Dragon Skin on future weapons

hey did anybody checkout out the segment on dragon skin on the latest future weapons episode (discover ch) I knew the for a while that it was a pretty good system but here is some video proof of just how sturdy the system truly is. it took 2 clips of armor piercing ak-47 rounds, 2 clips of armor piercing 5.56 rounds from and m4 and 2 clips of 9mm from an mp5 on the same vest, same side, from extremely close range in a matter of minutes and NO PENETRATION!!!! they even took the SAME vest and placed the back side of it on top of a frag-grenade mounted on a test dummy, and still NO PENETRATION, the vest was ripped to shreds on the outside, but nothing made it past the inside part of the vest. yet the people in charge have been saying that this was vastly inferior to the interceptor vest even though independent testing and user testimony said otherwise, i had another thread up a while ago following that whole debacle, to those that haven't seen the clip it's a real eye opener, and just thinks there are active orders now against soldiers spending their own money to purchase dragon skin for use in combat.....


I've tend to follow emerging military/LE equipment for the past few years as a hobby and tend to go with well-informed and non-biased sources and been touting dragon skin for a while now to anybody who would listen and have people call it "hogwash" or whatever but anybody who bother to dig a little into what was going on with the interceptor system been adopted and dragon skin which was coming out around the same time would have seen all the BS going around back then...there were even other vest system which weren't as promising as dragon skin but still better than interceptor which were completely overlooked and belittled for the in-house interceptor.

Don't the generals wear dragon skin, while the soldiers wear interceptors?
I've seen some stuff about this, and I'm sure it all comes down to money, personal business favors, or both.

And doesn't dragon skin protect the wearer from up to +5 longswords...

yes, I'm a hack

Still though, if the generals in field are wearing dragon skin...
makes you think

yeah, i read that the generals and top commanders were wearing it to "test it" while the avrage joe soldier isnt allowed to. Pure BS!

Originally posted by Morkoc96
yeah, i read that the generals and top commanders were wearing it to "test it" while the avrage joe soldier isnt allowed to. Pure BS!

Hmm... so it makes me wonder. Would an average joe soldier be allowed to buy his own Dragon Skin? I'd bet he wouldn't, because when he's the only one that survives a shower of bullets it will raise too many questions.

Hard to beleive that any vest can sustain such a lot of abuse.
Were those rounds actually armor piercing? Or maybe they used WOLF ammo for testing?
Anyway, fact that there is no penetration does not mean soldier will not get fatal trauma.

But if it is true, militaries in the future will have to switch back to full powered rifle rounds. M14 back in action.

I don't think this is the video your talking about but it covers similar testings:

AK-47 Military Ball Ammunition (40 rounds at 20ft)
9mm Military Ball Ammunition (150 sounds at 10ft)



Although I love to read about new technology like this I'm not as clued up when concerning military technology, I suspect if what people are saying is true and this protection is as good as the videos and people's opinions say it is then the main reason troops are not getting this body armour is because of cost and political reasons (aka money).

[edit on 24-1-2007 by UK Wizard]

a lot of soldiers starting using it at the same time interceptor vest was adopted on their own dime, (interceptor being a joint government and private sector endevour with a companies with a lot of contracts and relation with the government) I had a thread on this whole debacle a like a year ago (www.abovetopsecret.com...') soldiers were threatened with loosing all their benefits if caught using this armor. even after this order came down top generals a lot of mercs and top level officials were using this. there was a story over a year ago that raised a lot of question when some private contractors where ambushed by insurgents some people died in the attacked and one of the contractors had dragon skin he was shot twice in the back with ak-47 rounds in the mayhem and didn't even realized it until after getting back to base and taking off his armor (link with pictures from attack: www.military.com...


UK Wizard

that's an older video from the company that makes dragon skin, the vid I saw was from the future weapons show, it's really is an eye opener, been looking around, as soon as I find it online I would post it or provide a link to it.

To be honest anything new and shiny would be welcome...
The british army (namely ME) still get issued body armour that have a armoured bit about the size of a small envelope on each side.

Suddenly i felt alot more uncomfortable rolling around in the back of an open topped landrover in a convoy where the other vehicles are armoured and im wearing this pissant lack of armour. FUN.

smile

phantom

www.ksee24.com...

www.ksee24.com...

