skin vests in size extra large are 47.5 pounds and 1.7 to 1.9 inches thick; the Interceptor vests in size large, which offer an equivalent coverage area to the extra large Dragon Skin vests, weigh 28 pounds and are 1.3 inches thick.

The military addressed security concerns before making public any information about the tests.

Brown said. “We are facing a very media-savvy enemy,” he said. “They’re not only media-savvy, they are Internet savvy. … Everything that we put out into the public domain, we pretty much assume that they get. We don’t like to discuss our vulnerabilities and our counters to the vulnerabilities in the open public.”

After the NBC News report, military leaders felt they needed to address any doubts in the minds of servicemembers and their families.

TRANSCRIPT
DoD News Briefing Concering Body Armor with Brig. Gen. Brown from the Pentagon

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