Soft Body Armor Protection

Here comes another important tip from the Personal Defense Network. We're here at the Scottsdale Gun Club on the Titanium Member's range and I've got the director of US PALM, Rob Anderson, here with me. Rob, talk to me about this armor. This is US PALM's Brandley 2011 line-up body armor. We have everything from our brand new concealed carry cut for law enforcement down to a spare bulks cut for civilians.

We have our very popular air save plate carrier and system which is basically a stand alone level four hard plate for civilians. And then we have our Defender series. And today we can also speak about the different sizes we're just now offering them in small, the standard cut, and men's extra large. Now I've seen the Defender series before, and I'm a big fan of it especially when it comes to home defense, personal defense, it's that go to. And now you've got the small sizes for the kids and everything else over there.

But I haven't checked out the hard plate before. Now talk to me about this, because this is something I haven't seen available to civilians yet. Yep this is pretty neat. Basically this was an opportunistic buy for us. We secured a large quantity of these level four stand alone plates.

They're actually multi-kit 308 plates, and if you pull this out, you can see it's just your standard ceramic plate. Now I've seen these a lot with different military students that I've had. And I've test fired against these types of plates before. It's amazing what they'll stop but I've never seen them presented like this for civilian home defense use. So that's pretty amazing that US PALM has been able to bring these to market and at a price point that actually is pretty reasonable.

Absolutely that's one of our business focuses is be able to bring viable products to the commercial user. Now let's get back over here and look at these bigger vests, these law enforcement type vests. This is the kind of thing that you would see on a SWAT team operator, somebody maybe in law enforcement that has a higher risk, higher profile. Absolutely, so this is our Heat vest. This was designed in response to some local agencies that had to deploy in the middle of summer in Phoenix.

So it's a 115 degrees, these guys are out there all wrapped up with basically early 2000 technology. This is absolutely the pinnacle in materials. We have the cooling spacer mesh. We have tier tacticals, PV material, which makes it lighter, and it's basically designed so it's scalable. You can have everything stripped down.

If you just need to hit the bushes with that, or if you're doing a full entry, you can do the yokes, the collars, bicep, tricep, all that stuff. And this is exactly the kind of mesh that we have inside of this vest which creates those little areas for air to move through, Exactly cool off a little bit? Awesome. Well let's get to the Defender vest. The Defender vest is something that I know anyone watching the Personal Defense Network, keeping an eye on the Personal Defense Network, is interested in what they can have in their home or in their vehicle at the go, ready to throw on at any time.

And something like this is perfect even for the family. Absolutely, the smaller sizes are perfect for females. We have actually a lot of police, off-duty police people, folks that run these. The nice thing about them is that they come in different configurations. We have them that are all slick, if it's inappropriate for someone to be a combatant.

Or the handgun models, AR, etc... And the level of the armor in this? So these all have a soft armor solution that's 3A. And we're going to get to shoot some of this today and actually see exactly what that's gonna do? Absolutely.

Awesome, well I appreciate you being here to show us the line. We'll get this table out of the way. We'll get set up for the demo, and I look forward to seeing exactly what these will stop because I think they're a great option for people interested in maximum safety inside of their home or even mounted out of their vehicle. Absolutely. Awesome.

Thanks, Rob. All right, Rob, we got our test set up. We've actually got a Defender vest on this mannequin and we're about 21 feet away. This is the standard testing distance? Absolutely, so what we're gonna shoot today is the standard 3/8 panels that come in the Defender series, which are built to the 04 standard.

I think the interesting thing is everybody, when the new 06 standard came out, they think that the 04 isn't relevant any longer. Actually all it is is a little stiffer than the 06. So in this application the 04 is absolutely a 100% viable. Okay, so I've got nine millimeter, we've got ball ammunition loaded. I'm gonna fire one round and we'll take a look and see what that does.

Excellent All right. Take a look. Let's do it. Entry hole. And you know I think it's interesting to point out too whenever you shoot into material I think a lot of people are used to shooting paper.

They don't even realize what some of this might look like. Absolutely You know so just take that chance to point that out. If you're ever in a situation where you have a family member and you're afraid they may have been shot. People are dealing with adrenaline. People are dealing with shock.

You've gotta look hard to make sure And that's one reason you always want to feel. And make sure everybody's okay. That's right. So we can certainly feel that. I don't even know that we can see that real well from back there.

And as we turn this over, we're not gonna see anything because that slug is definitely, completely contained within there. Now when it comes to the rating, when it come to this 3A rating, what do we expect as far as multiple hits, on something like this? According to NIJ it's one hit. In our testing it's multiple hits. As long as you don't, which is practically impossible to do, stack them up on top of each other, this vest within an inch, if you have nothing within an inch of any of the strikes should contain everything.

All right well let's put a few more rounds into it. And of course this is just a static dummy, it's a static test. I'm standing still. There's no adrenaline, there's no real drama going on. So putting all the shots within an inch or two isn't terribly difficult.

No. So I'm actually gonna try to just go ahead and rapid fire. Yeah absolutely. Spread it out around the vest. More realistically.

And let's see what happens. And then we'll take a look. We've got shots spread out around the vest. We actually did at this point get two shots very close to each other. And sure enough Yep.

That's where we had a little penetration. There you go. So not surprising, the vest did exactly what it was supposed to do. It contained one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different shots at 21 feet, from nine millimeter and ball ammunition, not a hollow point that's gonna expand more rapidly. But as expected two shots right next to each other did push through.