This one has far more coverage of the new body armor system. Trust me, if you want to know more about it, these links shows it.

giving program now, the grenade part is about to be done right now (11 pm eastern discovery channel)

dragon skin looks awesome, those demonstrations are going to make people demand every soldier has this armor considering it was on national TV, I know the soldiers already demand it.

the THAD system looked good aswell.

yeah I saw it... and was very impressed! Complete protection from frag grenades from zero-point range? Amazing. I wonder if/when the military will start using it? Or have they been using it for a while already?

Either way, coolnes abounds with this product.

EDIT: Ok I admit, I posted without reading priorposts. But looks like you guys think it has been tested in the field already. So I'll reform my question... I wonder if/when the military is going to replace all current body armor with dragon skin? And if that occurs, wouldnt there be a sulplus of military grade body armor somewhere? wonder who gets that stuff...

[edit on 10-2-2007 by damajikninja]

Interceptor works, it just doesn't work outside the ballistic insert coverage zone which means Iraqis take time to make shots that will beat it and with superior marksmanship training, you get a chance to kill them while they aim. Keeping in mind that nothing saves you from a face shot from a car sniper.

DSkin can be penetrated, you just have to use a particular cartridge/gun combination to do it. The difference is that if you shift to DSkin on even 'some' (SOF) of our deployed units, the projectile will proliferate to beat it and then the Interceptor wearer will be dead no matter where you hit him.

Without mobility enhancement and cooling, effective PBA as a direct fire protection scheme is still impossible because the weight destroys your ability to maneuver effectively as dismounts.

Even as _NO_ PBA will beat an EFP/SFF type ORM and that is where you get the worst of your casualties because everybody is mounted up inside the vehicle and BAD Spall on the troop compartment frags everyone.

If you want to beat the kinds of tactics they are doing today, you need to make the populace as a whole feel the pain of indulging in sport warfare against the Americans and in particular quadruple your sensorization of the battlespace so that 'instead of about half' of IED/ORM attacks and maybe 10-20% of sniping/mortar ones, you kill 80-90%.

It is particularly important to _catch_ a larger number of perpetrators, field court them, execute them and hang or burn the bodies in public, on TV, so that instead of Americans being sidelined 'so long as we stay out of their way', we are once more the most-feared element of the ongoing COIN campaign.

The thing about infantry warfare is that nobody wants to do it effectively because it makes you /hated/ for the sheer dominance you exercise. Every soldier knows that every time he pulls the trigger on some 14-20 year old yutz on the far side of a courtyard, he's gonna get 10 more people mad at him and 'tomorrow' he will be back in among /them/ on another patrol.

BUT.

If you kill enough of them. Horribly enough. They start to learn that individual vengeance is too damn costly overall. And eventually you gain back civil order and can start the crawl-before-walking process again.

DSkin and other force protective measures (FRAG-5 etc.) are only a SMALL part of this.

In particular during active combat sweeps, if you want to survive engaging the enemy, learn to use remote fires (SMAW with thermobaric, SWORDS with Hellhound, and .50 with the 416 rounds if you're 'into Future Weapons' as active propoganda) and make sure the enemy knows that every time you find a building that spits bullets, you WILL put it down in it's entirety using overhead (GBU-38/39/VStrike) or direct force weapons.

Because here too, while it will be bloody until the residents refuse to allow their friends or enemies inside, as soon as they ALL realize that they cannot hide amongst the 'unknown unknowable' of possible collaterals and the need for 'delicate vs. decisive' fires to kill them is removed from our own sides hands-tied force posture, we will see a massive panic on their part in trying to find a new doctrine.

Which is where the sensorization (telephone poles with network CCD coverage on all streets, X20 increase in Predator flights and GCS multi-airframe control capabilities) on our part can begin the process of denying the force coordination on theirs.

A process continued by denying use of the telecomms grid to any Iraqi outside the government.

Now you've proven you will gut them if you catch them. They cannot hide behind women and kids, and they cannot execute 'deep maneuver' even in their own terrain to emplace COE weapons or share targeting for them.

Because if they try, we will shoot the man who 'lost' his cell phone, no questions asked.

