Israeli Company Creates Nano-Armor

Izeickl writes "According to IsraCast, an Israeli company has created materials made of inorganic fullerene-like nanostructures (IFs) which have amazing shock absorbing properties. During preliminary tests, these materials, which are five times stronger than steel, have successfully resisted to steel projectiles generating pressures as high as 250 tons per square centimeter. These materials could be incorporated in "nanoarmors" able to protect soldiers or police forces within three years."

Re:The problem is...

[tomstdenis]

useless metric.

Carbon fibre is also "stronger than steel" but pull it in the wrong way and it'll break like glass [which admitedly is usually the point]. What size/weight/type of projectile at what velocity will be stopped. That's useful.

Nice to know your vest will stop a handgun but if a .223 can go right through it, it won't be to useful against a properly armed adversary.

Tom

Is it Chemical proof?

[Keith McClary]

What if the bad guys start using White Phosphorous or Depleted Uranium?

Re:I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

[Melfina]

If the material is as solid as they claim it is it should reduce the impact of the bullet hitting. Reducing the impact is all well and good, but it's only so effective. To truly protect someone from a shot you need to be able to disperse the impact force throughout the entire vest.

It is only you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Policemen need armor a lot less than soldiers do, especially Israeli soldiers.
I disagree with your statement because it implies that you would prefer more of our soldiers to die.
I don't want our soldiers to die.

Not perfect, just better

[ZorgonTheMeek]

The thing that I am noticing about all of the replies on this subject is that that they are stating this armour is not perfect. Sure, the wearer will still feal the kinetic energy of projectile or whatever...but the wearer will be more protected with this than probably any other armour available measured by hardness. Maybe next they should think how to reduce the amount of energy that is transferred from one plate to the next.

Re:Getting your point across.

[MBraynard]

You are smarter than me on this subject, but doesn't the shape of the bullet also come into play? I have a 10mm. When I go to the range I use cheap standard bullets, but when I load it for home defense, it's hollow point. Goes in with a centimeter, comes out with a decimeter.

Re:Shock Absorbing

[Rank_Tyro]

Do a bit of math here. Newton's third law says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, if a projectile were to deliver enough energy to break a persons neck after hitting an impregnable helmet, the soldier that made that shot would suffer from a broken shoulder.

As an aside, necks are tougher than most people think. In movies, the hero grabs the villian by the head and makes a severe twisting motion accompanied by a loud "CRACK". In real life, the amount of force needed to break a neck seems to exceed the amoount of force that a SUV traveling at 35 mph imparts to a stopped vehicle at a stoplight. Whiplash is the usual outcome of a multi ton vehicle traveling at 35 mph. A 5 gram bullet moving at approximately 900 m/s has no where near the same energy delivered.

  Of course, if a howitzer round lands on the helmet, the odds of a broken neck are pretty slim compared to the odds of being blown into a thousand little red bits....

Re:Shock Absorbing !=Survivability?

[Lisandro]

IIRC, the AK-47 is a gas operated gun - the reciever is made to work using the energy of the gas from the firing. There's also a recoil spring system which absorbs energy from the shot round and helps reducing recoil. The person firing the rifle doesn't absorb all of the kinetic energy of the round; and even then, those guns can kickback strong.

Re:Getting your point across.

[Rangsk]

I could be wrong, but here are my thoughts.

At the same velocity, two bullets of the same size/shape have the same drag on them due to air regardless of mass. Drag increases by the square of the velocity.

No matter what the mass of the bullet, the gun is going to impart the same force onto it. As you stated, a = f/m and so the lighter bullet will end up experiencing more drag than a heavier bullet (due to drag increasing as v^2).

However, E = mv^2 / 2, and a heavier bullet will gain less velocity in general and so less energy.

It's basically a balance between the drag equation and the energy equation. For a given force of a gun, shape of a bullet, and distance of the target, you could probably calculate the exact desired mass of the bullet for the biggest impact. Speaking of impact, the density of the bullet would also change impact time, which could change the behavior of the bullet as well (less impact time = more damage). It's an interesting problem, but I'm sure it's been solved already by smarter people than I :)

And you've made a critical point...

[Khyber]

... as I was thinking that "Gee, I wonder when the next war breaks out for the technology to create this material?" I'll admit that's a paranoid thought, but jeeze, oil ain't gonna last forever. Producing technology with a good aplication most likely will last "forever" in our market. (Forever being the lifespan of the entire human race.)

The first obvious application of this technology is war or oppression of one's own citizens. This bothers me probably as much as anyone else here, but the question I pose is somewhat involved, so think carefully. Can we find OTHER uses for this technology that far outweigh the application for combat and war? Can there be some potential way to divert attention from this application and (for fun and economy) make it more profitable for use in other industries?

Just my honest thought and idea. Nothing more, nothing less.

question is: is it better than ceramic armor?

