# Incredible New Armour (Video)



## scm77 (10 Oct 2004)

This stuff looks amazing. 

http://www.exn.ca/news/video/exn2004/09/15/exn20040915-firepaste3.asx


----------



## bigwig (10 Oct 2004)

Very impressive!


----------



## SEB123 (10 Oct 2004)

Wow


----------



## Scoobie Newbie (10 Oct 2004)

Thats the same guy who made the anti bear suit.  He has a brother in the forces.  I hope the American and Canadian military buy his project.


----------



## Scott (10 Oct 2004)

He certainly is eccentric, but he knows what he's talking about and the bag certainly is something. I have a copy of the video of him "testing" his bear suit, I still howl whenever I see it, I don't think he's playing with a full deck but good luck to him, hope to hear of his product being purchased.


----------



## Inch (10 Oct 2004)

The fire paste amazes me, pure genius. I saw an episode on discovery channel about it, unbelievable stuff.


----------



## ramy (11 Oct 2004)

Good stuff !
this armor can save many lives thats for sure !


----------



## MikeM (11 Oct 2004)

Amazing, he's truly dedicated.


----------



## Matt_Fisher (12 Oct 2004)

Anybody know what the weight of one of the pad/bags is?

I'd love to velcro that stuff all over my LAV if I had to go back to Iraq.


----------



## SEB123 (12 Oct 2004)

I dint thhink its too heavy you can see the guy take one without problem


----------



## yot (14 Oct 2004)

nice!


----------



## Gayson (14 Oct 2004)

I wonder how much that armour would cost per cubic feet as compared to armour seen on modern vehicles.

Imagine if his armour was cheap enough how cost effective it would be to replace the armour of a damaged vehicle.

A LAV hit with an RPG would probably have a significant amount of damage done to it, replacing it's armour would be tedeous and expensive.  Now imagine if that LAV had this armour and was shot by an RPG, all maintenance would have to do is remove the spend pad and place a new one!


----------



## SEB123 (14 Oct 2004)

Did you saw the video he actually told the price while he speaks


----------



## scm77 (14 Oct 2004)

I believe they said three bags/panels cost approx. $1000


----------



## AlphaCharlie (15 Oct 2004)

He said in the range of $300 per bag, but I imagine that if the govn't gave out a contract it could be significantly less.


----------



## Gayson (15 Oct 2004)

I wonder how much it would cost to armour a LAV with this material vs. current materials.

Also I believe he said it cost him $300 to make each pad.  The costs would likely drop significantly if made by bulk instead of by him in his lab.


----------



## Kirkhill (15 Oct 2004)

In addition to the $ Cost there will be a weight penalty

If we assume that the LAV is a box on wheels and that box is 7 meters long by 3 meters wide by 2 meters high ( just for a rough estimate) then there would be about 80 sq. meters to armour or roughly 800 sq. feet.  1 square foot looks to be roughly the size of one of those bags.  So you need about 800 bags.  At a price of $300 per bag it means an additional cost per LAV of $240,000.  A significant cost.

The other concern is weight.  One of the bags looks to weigh somewhere between 1 and 5 lbs,  it could be higher.  At 1 lb/ sq foot bag that means an additional load of 800 lbs, acceptable I would think.  At 5 lbs that would be 4000 lbs of armour or about 2 tons and I that I would think you might be pushing the limits of what a LAV could support in addition to what it is already required to carry.  

If the bags weigh 10 lbs that is going to mean 4 tons of additional material the LAV has to carry.  Could they carry that?


----------



## Scoobie Newbie (15 Oct 2004)

How much does that anti-rpg fence weigh?  Do with that and add his bags.  I think it might be more advantageous for the LUVW though.


----------



## Kirkhill (15 Oct 2004)

You've got a point there CFL.

As well if you accepted that you were only going to supply the type of protection the RPG fence supplies and leave the floor unprotected (the LAV already seems to have a good record agains minestrikes and IEDs) and the upper deck unprotected (a problem when going into an urban environment I might think) then you could reduce my weight and cost estimates by half.

Cheers.


----------



## a_majoor (18 Oct 2004)

Kirkhill's calculations demonstrate why there is no perfect solution to the protection problem. When the Isreali Defense Force introduced "Blazer" Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA), it was thought to be the best thing since sliced bread, except for the fact it needed a solid layer of armour behind it (read much more than an M-113 or LAV), and had an annoying tendency to kill accompanying Infantry when it detonated....