The final step is to reduce the Iraqis to the level of animals. Feeding them and giving them cooking gas off the back of U.S. Army trucks with a roving screen of A-UAV and 'stake out' patrols of vehicle born S&D patrols to rapidly counter engage the likely mortar and VBIED response.

Do this, destroying their sense of national cheerleading identity from the fence by proving that they cannot even so much as /eat/ without our permission and you will strip their loyalty back from the totally corrupt government (80% Shiia what the frack did you expect?) and over to the U.S.

So that we can start the delousing and handup-to-standup process _all_ _over_ _again_. Just like we did with the Nazis.

This time, having made it clear that THEY will be held responsible for taming their wild haired youth on the basis of direct shared suffering if they fail. Because we can take away food, water, electricity and mobility if they do not.

Humiliate The Iraqis. Or be Humiliated By Them.

Like out of control children pushing the boundaries at every turn and being _pushed back_ by adults as they come, it's a pure dominance fight now.
And unlike Vietnam and AfG, we have the ability to win if we try.

There is no other choice left.

Not if you don't want an Islamic Fundamentalist Empire across the M.E. Willing to use Terror tactics /across the globe/ to expand their 'influence' even further.

FAIL TO DO THIS. And we might as well leave. Because the only thing the Arabs and their socially backwards 14th century collective vendetta attitudes respect is absolute, raw, **power**.


KPl.

Originally posted by ch1466
Interceptor works, it just doesn't work outside the ballistic insert coverage zone which means Iraqis take time to make shots that will beat it and with superior marksmanship training, you get a chance to kill them while

Rubbish. A negligible percentage of US casulaties in Iraq are from small arms. IEDs, mortars and RPGs are the threat.

Originally posted by ch1466

If you kill enough of them. Horribly enough. They start to learn that individual vengeance is too damn costly overall.

Which is why they use IEDs etc.

Originally posted by ch1466
...The final step is to reduce the Iraqis to the level of animals...

You're talking about reducing the US to the level of animals - below the level of animals - not the Iraqis. You wouldn't just destroy Iraq, you'd destroy America and what it stands for.

Wembley is right, most of the casualties are from IEDs or VBIEDs. Not small arms fire. More than 70% of the casualties are resulted from IEDs, rpgs, VBIEDs. Not from AK47 or PKM. And the most casualties from small arms are from sniper shots, the only tactic with a rifle the insurgents can somehow able to hit the Marines and soldiers from a distance without getting themselves killed. And sometimes they suck at that as well.

I saw the show your talking about and it was awesome. I love Future Weapons anyway its a great show. They part that threw me was the hand grenade they set off under the dragon skin WOW! If was in a combat situation I would defiantly go with that armor.

Wembley,

>>
Rubbish. A negligible percentage of US casulaties in Iraq are from small arms. IEDs, mortars and RPGs are the threat.
>>

If you would learn to stop soundbyting you would realize I spend several sentences dealing with this later on.

It is one of the ironies of this war to me that the media is so /incredibly incompetent/ and the military so _pervasively corrupt_ that we not only hide the percentage casualties on ORMs or Off Route Mines but in fact refuse to call a spade for what it is.

The EFP/SFF systems in use now are not 'improvised'. Not even close.

This doesn't change the fact that the DSkin is not anything but a faster ambulance answer to one small element of a larger overall problem. To which the most basic answer is: You make the killing stop by killing so many more of them than you that they fear fading from the scene altogether.

Fear is a useful tool when you are open about it. When you are covert and killing-with-kindness 'restrained', /then/ is when you start to see kids shot through the back of the head while kneeling to pray for their lives. Whole families butchered to cover up the rape of one young woman.

Yadda de yadda yadda.

But never think that fear is not a tool of the good guy. We cannot afford to be so innocent.


KPl.

Wembley,

>>
Which is why they use IEDs etc.
>>

WHICH IS WHY I SAID THAT ANY PBA IS NOT GOING TO WORK DAMMIT!

>>>
Even as _NO_ PBA will beat an EFP/SFF type ORM and that is where you get the worst of your casualties because everybody is mounted up inside the vehicle and BAD Spall on the troop compartment frags everyone.