[thorndt]

The US Army uses ceramic plates that slips into pockets in soldiers' jackets to stop projectiles. This is, I believe, called "hard body armor", as opposed to "soft body armor" (kevlar and such). The article states that this new stuff is five times stronger than steel...but how does it compare to the ceramic plates? FYI: The ceramic plates pretty much crumble and disintegrate when hit by incoming rounds; this stuff, I guess, would be so strong that the bullet would ricochet off?

Re:Just me?

[Rolo Tomasi]

who are the frontline defenders of our freedom

Alright, I've heard this sentence a lot ... how in the hell are soldiers occupying a foreign country protecting your freedom? I mean, if the soldiers were stationed in your homeland and a foreign invasion was imminent, that I could understand, but while they're occupying some third world country halfway across the globe? Nope, does not follow.

At least be honest about it and say they're helping you capture and control key resources or keep others from challenging your dominance or something, that sounds a bit more plausible.

Re:bleh...

[spauldo]

In America, the military doesn't protect your civil rights, except in the sense that they ward off invasion (the exception being if you're a member of the military, in which case your civil rights are quite a different matter, and the ones you don't sign over are protected by the military directly). The military is more or less the strong arm of the government in international affairs. Domestically, the military gets used more often for peaceful ventures such as disaster recovery and parades than it does in any martial sense. They can be used against the people, of course, but it's very rare for that to happen in the U.S.

Most military members do care quite a bit about civil rights, but they're not in a position to protect them unless ordered to.

Police act much more individually, so it depends on the cop. Some will play by the rules, some won't. Like Bob Dyllan said, sometimes you just find yourself over the line - in that sort of situation, best hope you get some good ones. In the end, though, it's up to the courts to protect your civil liberties.

Re:Getting your point across.

[todd10k]

How about teflon-coated bullets?

Ya see, alot of people watched "V" back in the 80's and think teflon will help a slug penetrate high grade armor. Its like how people think they understand blackhole physics because they seen "event horizon"

People are idiots.

Micrometeorite protection

[Jonathan Burns]

And not just for spacesuits, but robotics, tether reels, beanstalk climbers and more. If this works, it will be invaluable.

Re:The problem is...

[Helish]

You are forgetting one thing when calculating the energy of the bullet and an arrow. The mass of the arrow is a lot greater then of a bullet, so even tough the bullet might be traveling faster, it has a lot less energy. Think of the difference between M16 and AK47 rounds. AK47 rounds are a lot bigger, they travel slower, but they have a lot more energy.

Re:Just me?

[AHumbleOpinion]

I mean, if the soldiers were stationed in your homeland and a foreign invasion was imminent, that I could understand, but while they're occupying some third world country halfway across the globe? Nope, does not follow.

You should avoid a career in strategy. A defensive posture as you suggest is inferior to an offensive strategy that takes the fight to the enemy, denies the enemy the initiative, dictates the terrain to the enemy, ... While there may have been only one or two terrorist training camps in Iraq prior to the invasion Al Queda and other jihadists are certainly there now. Where would they be if Iraq were not such a magnet? They were displaced from Afganistan, we gave them a place to go, we gave their potential recruits a place to go. In the long run we may be better off by drawing them to Iraq for battle than by letting them disperse around the globe and choose the time and place of their attacks (New York, Pennsyvania, Washington DC, Spain, London). Is this fair to the Iraqi's that we use their country as a battlefield in the global war on terror? No. Are all the attacks in Iraq conducted by foreigners and jihadists? No.

It is premature to draw conclusions about Iraq. It will be decades before we can tell if the US invasion made things better or worse. For now, just keep in mind that the political left distorts events to favor their politics just as the political right does.

Who cares...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds sorta like decimated!

Re:No, I Don't Agree

[canadian_right]

The army does not get to decide which countries it invades. The civilian government decided to invade, the army then does as the lawfully elected government orders it to do.

You should be mad at the government that decided to start an ill advised war that was justified by frabricated evidence, has cost many, many more lives than 911, and made the USA LESS safe.

All this assumes you are speaking about the USA army.

and you thought mere radiation was bad..

[bombastinator]

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a good authority on this subject as my memory is vague and my sources third hand at best, but as memory serves, and it may not, so feel free to correct me, one of the big problems with fullerenes is that even if they are totally non reactive they still wind up being highly poisonous because of their size, shape and tendency not to bond with anything.

They tend to do unpleasant things like go through your skin, clog blood vessels, and never ever break down.

So the plan is to go spraying them around a war zone asp part of either bullets or armor, with much the same abandon as the U.S. did with depleted uranium in the gulf?

Considering the controversy currently surrounding that behavior this does not strike me as a particularly good idea from first glance.

Re:Getting your point across.

[M0b1u5]

I suggest you move to a safer town, or country.

Hollow Point bullets for home defence? I'd have no problem convicting you of manslaughter.

Re:Getting your point across.

[Fordiman]

Also great for naval engine rooms. A lack of penetrating power means it's not going to penetrate your pipes. Meanwhile, it will still wipe the smirk off any stowaway's face.