Dragon Skin

There has been quite a bit of discussion in Washington and the media about our military body armor.

Apparently, Dragon Skin body armor, manufactured by, Pinnacle Armor has initiated quite a battle in Washington and within the media over if it passed military testing or failed them. Some of the people from the armor's company have said the military testing results were created to show their body armor failed.

In the mean time, NBC broadcast results using the opinion of a highly respected test scientist, Dr. Phillip Coyle - the former director of test and evaluation at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration to certify results of side-by-side tests conducted at NBC's expense in Germany.

That was all well and good until the Senate called him to testify and he was confronted with all of the military testing data, then he stated under oath that the Dragon Skin body armor "was not ready for prime time." Click Here for full article.

While all of this is going on the body armor has had quite a bit of media attention on The History Channel and The Discovery Channel on shows like, Mail Call and FutureWeapons. Both hosts were drooling over the armor and could not believe the results of direct hits.

It will take a while to sort all of the conflicting testimony and independent tests results out, but for now it defiantly appears that the body armor will not be issued to our military.

I have included a video from the show FutureWeapons in which the host fires every imaginable type of round at the vest and then, believe this or not, sets off a fragmentation grenade under the vest with zero penetration!

I don’t know what the military tests encompassed, but from the video I am totally impressed. Just about any combat vet reading this will tell you that a fragmentation grenade at that range will make for a very bad day and here we can clearly see that the shrapnel did not penetrate the Dragon Skin body armor.

This made a believer out of me!

After watching this video I have to admit that something just is not right about the whole negativity from the military. It is evident that more people needs to become involved in this and have independent studies done.

On a personal note, I wore body armor for a large part of my life, from its bulky and big inception to today’s lightweight vests. If I was in a situation again where I would have to wear body armor, I would be wearing Dragon Skin.

www.military.com has a link for people to contact public officials on Dragon Skin, I am including their link here.

Alert: Tell your public officials how you feel about this issue.