If you want to beat the kinds of tactics they are doing today, you need to make the populace as a whole feel the pain of indulging in sport warfare against the Americans and in particular quadruple your sensorization of the battlespace so that 'instead of about half' of IED/ORM attacks and maybe 10-20% of sniping/mortar ones, you kill 80-90%.
>>>

ARE YOU BLIND, ILLITERATE, OR AADD?!

>>
You're talking about reducing the US to the level of animals - below the level of animals - not the Iraqis. You wouldn't just destroy Iraq, you'd destroy America and what it stands for.
>>

And you are ignorant of human psychology on both sides sir because we are already doing _exactly that_ (feeding them sacks of grain and cans of cooking gas off the back of trucks, over which they fight and scream like starving beasts).

I _saw it_ on Macneil Lehrer two days ago, read an MSNBC article on it just a week before that.

The difference between how you treat an animal and how you treat a man is trust and assumption.

You /assume/ that 'modern, civilized, man' will not stoop to blowing up mosques he has forbidden you to enter. Even if he thinks it's high sport to do the same to you.

Not because he is at all 'decent'. But rather because he _knows_ that when he drops to that level of hypocrisy where he is bleeping where he sleeps and thus has lost the will to JUST HOLD ON to what he claims to desire exclusively for himself. As a civillized man.

He has removed the mutual agreement by which ALL men refuse to degrade each others property.

In this, the mosques are the key* and yet 'nobody notices' because, in our false embarrassment over 'just cause' entrance to this slaughter house we equally fail to recognize that, right or wrong, so long as we are there THIS IS STILL A WAR. And as the occupying power we have a right and responsibility to fulfill our part of the Hague conventions in prosecuting it.

OTOH, ask any animal handler, especially those that deal with the 'big dangerous ones' like cattle and horses and hogs and they will tell you that the first thing they do before they go into an enclosed area with even a single specimen is take a moment to 'read' their captive audience's mood.

After which they act with as much discipline and respect as the poor beasts indicates is _safe_.

You don't walk in with your hand out to pet and a smile on your face.

Ever.

If you put the Iraqis on their heels, dealing with the animal inside -every- human mind. They will start to respond, as /centuries/ of indoctrinated bully-psychology have inculcated into their collective psyche, bowing their heads to the strongest power.

If you drop your eyes first, offer them your back, make yourself seem inconsequential or non-dominant in -any part- of their lives, they will see it as weakness.

And they will ignore or attack as the moment suits them.

ARGUMENT:
The difference between assuming men are animals and treating them as such until THEY prove otherwise is simply this-

You know better.

Indeed, if YOU make it clear that there _will be consequences_ to breaking the rules BEFORE it becomes a combat-response 'in the moment'. You capture the MIND inside that social animal with a CHOICE that it can make beyond the immediate environmental stimulus.

And given that these ARE MEN and they DO HAVE the cognitive capacity to both recognize what is wrong and decide upon an alternative, non-violent, route to achieve their objectives,

Then THEY AND YOU have the ability to back away from the danger point as men with the dignity to walk on both feet instead of scuttling about like assassin rats on all fours.

But you must never get down on your knees to 'level the playing field' with their position. You must stay dominant and challenge them to _get up off their heels_. By acting in a manner which is acceptable to all civilized men.

CONCLUSION:
This is a defeated enemy civillian populace people. They became that way the INSTANT Congress _authorized_ this little adventure as a defacto declaration of war.

Thus Hague 42/43 on the Laws of Land Warfare /require/ us to 'pacify and protect' what we have conquered. We did no less in Germany and Japan. The Iraqis _deserve_ no less here.

And we cannot just walk away without destroying our economy and the balance of power in the M.E.


KPl.


*And the second they started shooting mullahs on the steps of their holy houses. The very /instant/ they blew up the Golden Mosque, we should have used their behavior as an excuse to run infidel patrols through all the rest like a firehose to clean out a sewer. Driving forth the trouble makers, eradicating the arms and external guerilla smuggling pipelines and generally humiliating those who have no problem cursing us and instigating unrest among the ill educated and easily swayed.

When we aren't there to prove how weak their words are.

Mosques are the internet cafe`s and pep rallies, training grounds and supply dumps, sanctuaries and embassies of this insurrection. It is time we changed that, even if we have to defile every one of them with GI booted feet on an hourly swept basis.

Full version video of the Dragon Skin on Discovery Channel.