Richard Lemmens website
Copyright:
Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike
This text content and maps on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license license. This means that: adapting the content is allowed; using the content for commercial purposes is not allowed; sharing and redistributing the content with others is allowed. If you do any of the above, you must attribute your copy to its creator, Richard Lemmens, and make sure any alterations and distributions are licensed in the same way as the original. More info about Creative Commons licenses can be found at the Creative Commons website.

Warmatrix

War Matrix - Ballistic vest

Cold War 1945 CE - 1991 CE, Weapons and technology

BCS-LBAV ballistic vest
BCS-LBAV ballistic vest
A ballistic vest is a kind of body armor designed to stop missiles, especially gun bullets.
From around the 16th CE century onward, the introduction and steady improvement of guns led to a gradual abandoning of body armor, as gun bullets could reliably punch through them. Of course people tried to design anti-bullet armor. In the 16th century plate cuirasses were thickened to 4 millimeters of steel, though eventually abandoned. During the industrial era several types of bulletproof vests were made of silk, proving fairly effective. In the 20th century CE experiments yielded armor made with cotton, silk, steel and later fiberglass, plastic and aluminum. Most proved either too heavy or not strong enough.
The breakthrough came in 1971 CE, when the chemist Stephanie Kwolek discovered a liquid crystalline polymer solution. This led to the invention of Kevlar, a synthetic layered and woven fabric that was 5x more effective than steel. Since then, other fibers like Dyneema, Spectra, Twaron and Zylon have been developed, which are even more effective though also more expensive. Fibers are often combined with ceramic or steel plates to stop bullets dead.
A ballistic vest absorbs the kinetic energy of a bullet and spreads it over a large area, ideally preventing it from reaching the body. The vest can not stop every bullet; heavy rounds will get through, though with less speed and energy, causing lesser wounds. Even a bullet that is stopped in time may cause a concussion wound. Because of this, but also because ballistics vests are hot and heavy to wear, most soldiers have a love-hate relationship with them.
The NIJ standard rates the bullet resistance of ballistic armor. Types I and IIA are strong enough to stop bullets from light pistols; Types II and IIIA can stop heavy pistols; Type III rifle bullets; Type IV armor-piercing ammunition.
Ironically, ballistic vests protect well against gun bullets than can defeat ancient and Medieval armor, yet perform poorly against stabbing weapons that are stopped by those historical protectors. Some modern armor tries to compensate by making a compromise between ballistic and melee protection. Ballistic armor used by armies is often designed with an eye towards a third kind of attack: shrapnel from grenades, bombs and artillery shells.