Protect the Warrior
Written by Michael Puttre
SOTECH 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 4 (June)
Body Armor is the Last Line of Personal Defense
The military body armor industry in the U.S. is at a crossroads. The Department of Defense customer expresses satisfaction with the quality and quantity of body armor systems available for all of its personnel in harm’s way. Some would call this attitude complacency. Established suppliers find themselves shutting down production, laying off skilled personnel, and scrambling to remain relevant as the DoD plans to draw down its deployments in war zones.
Meanwhile, a new generation of researchers and developers are working to improve the economics and ergonomics of body armor systems, with a focus on retaining existing ballistics protection performance in lighter, better-balanced frameworks. And if these can be commercial off-the-shelf, so much the better. As always, special operations forces are at the forefront of body armor development, both as users and as authors of requirements.
SYSTEMATIC PROTECTION
The demands and nature of the SOF mission as a service have long made personal body armor an essential component of its members’ equipment. Almost any SOF operation would constitute asymmetric warfare, thus rendering notions of a front, flanks and rear essentially meaningless. An enemy might appear unexpectedly from any quarter, armed with any of a number of weapons types. Therefore, SOF requirements for body armor have traditionally been more pointed than in the other armed services.
Add to this the fact that SOF and their equipment often must be inserted into denied areas, and then transition to operating on foot in difficult environments where they must carry their equipment on their back while negotiating severe terrain. Many SOF missions involve high impact maneuvers (e.g. air assault, airborne operations, infiltration) through adverse weather conditions like arctic, desert and mountainous environments.
“The diversity of missions that SOF must be prepared to execute places high demands for making body armor lightweight, mission-tailored and capable of being configured to provide personal protection against multiple ballistic threats,” said Major Wesley Ticer, a public affairs officer with USSOCOM. “These mission scenarios require SOF equipment to be highly integrated into the soldier as a system.”
Evidence from the field clearly shows that ballistic wounds can be survived as long as no vital organs are hit. While specifically designed to defeat the effects of a bullet shot directly at a soldier, body armor has been effective in absorbing shrapnel and secondary projectiles when personnel are subjected to improvised explosive devices. If there is no penetration of the body cavity, there is an increased survivability when severe wounds to other parts of the body are received.
Nevertheless, the body armor component of the soldier system has lagged behind the other elements. Indeed, armor was often an afterthought or even regarded as optional. It had not penetrated the regular Army and Marine Corps to the extent it had among SOF. Even among the special forces, body armor was cumbersome.
“The development and application of ceramic plates for body armor dates back to the Somalia deployment of 1992-94 and the incident that most remember as ‘Black Hawk Down,’” said Marc King, president of Ceradyne Inc., a developer of ceramics for military, industrial and commercial applications. “Our special operations forces were deployed with steel body armor plates at that time. They returned from that experience and identified the need to have a lighter, more efficient body armor system.” When SOF talks, people listen—most importantly, people with the authority to write checks.
The paradigm of steel plates inserted into a garment evolved rapidly into one of a modular system with ceramic inserts and composite materials integrated into a soft yet load-bearing frame. King pointed out that ceramics were known armoring materials from their use in helicopters as a lightweight substitute for steel and aluminum, while providing high levels of protection to the pilot and crew. Thus, ceramics provided a natural starting point for the development of lightweight body armor.
The appeal of ceramics is that they break up an incoming bullet while absorbing much of the force of impact to do so as they crack. Bullets are thus turned into lower-velocity fragments and such fragments are then handled by the soft, ballistic underlayer of the armor system.
“Much of the early development was driven by special ops and their needs,” King said. “Still, throughout the 1990s, the body armor business was better defined as a boutique business addressing special needs and applications.”
Body armor exacts a trade-off between personal physical protection and mobility. According to USSOCOM, the task of achieving balance between lightening a soldier’s load in order to enable mobility, agility and endurance while providing physical ballistics protection is defined by mission, threat, terrain and environment. “The SOF operator selects and wears a modularly configured body armor protection system based on mission analysis and requirements,” Ticer said. “USSOCOM modular body armor systems balance survivability and mobility by tailoring a mission specific protection ensemble.”