And it's kinda hard to tell exactly how much push through we got, and how much energy would be left. But the vest did exactly what it was supposed to do, and in fact more than it would be advertised to do. Absolutely and I think an interesting thing is that one of the 06 standards, interesting point to make, is that it has to withstand a strike oneage from the edge. This is an 04 standard and it still withstood that strike. Oh yeah that is, and that it is literally right on the edge.

You can get much more on the edge and feel the slug inside. And that's what makes the 06 so much stiffer, is to accommodate that. So again that may or may not be something that we would expect, but it did work here. The Defender vest certainly has proven itself to me. Now I've had one of these for a while.

I got one of the earlier ones from you guys. And I do have it kind of in the closet ready to go and people have seen it on some of the TV shows and stuff when I wear it, I demo it. I'm a little more confident in it now. Certainly I took your word for it. But it's nice to actually be able to test it.

We actually go and test everything before we offer it to the public. Let's get another one. Let's step up from the nine millimeter to 45. I'll let you put a few rounds into one. Excellent.

Great. All right we've got him set up. Raised him up a little bit. You're angle is a little bit higher than mine. Now what are we gonna be shooting this guy with?

Uh, 45, 230 grain ball. Cool, I'll get out of your way. We'll try one round first again? One round first. Perfect.

Sure enough entry wound right there. One thing to take into consideration when you're doing this and you start stacking stuff up it does add a level of ballistic protection. So magazines, flashlights, that kind of stuff. Absolutely. And of course a little bit of a deformation there.

I can feel the slug in there but nothing came through. Not surprising. Now when you test these, and I know you've done a lot of extensive testing, what do you see in terms of performance when we talk about nine millimeter versus 45? Some people would say "Well the 45's heavier, it's gonna push through faster." Some people say "The nine millimeter is smaller, faster it's gonna cut through." Do you see any difference? There's a lot of internet rumors on that.

A lot of people think like a five-seven, a little bullet going fast will go through. It's not the case. Basically it has to do with the fibers grabbing the projo and slowing it down. Okay So not a lot. You'll notice when we shoot Bob here as the calibers increase, the more reaction he'll have.

Sure. And that's again another myth about body armor that some people have is that magically the bullets are gonna like bounce off of you like Superman. Oh no if you get hit you'll be sick. Yeah, but they'll be alive. At least you'll be alive.

There'll be some injury but you'll be alive to feel that injury. Absolutely. All right well let's go back and we'll let you spread out the damage. Put a few 45's in there like we did with the nine, and see what happens after four or five shots? Excellent.

Perfect. And as we take a look, entry, entry, entry, entry, entry. And I think we may have had another one down here somewhere. See a couple here. And it looks like we are completely clean.

So that's a total of eight rounds of 45. Now you can see where this is starting to bulk up and pack up. Oh yeah. All of that fiber in there is starting to get deformed and that's what's gonna create the gaps, as I understand it, where the next bullet might sneak through. Exactly but I tell you what that's a lot of hate.

Yeah, yeah it really is. To be able to absorb an entire magazine from a 1911 is more than one can expect when you purchase this off the rack. But this certainly will do it. Pretty impressive, pretty impressive stuff. Again stepping up from the nine millimeter to the 45 and still seeing a level of protection that's gonna keep me or someone else I care about safe.

How will this do against a 12 gauge slug? I say it stops it. All right and then buckshot also? Yep. Let's try both.

Excellent. Which should we do first? Let's shoot the slug first. Okay sounds good. And this is a 2 3/4 inch, one ounce 12 gauge Brenneke slug.

Exactly. All right. Well that's a lot of energy transfer. Let's go down and see what the vest did. I think you changed it's channel.

Yeah. Now this is actually the back of the last vest we shot and it's available, obviously, front and rear. A lot of damage was done but there's no slug that came through. Nope it's actually in there. I mean it split the fabric.

That's really impressive. Now what does the rating say, what does it actually say, as far as the 04 standard against this round? Even 3/8 soft solution to 06 standard not shotguns. Not supposed to stop a shotgun. 44, 44 mag.

So we want to be clear US PALM is not saying that this is the standard but out of my curiosity we went ahead and shot it and in this case it did stop it. So that's pretty inspiring that the armor will actually as we've seen, multiple shots spread out and around, that it's not really rated for, still getting stopped. And obviously whenever you deal with something like a rating and you've got life and death situations, people, officers, security agents are buying this stuff expecting a certain level of performance, there's always gonna be a safety gap that aren't in the ratings Absolutely. And that's what we're seeing right here. So, not you're claim but I'll tell you right now that I'd feel much better wearing this than not wearing anything if someone were aiming one of these at me and firing a one ounce slug.

Let's set up another one and try the buckshot load which it is supposed to stop. Correct. Perfect. Now one of the things that I always heard, I mean going back to the 80s, when we first started really seeing armor in regular use in law enforcement, we first started talking about armor. I can remember people saying you always wanted to make sure that your vest would stop your round.

Absolutely. Now number four buck is a very popular home defense round. This is a 27 pellet load from Federal. Let's see what the Defender vest does against this. Let's do it.

Again a lot of energy transfer there. Tight pattern as we would expect. Now the 27 pellets that are inside of that number four are relatively small, there's a lot of energy there. And that's the kind of thing that a lot of people might expect to see sneak through the fibers of the vest. Of course we're using the back of one of the vests we already shot.

And that's that nine millimeter pass through that we had, we're not worried about that, that was after the multiple shots. With the number four buck, 100% containment. Everything is right there inside of the vest. Defender vest certainly stands up to what it's supposed to and more. I appreciate everything US PALM is doing and I'm very impressed with the Defender vest series.

Excellent. Thanks, man Thanks. Be sure to check out the Personal Defense Network for more important tips just like that one.