Dragon Skin (body armor)
 Official Army Test Results |
Dragon Skin is a type of ballistic vest formerly made by the now defunct company Pinnacle Armor, currently produced in Missoula, Montana by North American Development Group LLC available for public, law-enforcement and military customers. Its characteristic two-inch-wide circular discs overlap like scale armor, creating a flexible vest that allows a good range of motion and is intended to absorb a high number of hits compared with other military body armor. The discs are composed of silicon carbide ceramic matrices and laminates, much like the larger ceramic plates in other types of bullet resistant vests.
The armor is currently available in one basic protection level: Dragon Skin Extreme (formerly SOV-2000), which until 2007 was certified to comply with the NIJ Standard-0101.06 as a level III resistant body armor.
Dragon Skin has been worn by some civilian contractors in Iraq, some special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, some SWAT teams, nine generals in Afghanistan,bodyguards tasked with protecting generals, and U.S. Secret Service personnel. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has also purchased Dragon Skin.
Dragon Skin armor is made of an overlapping series of high tensile strength ceramic discs encased in a fiber glass textile. Different layout configurations with variations in coverage are available.
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