New research has developed foam that can stop armor-piercing bullets

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Looks promising. Not what we would normally think of as foam, it's made of air bubbled metal foam. Anything effective that also lessens the weight a soldier has to carry is a great improvement.

Thanks for posting the article.
 
Lots of potential there in reducing armor weight. It's really the boron carbide (ceramic) strike face turning the bullet into dust in the video. The metal foam is underneath absorbing energy and stopping the bullet fragements and remaining hard core that penetrate the strike face. Then there is an aluminum backing plate or kevlar backing layer to stop anything that makes it through the metal foam.
 
Boron carbide is the 3rd hardest material known to man and has been used in tank armor for decades. Boron Carbide plates backed by porous metal (basically a strong bumper with a crush zone behind), backed by Kevlar. It sounds heavy, stiff, and non-breathing.

Mike
 
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Yeah, I don't think you are likely to ever have AP protection and breathability on wearable armor.

Right. The currently fielded armor weighs around 7lbs per square foot of coverage. A front plate is about 1 square foot. The new technology (metal foam) will provide comparable protection (if it works reliably) at a weight of 3-5 lbs per square foot (depending on the design that ends up being fielded). That's a significant weight reduction in terms of comfort and wearability.

Regardless of the effectiveness of the foam, all Level IV AP armors (including this one) have a ceramic strike plate. Most use boron carbide. It is very hard to see how this can be done in a breathable manner. It is very hard to stop an AP M2 bullet (the Korean-era armor piercing 30-06 bullet they test with) at 2880 fps. Really, it is impressive that they have designed an armor that stops it weighing only 7 lbs per square foot, much less the metal foam design that is much lighter.
 
The arms race is supposed to include armor and counters to armor that is natural scientific progression.

When defense won out in the arms race is when we had fortified castles that could defeat any attack. Pouring boiling oil and raining down arrows from relative safety from above. Siege weapons would try to counter it but generally if a city could outlast a siege and not starve to death they won. Fortunately we don't have widespread impenetrable modern bunkers tyrants rule from.
It supported royalty that couldn't be unseated and just had to install towers and castles various places. They were also the primary ones that could afford plate and earlier on chain mail and had a clear advantage against many weapons.
Eventually most of the world was ruled by intermarrying royalty so firmly seated that they established god gave them authority to rule from a birthright taught as a religious tenant. It took hundreds of years to shake that off. Then called mining, or tunneling with gunpowder and blowing up fortifications would lead to a world not controlled by who controlled the defenses. The big artillery that could smash through castles came along as well. Gunpowder actually freed us from that world where not being born royalty made you forever second class.
While weapons too deadly are scary, weapons not deadly enough throw the balance of power into the toilet. We are supposed to evolve with armor and counters to armor.

We have legislation that limits civilian application of less powerful ways to defeat armor though. Something as basic as hard sharp metals, principles behind edged and puncturing weapons going back thousands of years to defeat armor is outlawed in bullets.
This makes body armor disproportionately more powerful than it really is if someone applies basic science.
 
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