USER DRIVEN REQUIREMENTS
This modular, mission-specific approach is a luxury that up until recently only SOF operators enjoyed. Even so, the widespread deployment of body armor throughout the Army and Marine Corps has created many channels of input from regulars out in the field. “Up until 10 years ago, I would have said that SOF were driving body armor requirements,” said Sam White, president of Point Blank Solutions Inc., Pompano Beach, Fla., provider and integrator of many of the vest, carrier and other framework elements of body armor systems in U.S. military service. “Now, the most feedback comes in from the regular Army.”
The main catalyst for change was the Iraq War of 2003 to present. At the start of that war, and in the preceding Afghanistan campaign launched in 2001, the U.S. fielded the Interceptor Body Armor System (IBA), which consisted of the Outer Tactical Vest with the ability to defeat 9 mm bullets and shell fragments, and the Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI), consisting of ceramic plates that could defeat rifle bullets up to 7.62 caliber. All of the troops deployed initially to Afghanistan and subsequently to Iraq were equipped with IBA.
Approximately a year and a half into Operation Iraqi Freedom, it became clear that the enemy had figured out how to defeat SAPI plates. While the regular Iraqi forces were not equipped with armor-piercing rounds, over time elements of the insurgent forces acquired widespread access to such ammunition, and casualties from armor-piercing rifle rounds mounted among U.S. troops wearing SAPI. After the emphasis of the war had shifted from a conventional battle with fronts, flanks and rears to a prolonged asymmetrical war of the type SOF was familiar with in style, if not in longevity, pressure began to build on the Pentagon. “It was not until we identified that we were engaged in an asymmetric war in Iraq did body armor with the ceramic SAPI plates become an item of issue for all the soldiers in the theater,” said Ceradyne’s King.
The pressure came from Congress, which in turn had been pressured by soldiers, Marines and their family members, who said that existing body armor was inadequate. In short order, the Pentagon asked body armor manufacturers to increase the level of protection of their products. The result was the Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert (ESAPI), which had the ability to defeat armor-piercing rounds.
“Ceradyne was able to address this change in 60 days from the date that was requested and has been delivering ESAPI to DoD continuously ever since the change was requested,” King said. The company was in a position to mobilize so quickly because it was already providing enhanced protective ceramic plate inserts to SOF under the Special Operations Forces Equipment Advanced Requirements (SPEAR) program. SPEAR is an ongoing effort to produce increasing levels of protection against armor-piercing bullets with increased muzzle velocities.
The enormous demand for SAPI, and subsequently, ESAPI plates in the form of hard and fast DoD orders prompted Ceradyne to launch a seven-year long capital expansion effort to become the single largest supplier of body armor plates to DoD. At its height in 2006, Ceradyne was producing 19,000 sets of ceramic body armor plates per month. However, the current contract only runs through the end of May 2010. King reported that in March, the government issued a 60-day Federal Warning Notice that workers at Ceradyne’s Lexington, Ky., plant were at risk of losing their jobs.
The problem is one of success. This is characteristic of defense industries as successful wars draw to a close. The military submarine and aircraft industries would sympathize. It’s a similar trajectory. Companies that have built up the niche expertise and manufacturing infrastructure to deliver sophisticated military products remain saddled with their overhead costs even as revenue dries up due to sharp drops in demand.
“Current body armor technology is very mature and has reached a plateau over the past few years,” USSOCOM’s Ticer said. “Next-generation technology is not on the horizon, and USSOCOM must engage technology leaders such as DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and national and service labs to stimulate research that might yield revolutionary body armor technologies.”
Point-Blank’s White confirms that demand for military body armor systems for U.S. forces has leveled off. “We clearly had a spike in demand a few years ago but now would say we have a more stable market,” he said. Stability, in this context, means that the military customer has transitioned from a rapid-acquisition mode to one of refinement of existing designs.
