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New Metal Foam Armor Obliterates Bullets To Dust On Impact (discovery.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Discovery Magazine reports that researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a super strong armor material that literally turns bullets to dust upon impact. The armor plating is made in part from composite metal foams, or CMFs, which are both lighter and stronger than traditional metal plating used in body and vehicle armor. The armor -- only an inch thick -- features a ceramic strike face, Kevlar backing, and CMFs in the energy-absorbing middle layer. "We could stop the bullet at a total thickness of less than an inch, while the indentation on the back was less than 8 millimeters," says Afsaneh Rabiei. "To put that in context, the NIJ standard allows up to 44 millimeters indentation in the back of an armor." CMFs are very effective at shielding X-rays, gamma rays and neutron radiation. Other applications include space exploration and shipping nuclear waste which both require a material to be not only light and strong, but also capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures and blocking radiation. A video shows a 7.62 x 63 millimeter M2 armor-piercing projectile that was fired using standard testing procedures established by the Department of Justice for evaluating armor types.
I saw some documentary that sort of explained this.
It was about SWAT teams and storming rooms and how they like to move quickly in patterns the person in the room can't predict.
The movement creates a kind of cognitive problem for the adversary in the room which causes them to target center of mass. This kind of increases the utility of body armor because the adversary "can't" target their heads very well, making any shots likely to hit the body armor instead of more exposed extremities.
It seemed kind of reasonable to me, although I wonder if there's a "in real life" aspect to this that might weaken the tactic, like recoil or muzzle climb tending to cause point of impact on multiple shots to rise. My guess is that the movement of the SWAT guys is enough of a deterrent for secondary shots to not hit them.
The other possibly confounding factor would be just the random nature of poor marksmanship or the "spray and pray" effect. A presumably unskilled shooter may simply fire a lot of rounds in a way that disregards any aiming or target motion, possibly increasing the likelihood of some impact. My guess is that part of the goal of SWAT movement is rapid lateral movement relative to the adversary, making it difficult for the adversary to achieve a wide enough field of fire for even random shooting to be effective.
It does make me wonder if special forces type soldiers have a specifically trained countermeasure to defend against trained, skilled people storming a room, such as sweep firing from extreme lateral angles, combined with their own movement, to at least reduce any advantage in attacker methods.
After the medieval knight with full plate armor fell out of use because of cheap pikemen and the pistol,
I thought it was the crossbow, actually. The longbow could nail a knight to a tree, but required a lot of training and strength. The crossbow could do the same but could be learned quickly. Early firearms were about on a par with a crossbow both for handling accuracy and rate of fire (though they had other advantages - and far more room for technical improvement with time).
Is my impression wrong?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Bundy is a racist bigot and a loser who depends on government handouts. The grazing fees charged by BLM is way below the market rates. If BLM auctions off the grazing rights and Bundy had to bid for it in open market it would have costed him and other ranchers 10 times more. Other ranchers know they are getting a sweet deal from the federal government and try to avoid drawing attention to it. Bundy's greed is shining a light on their sweet deal and they are worried they all may have to pay higher grazing fees. That is why there is so much opposition to the Bundy family in the west.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact