Report to the Attorney General on Body Armor Safety Initiative Testing and Activities
Abstract
On November 17, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the U.S. Department of Justice's Body Armor Safety Initiative in response to concerns from the law enforcement community regarding the effectiveness of body armor in use. These concerns followed the failure of a relatively new Zylon(trademark)-based body armor vest worn by a Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, police officer. The Attorney General directed the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to initiate an examination of Zylon(trademark)-based bullet-resistant armor (both new and used), to analyze upgrade kits provided by manufacturers to retrofit Zylon(trademark)-based bullet-resistant armors, and to review the existing program by which bullet-resistant armor is tested to determine if the process needs modification. As part of the Body Armor Safety Initiative, NIJ has issued two status reports to the Attorney General containing results from the body armor studies. The first two status reports highlighted the following findings: Ballistic-resistant material, including Zylon(trademark) can degrade due to environmental factors, thus reducing the ballistic resistance safety margin that manufacturers build into their armor designs. The ultimate tensile strength of single yarns removed from the rear panel of the Forest Hills armor was up to 30-percent lower than that of yarns from "new" armor supplied by the manufacturer. Artificially-aged armor of the same type that failed in the Forest Hills incident was ballistically tested, but no bullet penetrations occurred. The upgrade kits tested did not appear to bring used armor up to the level of performance of new armor. However, used armors with upgrade kits performed better than the used armors alone.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 24, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA485170