@@cr4zyj4ck Not yet it ain't. I've got sludge pumps around my house right now to get rid of the water. The ground can't absorb anymore right now. But I'm near Fort Worth, a few hours from Matt.
A big part of why dragon skin is so unreliable is the adhesive that holds the plates in place degrades in high temperatures and humidity...the gaps werent necessarily a part of the design they just came to be as the armor aged in a non air conditioned environment...which the army frequents 😂
@@KarstRats 1 rivets bind metal to metal 2 That would like quadruple the price per vest 3 if you put a metal link in the vest that's only held in place by Kevlar those metal rivets are going to absorb the energy of that round much more effectively than the kevlar...and their already halfway through the Kevlar since their holding it in place...so you just stopped a brass bullet by creating a titanium bullet.
@@ceberskie119 I'm talking about putting the rivets metal to metal not through kevlar... And it may cost more but it'd work... And not kill you but it was just an option for fixing this. I'd still go get ceramics
@@soulknife20 I meant all of tv programs not just history channel. Looks like you know all the shit they feature on it..thank god I stopped being programmed by the television 10 years ago. Good luck knowing what is true and what is propaganda. Because the government wants you ignorant , they want you to think lies are truth and truth are lies. But keep voting it's doing so much good having liars in charge of our country.
Hey! Another reason Dragonskin was scuffed is that the rigging that held the scale plates in place could break or weaken meaning like the homemade body armor scales could come loose or even fall to the bottom leaving exposed areas. If you look at some of the temp tests from the Army results the plates are moved all around in some of the tests and left parts heavily exposed. Iirc this was a design flaw in the use of adhesive to keep the plates in place which when exposed to oil or temperature change could weaken and compromise the armor. It's a shame that no one ever took the design and tried to improve upon it replacing the adhesive with some sort of proper system. Or even adding to the adhesive to ensure plates stay stable.
Also the fact that when the dragon skin takes damage you need to replace the entire thing. Which isn't necessary for plate carriers. There for plate carriers are cheaper
@@jamesTBurke That is a good point against armors like this. But my counter to that is ergonomics. Soft armors often have better coverage and can be a lighter weight. The dragon skin wasn't lighter but did have great coverage. It did have many faults tho
Yep! The glue they used to hold the scales in place failed *extremely* easily. The NIJ now does "tumble tests" where they toss the armor in a dryer before shooting at it, that prevents armor that works great but only in pristine condition (like dragonscale) from passing. Now, there is even more to the story. The army wasn't going to make a big deal out of it and basically leave the results private. Pinnacle went scorched earth when they heard their armor failed and went on a media campaign claiming the army was biased and made their stuff fail. The army then released the test results, got the NIJ to change their standards and Pinnacle went out of business. Another interesting tidbit, *technically* the patent for this armor is still valid (or was a year ago) but Pinnacle transferred it to another company which transferred it to another company and that final company *maybe* exists but appears to not actually do anything at all. I know all of this because I've done serious work in making a functional improvement to dragonscale that doesn't have any of the issues mentioned. (The vest I was looking at would have weighed about as much as an aluminum plate while still being flexible, and being able to stop a 7.62x54r round at 10 yards.)
"Where's my princess" Matt slowly coming out from behind the tree: "heey" XD gotta say out of the majority of your intros this one got me the most, I think I laughed for about 3 mins straight.
HI Guys, I can get you information on the newest generation of Dragonskin body armor just released by Pinnacle Armor Company. If you would like to contact me, let me know.
@demolitionranch - Matt, you need to get a torso target that has the clay center area (you can replace the clay each time). That will show what the energy transfer would do to the human body. Often times armor will stop a bullet but the energy to the body would have killed the wearer. Thats what they use to actually test these armors.
Thank you for saying this I was thinking that the whole time. The plate behind the body armor is just acting as an extra part to help instantly decelerate the bullet
Totally agree with this. I mean this armor for instance, most rounds probably didn't penetrate the skin. But i don't think their internal would be the same
There have been zero instances since the inception of the NIJ armor specification or the DoD armor specifications, which require a maximum of 44mm of back face deformation, in which the deformation resultant from a spec impact caused a fatality. To that end the NIJ and DoD are revising the requirement to move the maximum up to 52mm. We use clay in testing to capture the dynamic BFD since the body does serve to support the armor material and shooting over air (in order to use high speed cameras to measure BFD) results in different ballistic penetration results.
I remember watching Richard shoot Dragon Skin on Futureweapons back in the day. Good times. :) Great video, Matt! I always wanted some, too, because I thought it was invincible.
@@yogithebear7493 Not likely dragons breath is more of a pyrotechnics display than a legit round. Cool to shoot at night cool to shoot at barrels of gas but not really good at going through body armor.
