Government Issues Status Report on Body Armor

No doubt about it – body armor saves lives. More than 2,700 police officers have been saved since lightweight body armor became readily available 30 years ago. An officer who is not wearing armor is 14 times more likely to suffer a fatal injury and an officer who is. And in a post-9/11 world, with men and women fighting in Iraq and the threat of home-based terrorism ever present, the importance of body armor cannot be overstated.

But the body armor industry has suffered a black eye of late. Questions surrounding the reliability of a fiber used in the manufacture of body armor – Zylon – have resulted in accusations of wrongdoing, suspicions and fear from endusers, and misinformation and confusion surrounding this important issue.

In tackling this story, UniformMarket sought to set the record straight. As seasoned industry insiders, we attempted to interview the various manufacturers of body armor. We wanted to know what they were doing to allay the fears of their customers, and how they were faring in the wake of such negative publicity. More importantly, we wanted to hear about their products, new innovations and old standbys, because we know the industry is about more than just Zylon.

Yet we could not obtain comments for this article. Numerous phone calls went unreturned. Others we were able to speak with stated that although publicity about their products would be welcomed, any mention of Zylon would be too controversial at this time, and they thus could not cooperate.

So this piece instead will focus on the government’s investigation into the body armor industry and the incident that sparked the probe. Highlights from its latest findings; “Status Report to the Attorney General on Body Armor Safety Initiative Testing and Activities,” issued by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) on December 27, 2004, appear below.

Background. At the request of law enforcement, the NIJ in the early ‘70s developed a voluntary body armor standards and testing program to verify the performance and safety of body armor. While NIJ’s program relies on voluntary participation by manufacturers, most police departments require that armor be tested and found in compliance before they will purchase the armor.

But testing can be problematic. One issue that has been a challenge for the NIJ is determining the effects of age and use on armor performance. Currently, destructive ballistic testing (testing that destroys the sample tested), is the only method of accurately determining the performance of used armor. The testing also may not be a good indicator of the performance of other armors of identical construction, because they may be of different ages and subjected to different wear, care and environmental conditions. For example, some officers may follow the manufacturer’s care and maintenance instructions, while others may not. Officers also wear their armor in widely divergent climatic regions of the country, creating additional concerns.

Additionally, the process of manufacturing the ballistic fiber, weaving the ballistic material into fabric and assembling he materials into the finished product also may affect the performance of the armor The equipment and chemicals used in the construction process all have an impact on the final product, and changes in these processes may change their performance.

The controversy surrounding Zylon illustrates the difficulties in determining why body armor fails to protect. The first concerns over Zylon-based armor occurred in the summer of 2003, when a Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, police officer was shot and seriously injured when a bullet penetrated the front panel of his Second Chance Ultima armor, which is made of multiple layers of fabric woven from Zylon yarn. While Second Chance is the manufacturer of the armor, Zylon is actually manufactured by the Toyobo Corporation, a Japan-based firm. NIJ obtained the rear panel of the armor in order to test the piece, and found that its tensile strength, a critical property that influences performance, was 30 percent lower on the rear panel than on “new” armors of the same model supplied by Second Chance Body Armor. Armed with this information, the NIJ launched a series to tests designed to determine the reasons behind the Forest Hills incident.

But as of this writing, there are still no definitive conclusions for a host of reasons. While tensile strength was found to be lower on the back panel, NIJ was never able to obtain the front panel of the officer’s vest, and therefore was never able to determine its tensile strength. Secondly, NIJ sought to attain similar tensile strengths in other armor that it tested and in the Forest Hills armor. However, other mechanical properties might also influence ballistic strength, but they were not measured because it is difficult to accurately do so. Thirdly, the particular cause of degradation might also influence how these materials respond to ballistic impacts. It is not known whether Zylon yarn damaged by chemical means will respond the same as that damaged by mechanical means. Finally, the presence of moisture in an armor panel can also influence ballistic resistance. The moisture content in the interior of the officer’s armor panel at the time he was shot is not known.

Since the publicity hit over a year ago, Second Chance has been the target of numerous lawsuits from class action lawyers and attorneys general. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on October 17, 2004.

Research conducted thus far has supported the fact that ballistic-resistant materials, including Zylon, can degrade. As stated above, there are numerous factors, or combination thereof, that appear to influence the ballistic resistance of body armor. New techniques to measure degradation should lead to a protocol for aging new armor to evaluate its performance, a definitive test for determining the performance level of armor in field use, and eventually to a non-destructive test method for determining the performance level of used armor.

Rather than producing a “smoking gun” or industry indictment, the NIJ has called upon manufacturers to “understand the vulnerabilities of materials used in their armor designs, take steps to protect the materials against these vulnerabilities and accounts for any sources of performance loss during the armor design process.”

The NIJ is scheduled to release the second part of its investigation in the Spring of 2005. UniformMarket would still like to hear from manufacturers about the Zylon issue, and about the other products that help protect the lives of the nation’s law enforcement community.

To read the full report, visit www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij