Posted on 10/21/2004 10:31:16 AM PDT by Mini-14
CENTRAL LAKE, Mich. -- Second Chance Body Armor Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after being hit with lawsuits in Massachusetts and at least nine other states accusing it of selling defective bulletproof vests to police officers.
One lawsuit blames the company -- the nation's largest manufacturer of soft, concealable body armor for law enforcement -- in the shooting death of a California police officer. Another, brought by the state of Utah, led to a $210,000 settlement.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
bang
Well, we all know this will soon be President Bush's fault!
Interesting. You can't sue a police officer who was supposed to keep your relative from being killed but didn't, but the police can sue a ballistic armor company for making a garment that's supposed to resist bullet impacts but doesn't, or doesn't enough.
Victory for John Edwards. Now police will have to share their body armor if they can find any at all.
So will the cops or soldiers who can't get armor get it from the trial lawyers association?
August 2004
Researchers, Manufacturers Search for
Better Body Armor
by Joe Pappalardo
Demands for body armor improvements are driving the defense
industry to create near- and far-term solutions to provide lightweight,
reliable protection from a variety of ballistic threats.
Long-range developments, drawn from anticipated advances in
nanotechnolgy, could see battle dress instantly morphing into a
protective system that would ward off not only shrapnel and bullets,
but also poison gas and biological weapons, researchers predict.
Although the current system, Interceptor, has been met with positive
reviews from soldiers and doctors, the military is asking more from its
body armor and seeking to lessen its weight, according to military
researchers and industry professionals. This is placing demands on the
research community and industry to come up with immediate fixes,
while steadily raising the performance bar for future body armor
systems.
Interceptor provides protection from small arms and fragments for the
vital organs in the torso, utilizing small arms protective inserts (SAPI)
plates that are designed to flatten bullets and distribute the shot’s
energy to the hard ceramic composite. Interceptor’s outer tactical
vest weighs 8.4 pounds and protects against fragmentation and 9 mm
rounds. The protective plates, that are built to withstand multiple small
arms hits, increase the weight to 16.4 pounds.
The problem, discovered with dismay on the ground in Iraq, is that the
system leaves soldiers’ limbs and sides exposed. In response, the
Army recently purchased tens of thousands of shoulder and underarm
attachments from Point Blank Body Armor, of Seale, Ala., the sole
supplier of the Interceptor system. “Doctors were saying injures were
like tan lines,” said Dan Power, vice president of Point Blank. “It’s the
extremities that are being hit.”
In late April, Point Blank won a contract to supply the Marines with the
arm and side attachments, called APES (armor protection enhancement
system). The two-piece, 5-pound system attaches to Interceptor vests
and protects soldiers’ biceps and underarms against 9 mm shots and
shrapnel. In late May, the first of 33,000 sets arrived in Kuwait and
Iraq.
A similar system for the army, called the dorsal auxiliary protection
system (DAPS), was ordered in May. By October, roughly 50,000 DAPS
systems will be in Iraq. Both systems required quick-turnaround
modifications of off-the-shelf armor used by SWAT and other police
units, company officials said.
The added protection is composed of two pieces that are attached to
Interceptor with Velcro and snaps. They pad the underarm and
shoulders, with elastics and webbing strategically placed to prevent
the armor from shifting while preventing stiffness.
The speed of the military’s demands has transformed Point Blank’s
business, said Ronda Graves, chief operating manager. She said the
company’s three facilities, operating with a total of 750 employees,
ships body armor to U.S. forces daily.
“The big problem is we need ballistic fabric,” Graves said. “We get the
fabric at 7 a.m. By 9 a.m., we have it spread and tested. The DAPS will
go out the door that day, or at the latest early the next morning.”
The boom has not gone unnoticed by investors. Point Blank’s stock has
risen 133 percent over the course of just a year, and the company is
opening a new research center in Florida to help quickly tailor
mission-specific armor products to customers.
Fabric and plate production companies are also expanding to meet the
need. ArmorWorks Inc., of Tempe, Ariz., has recently been awarded
more than $50 million in contracts from the Army and Marines to
produce 100,00 SAPI plates for body armor, ensuring their status as
the leading producer for the U.S. military.
The Dutch chemical group DSM in May opened a production line in
North Carolina to produce its polyethylene fiber, Dyneema. Company
spokesmen said the site would be dedicated to military orders first to
meet growing demands. During the past year, DSM supplied Dyneema
to reinforce cockpit doors, and is now looking to the body armor
market for further growth.
Also this year, Honeywell announced a $20 million investment to boost
production of its body armor fibers, called Spectra, to meet increased
demand from U.S. military. Spectra fibers are used in the SAPI plates of
the Interceptor system.
Honeywell has been operating its Spectra fiber operations 24 hours a
day, seven days a week for several years to fulfill customer demand
and will continue to do so throughout the expansion, expected to be
completed in the second quarter of 2005, company officials said.
Layers of Spectra fibers, a polyethylene that has been improved in
recent years to stop large caliber rounds, are bonded with ceramics to
improve SAPI plates. The fibers, according to Honeywell, are pound for
pound stronger than steel. A cross hatch of these fibers are fused
together with heat to form a composite.