@@Ozark-nq9uu, dear God, don’t even get me started with that. 😂 or when you go prone on the range and the plate shifts the 9mm lining right into where your stock’s supposed to go.
@@mattj.7756 I ended up putting the stock outside the armor entirely, more on the outside of my shoulder, that turned out to be more difficult once we got to Iraq and got the soft kevlar on our arms. I'd try to put the buttstock in the gap between, but that was awkward and would throw off my aim.
"Why is it missing plates here?" Gee Matt, its almost like they went out of business because of fraud, false advertising and grossly incompetent and criminally negligent QC and production...
@@tyler1776. Thats waaay too far down, regular plates that are square/flat topped have plenty of exposed neckline still, that V in the dragon skin exposes about 1/4 of the spine on the upper torso.
or it was the fact that it cost to much so they were told to do it on the cheap which didn't work and had to make it lighter which also didn't work yet they went along with it to get a gov contract which lead to all of those other events occurring.
@@desertedgoatgaming Yeah no, they were found to be massively overselling in their RFIs and RFPs, the US DoD's lawsuits against them brought all their scummy and scammy business to light.
I am thinking about dropping out of school to focus on my career as a star on RU-vid. I already make a lot of money on RU-vid. School bores me so much. I need more opinions and since I don't have any friends, I gotta ask you, cas
@@AxxLAfriku how about you stay in school and keep the RU-vid „star“ bullshit as a hobby? Because becoming a „star“ is not really your decision so it could become a bit of a challenge…
@@AxxLAfriku not only that you already making a lot of money out of RU-vid? You do know not even people with millions of subscribers make money of RU-vid right? General Sam barely makes any money of RU-vid he ain't poor but he ain't making outrages money either, enough to pay for his house and car. That's about it. So we both know you bullshitting, stick you being yourself, lying won't get you anywhere let alone begging.
@@AxxLAfriku dude stay in school. Lmao like seriously don't depend on RU-vid. Most youtubers finish school and have jobs besides youtube. Plus you have 79000 subs and get 90000 views you ain't getting paid much for your channel
This is not a fair test. Level 3 can only stop 3 spaced high caliber riffle bullets. The amount of 9 m bullets damage rhe integrity of the armor then whe you hit it with big bullets it had no chance. According to Meta... I found that: * Senator George Allen (R-VA), who was involved in the 2006 congressional hearings on body armor, has a son, Forrest Allen, who worked as a lobbyist for Ceradyne, Inc., the manufacturer of the Interceptor Body Armor system. * Senator Jim Talent (R-MO), also involved in the hearings, later became a member of the board of directors for RMA Armament, a company that developed a rival body armor system. However, I couldn't find a direct connection between Talent and Interceptor Body Armor or its boards. 😅
Does anyone remember they featured a composite metal bullet that would go through steel plate then essentially explode in tissue of pork shoulder behind the plate BUT when it hit the tissue first, it dumped all energy & never made it to the plate... They wanted something that was completely barrier blind but would NOT over penetrate... I have tried for years to find that footage online but I'm convinced it was scrubbed...
When the scale plates went through mil tests they failed most of them. If they were used in 120 degree Middle Eastern heat, the glue would melt and all the scales would fall to the bottom of the plate pouch, making the entire thing pointless. They simulated this and the disc plates acted like coins in a hip pocket.
@@sylvainh2o it wasn't too heavy, it was dismantling itself because the adhesive used to stick the overlapping plates together sucked and failed under desert temperatures, it was also very expensive to maintain and knowing the DoD they scrapped it because it was going to cost them a lot of money
@@julian23561 It's the same materials as they make the plates to protect the crew served mounts on USN ships. The USN uses about 6 inch thick panels of laminate(super heavy, bolted to brackets bolted to the deck) which alternate between a layer of cermic squares and sheets of kevlar. Yes, it delaminates and is replaced rather than being fixed. I asked and was told "these are f(*#$&(*#$ expensive to repair".
@@Ozark-nq9uu Sorry to correct you but Dragon skin never made it to issue status. Matter of fact, when we deployed we were informed that those that had bought it could wear it, after they waived their burial benefits for using non-approved body armor. There were units that tested it, but it never reached the status of full adoption by the DoD.
That intro was the perfect time to have Mere involved lol. "Where's my princess?" cut to Mere in her normal disappointed stair, then turns and walks away shaking her head.
You gotta remember that this was before light weight stronger AR500 plates were really a thing and Ceramic plates were the best rifle round stoppers of the day. The problem was that a single large ceramic plate shattered and powderized after just one shot. So the idea was to make a ceramic scale armor that could take multiple shots. It actually DID work as long as those multiple shots weren't all right on top of eachother.
