See NIJ Ballistic Standards at bottom of story.

It is good enough body armor that nine American generals in Afghanistan are wearing it in place of the standard "Interceptor OTV" armor issued to the troops they command. It offers such great protection that the U.S. Secret Service agents guarding the President of the United States wear it, and it is good enough that a civilian contractor in Iraq was shot eight times in the torso at close range and survived without even suffering soft tissue trauma. But the same armor, already in mass production, is apparently too expensive to provide to the men and women fighting and dying in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) every day.

The armor is called Dragon Skin and there is nothing particularly new about it. Dragon Skin has been made since 1997 by Pinnacle Armor, a small Fresno, California company with 30 employees. It is called Dragon Skin because it is manufactured from small overlapping armor plates that lay atop each other like ancient chain mail, explained Pinnacle spokesman Paul Chopra, "or like fish scales, but my boss didn't think it sounded too sexy calling it "Fish Skin."

Regardless of what it is called every military service, many federal police agencies, local police departments, and the U.S. Army's ballistic testing facility at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland have purchased small quantities of the unique armor. Among its owners and users it has a sterling reputation, numerous sources told DefenseWatch.

Outside the government parents, spouses and church groups who heard about its superior qualities through word-of-mouth are also purchasing the high-tech chain mail for their knights going in harm's way. Chopra said Pinnacle has privately sold hundreds of the armored vests and ancillary equipment to service members. Despite the well known qualities of Dragon Skin, in 1999 the Department of Defense inexplicably chose the Interceptor armor for the Armed Forces two year after Dragon Skin became available on the open market.

The crux of the issue Dragon Skin presents is discovering the measure the Department of Defense used to decide why the merely good Interceptor OTV armor was good enough for America's warriors when the best body armor has been available for purchase since the Global War on Terror began. So far the Department of Defense has declined to respond to numerous DefenseWatch requests to answer the question.

Pinnacle Armor representative Charlene Chessum said part of the reason Dragon Skin is not being issued to every service member going into battle is overcoming the inertia endemic in huge institutions like the military, and in part because of the laws of economies of scale say that the more product  a manufacturer can make,  the cheaper a product is to produce. 

When it comes to body armor the Department of Defense apparently looks more at cost than quality.

L., Dragon Skin Body Armor. Photo: Pinnacle Armor

A complete suit of Dragon Skin armor, at more than $5,000 per copy, currently costs about five times as much as Interceptor OTV body armor being issued to the troops. Inceptor armor is primarily produced by two giant companies, Armor Holdings Corporation, the current darling of the Defense Department that has more government contracts than a junk yard dog has fleas, and Point Blank Body Armor, the flagship company of DHB Industries that is currently in the dog house. They can both afford to make it cheap.

Several armor experts, who design, manufacture and sell body armor to individuals and police agencies said that size, cost, and accessibility is what drives the Pentagon's decision on what to buy and whom to buy it from. The same explanation begs the question of how much the lives of America's fighting men and women are worth, they said. Granted, Dragon Skin does have a hefty price tag, but it also save lives, they unanimously agreed.

The basic Dragon Skin vest for torso protection costs about $2,000 and the entire getup, which includes a protective collar, optional  lightweight SAPI plates, an optional weight bearing rig, backpack plates, and an armored, take-it-with-you anywhere protective blanket, can run an individual more than $5,000. The basic Interceptor body armor issued to American troops costs about $1,100, although the wearer receives far less protection, ballistics information provided by both the manufacturers and the U.S. Army showed. According to the statistics provided by Pinnacle, in Army-supervised ballistics tests Dragon Skin's protective qualities "far exceeded" anything available anywhere else, Chessum said.

Unfortunately, the Army decided to classify its specific findings recorded in ballistics tests recently concluded by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Aberdeen, Maryland on Pinnacle's Level IV body armor system except to say it "surpassed all current industry standards" and "set standards" leading to a "classified protocol," according to the Army.

Fortunately David Crane, a military defense industry analyst and the editor-in-chief of DefenseReview.com, got to check out Dragon Skin before its superior qualities became a national secret. He called Dragon Skin the "future of armor" in an article he wrote called Body Armor Times 10:  Pinnacle's Innovative, Flexible Body Armor  

In it Crane said, 

"Understand, again, that we're talking about a unique and superior version of level IV body armor/ballistic protection, not your conventional, run-of-the-mill NIJ [National Institute of Justice] level IV SAPI protection. Pinnacle Armor's unique Level IV "+" flexible ceramic hard armor will successfully take many more hits than conventional/standard NIJ Level IV SAPI plates, and provides coverage over a much greater surface area. In other words, it provides for more complete torso coverage, all the way up to total coverage." 

L., Ceramic Stopper: Section of SOV-1000/Dragon Skin disc/panel with M80 ball round stuck in it. M80 ball is a Level IV ballistic threat, and Pinnacle's SOV-1000 Level III "+" system has stopped it. Backface Deformation Signature is only 9mm (just over 5/16"). Photo: Pinnacle Armor

Crane also discovered that Pinnacle's titanium composite and ceramic composite flexible hard armor system ballistic vests are "significantly superior, ballistically and durability-wise" to the Interceptor's inflexible, conventional ceramic hard armor plates. Army scientists at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center-Natick, in Natick, Mass, where Interceptor body armor was created, are currently dealing with breakage problems with the Interceptor's ceramic armor plates including unconfirmed reports that up to 60 percent of its hard armor sent to the field has broken when its gets slammed around, a source close to the situation said.

Breakage is never a problem with the Pinnacle products because its SAPI plates are a very durable composite material and so-called "soft" Dragon Skin armor consists of silver dollar-sized circular ballistic ceramic or titanium discs that are configured like fish scales, explained Chopra, a...