Researchers are working on longer-term revolutions in body armor. At
the Natick Soldiers Center in Massachusetts, researchers are testing
new fibers in search of the next big thing. Large hopes are pegged on
a fiber called M5, which gave a surprise performance during tests
performed in December 2003. “We shot it, and it did better than
expected,” said Phillip Cunniff, a ballistics researcher at Natick.
The polymer’s unique molecular structure, which features a lateral
network of hydrogen bonds along with the typical covalent bonding,
increases the fabric’s strength. The weight would be approximately 40
percent less than the Kevlar used in Interceptor, Cunniff said. Another
feature of M5 fiber is excellent thermal and flame protection. Besides
helmets and vests, M5 fiber could also be used for structural
composites for vehicles and aircraft.
The quest to revolutionize body armor has also been taken up by
nanotechnologists, who are seeking the formula to new composites
too add added benefits to SAPI plates.
New properties can be drawn from existing materials by combining
them at molecular levels, said Ned Thomas, director of MIT’s Institute
for Soldier Nanotechnologies. The institute, operating under an annual
budget of $10 million, was established in May 2002 to pursue projects
that apply the emerging science to Defense Department priorities.
Size and shape mean everything at the nanotech level, which is
one-billionth a meter, since those qualities influence the behavior of
familiar materials, Thomas said. For example, if steel and nylon could be
intermeshed and organized properly, the new substance could have
suitable properties for body armor.
The rule of mixtures—which essentially means that a mixture will
experience more properties of Substance A if more Substance A is
added—does not apply to nanotech because of the small dimensions.
Thus, a small infusion of force-resistant material into cloth could go a
long way to increasing protection.
One such idea involves applying a piezoelectric layer—which converts
an incoming force into an electronic signal, such as the keys of a
laptop computer—into redesigned SAPI plates, creating an energy web
that would distribute the force from an incoming projectile.
But Thomas said the true breakthroughs hold more promise than
incremental enhancements. “What’s driving people to nano-land is not
to make something 5 percent better but 500 percent better,” he said.
“The advantages are going to come with the surprises.”
Thomas said immediate attention is being paid to using carbon
nanotubes to reinforce systems and disperse energy over a wide
area, the essence of body armor. Nanotubes can change properties
based on the size, shape and twists of the tiny structures, opening up
unexplored possibilities to change familiar materials in fundamental
ways. Discovered in 1991, scientists are now only beginning to
determine their properties and uses, including forming tubes into
chains of nano-length ropes that could prove to be the ultimate carbon
fibers.
The ideal warfare suit would change from a comfortable fabric to body
armor after being exposed to stimulus, such as an incoming bullet,
Thomas said. The clothing would stiffen to distribute the impact in the
time it would take the bullet’s nose to penetrate the first layer of
cloth. “A microsecond is a lot of time for a molecule,” Thomas said.
Such a system could be designed to react to laser designators or
weapons, he noted, and would revert back into its comfortable form
after the threat withdrew. It could also be configured to react to
chemical or biological threats, playing goaltender against pathogens or
gas particles.
Other far-flung advances, according to ISN founding partner DuPont,
could include sleeves that can double as hard casts for broken limbs,
built-in biosensors for medics, interwoven communication equipment,
and chameleon camouflage abilities.
Such systems are feasible within twenty years, but require
un-chartable breakthroughs. “I think the answer is maybe,” Thomas
said of the possibility of such body armor to become reality. “It’s not
‘no.’”
A big Kudos to trial lawyers
> ... Zylon's producer, Toyobo Co. of Japan. Toyobo has
> acknowledged that tests show Zylon loses 10 percent to 20
> percent of its durability within two years of manufacture.
Umm, OK.
What do we know about the adverse cases?
Were they really the result of substandard vest performance,
or were the user (or post-facto lawyer) expectations too high?
I think your analysis is wrong. Someone started a thread over at packing.org, and a police officer reported that the zylon material really is junk, and is failing to stop rounds.
I would be all for soldiers lugging trial lawyers into battle, one in front and one behind each one, so the lawyers take the bullets intended for that soldier.
Crud. They developed and implemented an advanced technology (remarkably thin, lightweight ballistic vests) featuring new chemestry, and got slain for not realizing it deteriorates faster (to wit, years) than expected. SC made the best ballistic vests; now people are going to suffer/die because lawyers saw fresh meat.
Is someone/group deliberately trying to make the USA defenseless?
Uh, what? How does this relate to the story? And why wouldn't you sue the PERP responsible for killing your relative?
Maybe Zylon is failing. The solution is to get it out of the field ASAP and continue R&D. The solution is NOT to destroy the lead company over a new-technology mistake, cease production of the best vests out there, and discourage anyone from developing better materials.
How many more will now die because they leave off their more heavy and uncomfortable alternative vests?
Of course, if you are injured because the vest failed to stop a round, that is a different matter. Those individuals should be compensated.
It's a new material that has an unexpectedly rapid deterioration rate (BP vests do deteriorate and have a finite lifespan, this was just a lot shorter than predicted). Once discovered, SC moved fast to make good by replacing all Zylon vests at no cost. Sadly the lawyers moved in too.
Was there no warning label that the vest would not protect against headwounds?
Works for me.
I suggest that they hold a lawyer in front of them, when they go into dicey situations.
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