Inventor Says Armor Can Take Multiple .50 cal Hits

Nano Tubes!! Cool stuff!! We're talking vehicle and personal protection plates. It's called Kryon

A manufacturer in Arizona says he’s developed a ballistic plate formua that uses an alloy of aluminum and carbon nanotubes to build armor plates strong enough to protect against multiple high-caliber hits — including .50 cal ammo.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, John Bourque, the CEO of Bourque Industries has developed a material called Kryron that can be used as armor for vehicles and personal plates.

According to a company press release, a Kryron Terminator ballistic armor plate (hard armor plate) showed some impressive multi-hit capability when “a Terminator Fat Boy plate was shot multiple times with .50 caliber AP ammunition and .30 caliber AP ammunition, then reversed and shot with the same rounds again, with no penetration, ricochet, shatter or spall.” And, that’s not all. A Kryron Terminator Thin Line plate “sustained several dozen rounds of 9mm machine gun fire at exceptionally close range with no penetration, ricochet, shatter or spall.”

If they can keep the weight reasonable for the personal plates they may just have something out of this world.

kitup.military.com...

bourqueindustries.take2pro.net...

Yeah ... but what does you spleen look like when its all said and done.

Originally posted by SirMike
Yeah ... but what does you spleen look like when its all said and done.

Internal injuries are better to deal with in the field then massive gaping wounds.

But, for personal body armor, stopping the .50 round will just smash your insides. The concussion alone will not only smash, but sever arteries.

reply to post by SirMike


I imagine you'd be pretty banged up from the hit.
But at least you'd be alive.

If I'm not mistaken most of the damage done from a .50 cal hit is due from cavitation through the body.

Can someone confirm this?

thats pritty funny jon, i am in the marine sniper corps. and we shoot .50 cal snipers every day the impact force at 2000 yards is 2764lbs/square inch we have to know that to know how much steel the bullet can penetrate 1 and 3/4 inch steel plate at 2000 yards.

answers.yahoo.com...

Pretty cool.

Although, I think the impact alone would be enough to still possibly kill someone.

In my opinion, it will only be good for vehicles, I've noticed that the only real armour that could actually save a life would be to combine Graphene as a first layer and a sillicon armour (It's here on ATS some where! ) as a second layer to absorb the shock. However, good find!

Jamie.

reply to post by jibeho


Nanotubes are the material of the future!

I can't imagine taking a 50 cal round to the body and living though! That would be intense, and you would surely wind up with broken bones, contusions, and possible internal damage. It would be like getting hit by a truck mirror as it drives past you at 45 mph!

Sounds like they have a hard armor plate for vehicles and a thin plate for personal protection. They did not mention the .50 hits on the thin plates. What amazes me most is the technology and the science behind a new alloy that can save many lives. It appears that they have a contract to equip some LMVs with the plates. I would certainly feel safer in the sardine can knowing it was armored with these.

reply to post by jibeho


Ahhh....but here is the kicker

This is the sort of things we get when the military spends money. We must allow the military to spend money in order to stay on top. I will however admit, there are things that the money could be better spent on and does need some oversight, like $20,000 dollar hammers. But on things like this, spend away.

why can't they coat it in some sort of rubber that resists the shock so you're not bleeding internally of a hematoma.

or minature springs connected to rubber or something, you know? underneath the kevlar

Yeah, some company came out with Dragon skin a couple of years back but the military turned it down even if it was a superior armor.

Dragon Skin Part 1
Dragon Skin Part 2

From what I can understand from the past several of years of watching military videos, reading books and what not, It seems to me they prefer a soldier dies on the battle field than severely injured...it costs less to bury and to hopitalize and pay a life time of disability.

I doubt this new armor will be aproved for use.

Originally posted by grey580
Can someone confirm this?

thats pritty funny jon, i am in the marine sniper corps. and we shoot .50 cal snipers every day the impact force at 2000 yards is 2764lbs/square inch we have to know that to know how much steel the bullet can penetrate 1 and 3/4 inch steel plate at 2000 yards.

answers.yahoo.com...

Last I checked, it was Marine Corps Scout/Sniper, I have no idea of what the "marine sniper corps" is... And I was in the Navy... Powdering Marine butts and making sure they at least tried not to get the clap when going ashore...

As for the ballistic data... You can see for yourself what the energy is for these non-military loadings for .50 BMG... I've always viewed terminal kinetic energy in foot-lbs or Newtons.

There are a number of 50 cal rounds and i note that they don't claim to stop 50 BMG.
A .50 BMG round can produce between 10,000 and 15,000 foot pounds impact.
if anyone is still standing after being hit by a 50 BMG it would be like being hit by a Motor cycle going about 40 mile a hour

When you talk about 50 BMG you have rounds like the 50 BMG SLAP round that is very hard to stop.

These nano materials are amazing but a better solution to stopping sniper rounds would be to not place our troops in harms way. How much can we afford to protect every soldier?
We've already broken the economy with government spending on wars and security.
There won't be a Nation left to defend at the rate we're going.

It couldn't be an alloy, because aluminum and coal can't be smelt. So that's kind of a composite, where aluminum is warp, and carbon nanotubes are weave inside warp. I assume it has a high cost per square meter, because usually the amount of weave is few/over a dozen % of whole mass of composite.
So military couldn't afford it for personal defense. Maybe for some aircrafts?

Nano tubes are really expensive. I think it's like $100 for a gram of the regular carbon variety. There is absolutely no way they are going to be useable in infantry armor until some major manufacturing breakthrough happens. I've been following nano tech for a while, and currently this nanotube dream, is a nanopipe dream.

Its cool technology, but don't get to excited, it has got a while to mature. I'm really hoping this technology isn't just for military applications.

Although this is an unprecedented shot stopper if its as good as the company makes out, the assertion of the membership that an impact would still be lethal is , in all probability correct. As another poster has pointed out, truely effective personal armour would have to have a second , extremely efficient shock absorbing layer to it. One currently existant armour component which assisted the Trojan S full armour suit by Troy Hurtubise in recording a negligable amount of displacement (when slammed by various rounds including twelve gauge from a distance of six feet, walking in all the way to two feet) was his discovery of a product he calls Ballistic Foam.

If this component was added to the armour plate, on the side that sits upon the body, this would drasticaly reduce the amount of force delivered to the body inside the armour. However, because 50. hit harder, the near zero displacement would probably be much larger... You would probably be looking at the same sort of pain and damage you would get from just wearing kevlar and getting a 357. in the chest.

reply to post by jibeho

What amazes me most is the technology and the science behind a new alloy that can save many lives.

The irony is of course, that the technology is created with the purpose of aiding in killings.

This is really silly, the USA cannot stop walmart homemade bombs today and it thinks this will work? Armor always loses.

I mean look at the amount of weight that soldiers have to put on in the sweltering desert heat, no wonder the troops are ineffective, they are just carrying weights around like Mr. potato head.

I did a report on space elevators once for a class. I had to cover nanotubes since they are planned to be used in the tether system since they are the strongest material we can create.

Only problem is that we can only produce a few inches of it at a time because of the process involved.

So in other words, it makes me sick to see carbon nanotubes being implemented into armor when it should be used for progressive technology