Man I remember those lawsuits that went back and forth. Pinnacle was sued by DoD and gold star families were suing the DoD for "robbing their loved ones of armor that would have saved them"
That military contract got shot down as and "unsafe" product. Later, some guy found a vest on Ebay and the Feds went after him. There was some shadiness regarding how the inventor got shut down, and who he was competing with at the time for the military contract, follow the money. I'm curious as to what ever happened to the inventor of that armor.
I remember reading a lot about this armour when it came out, and was seriously thinking of buying one, as I was doing some high risk raids and searches at the time. The one thing I most wanted to see was the round it was more-or-less designed to resist, the 7.62x39 out of an AK or SKS. Cheers, L in Canada
I’ve commented it years ago, and it’s still relevant, during the intro it’s sounds like a bunch of empty shotgun shells fall. But in the video they’re all full
The proof of concept for scale-like armor was feasible. I think the limiting factor was the quailty of adhesives back then. Id like to see a company try this again
@@TheDancingBearOnWT That's just the gun-grabbing, control freak's excuse. Crazy people and criminals don't need firearms to do what they do. Only law abiding citizens get effected by gun restrictions and the gun grabbers know this, so don't listen to their communistic propaganda.
Oh, hey I get to comment on something I know about. I was a menial go-fer for the group doing some of the stress testing of Dragon Skin at Aberdeen and got to witness testing. To answer some of the questions you had (and ignoring the weight issue, since you summed that up perfectly): 1) Dragon Skin is, in sterile conditions, shot-for-shot, more protective than the IBA that was the standard armor at the time. Plate in the IBA will catch 2-5 rounds, whereas *each* individual scale of DS can catch 1-2 rounds, but the odds of getting hit in the same scale twice is tiny. It *was* flatly more protective. In sterile conditions, when the scales were struck directly by incoming fire. 2) The nature of the scales (overlapping from top to bottom) created mobility issues; essentially it became hard to bend forward if the bottom of the DS overlapped your natural waist. This can true of a solid strike plate as well, so it wasn't a deal-breaker. 3) The glue used to hold the plates in place had issues holding together in high temperatures, resulting in plates drifting around or coming loose altogether. This was an issue (it's not like we were fighting anywhere especially hot in the early to mid 2000s, right?), but it could have been fixed by the manufacturer. It was also this issue which tended to produce the certification failures: a loose plate can be forced out of the way by even a low-caliber round, and let the round through, which you seem to have discovered in the video. 4) Our group found that oblique hits to the *side* of plates would cause a "tearing" chain reaction (multiple plates ripping away laterally around the circumference of the body) that would tear holes in the protection and infringe on the wearer's movement enough that they might have to abandon the body armor. This was intrinsic to the design; any overlapping scale armor would have this problem. This issue was exacerbated by the glue problem above. 5) There was minimal cervical vertebrae protection. You notice this at roughly 18:30 in the video. This was evidently left off for a combination of shoulder mobility, user comfort, and so the user could easily keep their head up while firing from prone (if you've got the plates going all the way up to the base of the neck, your neck is supporting that weight while you hold your head up). The small plates are not as mutually supporting as a single large plate in an IBA (duh, when you lift one corner of a large plate, the whole thing moves), so this is intrinsic to the design. 6) Here's the big one. The Dragon Skin was NOT meaningfully user-serviceable. With an IBA, if you have your plate shot up and you make it back to safety, you can drop in a replacement plate with no *serious* loss of protection, since the strike plate (and not the IBA) forms the bulk of the protection against incoming small arms fire. You can be back out there with a new plate in minutes. With Dragon Skin, once it's been hit, the entire rig *must* be taken out of service and returned to a depot (at least) for repair and refurbishment. It was THIS issue, combined with the already-existing logistic support network (ie, sunk cost) that supported IBAs and single-piece strike plates, that ultimately produced a "no-go" recommendation. It's far easier and cheaper to stock a few dozen spare strike plates, than it is to have a few dozen extra DS rigs laying about.
I remember when future weapons was showing the dragon skin armor and thought, what a great breakthrough . I was wondering why other companies wasn't following their technology. Now I know. Kinetic sand is better in my opinion. I love your testing. Keep it up.
@@Will-xl7xp Newton's Third Law. any round with enough power to destroy the organs of its target would also destroy the shooter's organs with its recoil.
@@MattNotFat weight was an issue but once it failed multi AP nothing else mattered… ESAPI performed better. If I remember correctly, some of the materials may have been foreign sourced as well. Which would make it not comply with the Berry Amendment.
@@Slidebite1775 huh interesting. By the way, do you know why ceramic a popular choice to make body armor? I get it's lighter than steel, but it seems like it can only take a few shots before falling apart.
@@MattNotFat ceramic is very hard. BTW, the Esapi plates are actually Boron Carbide. Ceramic is also light, it sucks to be in a truck or helicopter while wearing soft armor and two plates….
