Researchers, manufacturers search for better body armor.

Demands for body armor improvements are driving the defense industry to create near- and far-term solutions to provide lightweight, reliable protection from a variety of ballistic threats.

Long-range developments, drawn from anticipated advances in nanotechnolgy, could see battle dress instantly morphing into a protective system that would ward off not only shrapnel and bullets, but also poison gas and biological weapons, researchers predict.

Although the current system, Interceptor, has been met with positive reviews from soldiers and doctors, the military is asking more from its body armor and seeking to lessen its weight, according to military researchers and industry professionals. This is placing demands on the research community and industry to come up with immediate fixes, while steadily raising the performance bar for future body armor systems.

Interceptor provides protection from small arms and fragments for the vital organs in the torso, utilizing small arms protective inserts (SAPI) plates that are designed to flatten bullets and distribute the shot's energy to the hard ceramic composite. Interceptor's outer tactical vest weighs 8.4 pounds and protects against fragmentation and 9 mm rounds. The protective plates, that are built to withstand multiple small arms hits, increase the weight to 16.4 pounds.

The problem, discovered with dismay on the ground in Iraq, is that the system leaves soldiers' limbs and sides exposed. In response, the Army recently purchased tens of thousands of shoulder and underarm attachments from Point Blank Body Armor, of Seale, Ala., the sole supplier of the Interceptor system. "Doctors were saying injures were like tan lines," said Dan Power, vice president of Point Blank. "It's the extremities that are being hit."

In late April, Point Blank won a contract to supply the Marines with the arm and side attachments, called APES (armor protection enhancement system). The two-piece, 5-pound system attaches to Interceptor vests and protects soldiers' biceps and underarms against 9 mm shots and shrapnel. In late May, the first of 33,000 sets arrived in Kuwait and Iraq.

A similar system for the army, called the dorsal auxiliary protection system (DAPS), was ordered in May. By October, roughly 50,000 DAPS systems will be in Iraq. Both systems required quick-turnaround modifications of off-the-shelf armor used by SWAT and other police units, company officials said.

The added protection is composed of two pieces that are attached to Interceptor with Velcro and snaps. They pad the underarm and shoulders, with elastics and webbing strategically placed to prevent the armor from shifting while preventing stiffness.

The speed of the military's demands has transformed Point Blank's business, said Ronda Graves, chief operating manager. She said the company's three facilities, operating with a total of 750 employees, ships body armor to U.S. forces daily.

"The big problem is we need ballistic fabric," Graves said. "We get the fabric at 7 a.m. By 9 a.m., we have it spread and tested. The DAPS will go out the door that day, or at the latest early the next morning."

The boom has not gone unnoticed by investors. Point Blank's stock has risen 133 percent over the course of just a year, and the company is opening a new research center in Florida to help quickly tailor mission-specific armor products to customers.

Fabric and plate production companies are also expanding to meet the need. ArmorWorks Inc., of Tempe, Ariz., has recently been awarded more than $50 million in contracts from the Army and Marines to produce 100,00 SAPI plates for body armor, ensuring their status as the leading producer for the U.S. military.

The Dutch chemical group DSM in May opened a production line in North Carolina to produce its polyethylene fiber, Dyneema. Company spokesmen said the site would be dedicated to military orders first to meet growing demands. During the past year, DSM supplied Dyneema to reinforce cockpit doors, and is now looking to the body armor market for further growth.

Also this year, Honeywell announced a $20 million investment to boost production of its body armor fibers, called Spectra, to meet increased demand from U.S. military. Spectra fibers are used in the SAPI plates of the Interceptor system.

Honeywell has been operating its Spectra fiber operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week for several years to fulfill customer demand and will continue to do so throughout the expansion, expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2005, company officials said.

Layers of Spectra fibers, a polyethylene that has been improved in recent years to stop large caliber rounds, are bonded with ceramics to improve SAPI plates. The fibers, according to Honeywell, are pound for pound stronger than steel. A cross hatch of these fibers are fused together with heat to form a composite.

Researchers are working on longer-term revolutions in body armor. At the Natick Soldiers Center in Massachusetts, researchers are testing new fibers in search of the next big thing. Large hopes are pegged on a fiber called M5, which gave a surprise performance during tests performed in December 2003. "We shot it, and it did better than expected." said Phillip Cunniff, a ballistics researcher at Natick.

The polymer's unique molecular structure, which features a lateral network of hydrogen bonds along with the typical covalent bonding, increases the fabric's strength. The weight would be approximately 40 percent less than the Kevlar used in Interceptor, Cunniff said. Another feature of M5 fiber is excellent thermal and flame protection. Besides helmets and vests, M5 fiber could also be used for structural composites for vehicles and aircraft.

The quest to revolutionize body armor has also been taken up by nanotechnologists, who are seeking the formula to new composites too add added benefits to SAPI plates.

New properties can be drawn from existing materials by combining them at molecular levels, said Ned Thomas, director of MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. The institute, operating under an annual budget of $10 million, was established in May 2002 to pursue projects that apply the emerging science to Defense Department priorities.

Size and shape mean everything at the nanotech level, which is one-billionth a meter, since those qualities influence the behavior of familiar materials, Thomas said. For example, if steel and nylon could be intermeshed and organized properly, the new substance could have suitable properties for body armor.

The rule of mixtures--which essentially means that a mixture will experience more properties of Substance A if more Substance A is added--does not apply to nanotech because of the small dimensions. Thus, a small infusion of force-resistant material into cloth could go a long way to increasing protection.

One such idea involves applying a piezo-electric layer--which converts an incoming force into an electronic signal, such as the keys of a laptop computer--into redesigned SAPI plates, creating an energy web that would distribute the force from an incoming projectile.

But Thomas said the true breakthroughs hold more promise than incremental enhancements. "What's driving people to nano-land is not to make something 5 percent better but 500 percent better," he said. "The advantages are going to come with the surprises."

Thomas said immediate attention is being paid to using carbon nanotubes to reinforce systems and disperse energy over a wide area, the essence of body armor. Nanotubes can change properties based on the size, shape and twists of the tiny structures, opening up unexplored possibilities to change familiar materials in fundamental ways. Discovered in 1991, scientists are now only beginning to determine their properties and uses, including forming tubes into chains of nano-length ropes that could prove to be the ultimate carbon fibers.

The ideal warfare suit would change from a comfortable fabric to body armor after being exposed to stimulus, such as an incoming bullet, Thomas said. The clothing would stiffen to distribute the impact in the time it would take the bullet's nose to penetrate the first layer of cloth. "A microsecond is a lot of time for a molecule," Thomas said.

Such a system could be designed to react to laser designators or weapons, he noted, and would revert back into its comfortable form after the threat withdrew. It could also be configured to react to chemical or biological threats, playing goaltender against pathogens or gas particles.

Other far-flung advances, according to ISN founding partner DuPont, could include sleeves that can double as hard casts for broken limbs, built-in biosensors for medics, interwoven communication equipment, and chameleon camouflage abilities.

Such systems are feasible within twenty years, but require un-chartable breakthroughs. "I think the answer is maybe," Thomas said of the possibility of such body armor to become reality. "It's not 'no.'"