FUTURE FOCUS ON MOBILITY
The plateau effect with regard to ballistics performance of body armor systems is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it reveals that modern body armor systems that are effective against current battlefield threats have become standard throughout the armed services. Everybody who needs protection is provided for, which is a good thing. On the other hand, the attitude of the services with regard to existing body armor inventory creates challenges for companies that develop and manufacture it. Such challenges range from having to compete for the more the more numerous, lower-volume contracts currently on offer, to closing factories and laying off personnel.
“There had been no drop off in research and development,” said Point-Blank’s White. Users of body armor systems in the field are constantly demanding modifications and new design features.
Ticer said the objective of current body armor development programs is to achieve better ballistics protection and area of coverage without sacrificing operator mobility and mission accomplishment (i.e., less weight and better protection are desired). Recent requests for proposal concerning body armor development imply an emphasis on the mobility side of the ledger. For example, the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command awarded a contract to ATC Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio, to develop a hard armor prototype based on the company’s Hotblox family of ceramic-composite materials, which are 5-10 percent lighter than the existing ceramic armor plates. Other recent RFPs, solicitations and notifications with regard to body armor systems are for vests and plate carriers that are less expensive or incorporate specific features desired by different services.
At the BAE Systems Security and Survivability Division, Fairfield, Ohio, research and development informed by a decade of infantry combat has driven the development of a new family of body armor systems that emphasizes modularity and mission-specific configurations. Sean Martin, director of business development for BAE Systems’ Security & Survivability business, said the company had decided to invest millions of dollars in its effort to develop lower-weight, more modular body armor systems, in particular due to changes in the soldier experience from Iraq to Afghanistan. “In Afghanistan, the warfighter has to walk to the fight rather than be driven there,” Martin said. “We had to recalculate armor capabilities and weight versus factors like the altitude at which combat operations occurred.”
Appreciating that high-volume acquisitions of body armor systems by DoD are not likely, at least in the short term, it is unveiling its Ultra Lightweight Warrior (ULW) family of body armor systems that are amenable to lower volume programs. BAE Systems’ strategy is to develop and market a family of body armor systems that the user can scale for specific mission goals, environmental conditions and likely unit exposure to specific combat threats. Scalability, in this sense, means that a customer can order a ULW configuration that can be fitted with various configurations of hard- and soft-protection components to meet likely threats in specific situations. Or a customer can order a single configuration to meet a particular unit’s threat exposure.
“Through the use of better materials and optimized configurations, the ULW achieves a 15 to 20 percent reduction in weight over currently deployed armor systems,” Marten said. In material terms, this means that a helmet, hard-, and soft-armor ensemble weighing 60.9 pounds weighs 47.2 pounds in a ULW configuration, providing the same ballistics protection and carriage.
The emphasis on research and development is drawing new players into the body armor arena. One such player is Archangel Armor, Fayetteville, N.C., a small startup focusing on the ergonomic factors associated with body armor. Archangel President Paul Carter said his goal is to bring his experience as an occupational therapist to the soldier protection field. While the ballistics protection performance of various armor configurations is readily testable in a laboratory environment, the effect of wearing a given configuration over time really requires evaluations by soldiers who have lived with it under operational conditions.
“Nobody had looked at long-term use injuries with respect to body armor,” Carter said.
Although his company is tiny and has no contracts to its name, Carter has succeeded in attracting the attention of SOF. The 7th Special Operations Group evaluated the Archangel body armor system in Afghanistan in the spring of 2009. A subsequent report cited the main advantage of the equipment was that it provided an improved platform to carry the required ballistic protection equipment, while providing spinal support and correct alignment that is nonexistent with current body armor carriers. Another advantage was the armor carrier’s ability to accept various types of Modular Lightweight Load-Bearing Equipment accessories with its adaptable mounting system.
Time will tell if the DoD will follow up body armor R&D and prototype programs with procurement funding. However, if incremental improvements are to be applied to body armor systems, it’s a safe bet that SOF will be among the early adopters. ♦