No matter what sort of protective system is chosen, it should be applied where it will do the most good, not just layered all over the vehicle.


----------



## Slim (18 Oct 2004)

Wow, very impressive.

Very interesting prospects for my line of work as well...Vehicle armour for normal cars tends to be very heavy already...This stuff could be easily layered in the doors of most cars you'd want to armour against attacks of different types.

Something to look into.

Slim


----------



## Kirkhill (18 Oct 2004)

There is another point I was thinking about with respect to armour and the G-Wagen.

If you compare the G-Wagen hard-top armoured version to the G-Wagen open version and ask which gives greatest protection to the occupants, it seems to me that the answer requires another question: to what threat.

A soldier standing in the back of the armoured hardtop, head out, is pretty well protected against rifles and machine guns.   He is better protected than a soldier in the back of the open SOV version.

But what happens if you ask the same question about RPGs.   Is it not possible to argue that the soldier in the armoured vehicle is at greater risk than the soldier in the open vehicle?

Risk of death or injury is a function of the lethal effect of a round, the probability that it works correctly and the probability of hitting the target.   An armoured hard top G-wagen appears to make a bigger target thus increasing the likelihood of a Grenade hitting the target and detonating.   Once the round is detonated then the probability of catastrophic effects is pretty high.

On the other hand, a low silhouette with an open roll-over cage presents less surface area on which the Grenade can impact and detonate.   Put briefly, an RPG round is more likely to miss the open SOV version than it is the Armoured hard top version.

As A-Majoor points out, there isn't very much that is all singing - all dancing.


----------



## Morgs (20 Oct 2004)

i remember watching a video of this guy and his bear suit in high school, we all thought he was  :dontpanic:
looks like he still is, but the ammount of fire those things took was incredible. i dont know a lot about armour but what he had still looked very "home made" definately room for improvement, especially if he got funding
anywhoo, thats my tuppence worth


----------



## Black Ops (23 Oct 2004)

I really dont know why people think he is crazy. Alot of people thought his bear suit was very stupid, But the man had an interest in studying bears, so he made a suit to protect himself. Not crazy if you ask me. I will admit he is very excited, but who wouldnt be excited to develop 3 products that save lives? I have had the pleasure of meeting this man, and I must say he is one of the kindest men I have ever met.. And a genius none the less. This guy should be given some sort of award.


----------



## JasonH (23 Oct 2004)

The Canadian Forces would be stupid to just throw away this idea like I believe they have.  This video was made back in 2002 and if they would have picked up on this they can easily refine the techiniques of how he made the stuff.  Specially the Fire paste, because if he could layer it in a way the fire paste could be refined to stop the molten core of an RPG element from getting through armour.  It's just a matter of time, the guy spent years it looks like refining that bear suit.  Give him time with this armour and surely something good will come of it.


----------



## Black Ops (23 Oct 2004)

The video was made the summer of 2004. I live in the same city as Troy and actually live less than 5km from where the tests were done.

http://baytoday.ca/content/news/print.asp?c=3303

http://baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=3796


----------



## Spr.Earl (24 Oct 2004)

Inch said:
			
		

> The fire paste amazes me, pure genius. I saw an episode on discovery channel about it, unbelievable stuff.


Was that the one were he made a hat and they put a torch to his head and F'all happened ?
I've been watching him over the last two or three years and no he is not a nutter all's it is is that no one is taking him seriously.
I would like to see his material in bomb suits!!


----------



## Inch (24 Oct 2004)

Spr.Earl said:
			
		

> Was that the one were he made a hat and they put a torch to his head and F'all happened ?
> I've been watching him over the last two or three years and no he is not a nutter all's it is is that no one is taking him seriously.
> I would like to see his material in bomb suits!!



Aye, that's the one. I thought it was pretty neat to see, the stuff was even cool to the touch seconds after taking the torch away.


----------



## brihard (29 Oct 2004)

I don't think any kind of 'Damn!' even begins to cover it.

Now, we saw thsoe panels take the brunt of 20x a grenade blast, or 10x an RPG blast. I think we can safely say that an RPG hitting a soldier would kill him by concussione ven if shrapnel and flame didn't get him, so why would the panels need to be as thick? Narrow it down so ti can stop maybe 2-3x a grenade blast or several .50 cal rounds, see if it can be made more space efficient. Now incorporate that into new ballistic armour. Since it's such a light material, perhaps it could even be made flexible for 'soft' armour in traditionally uprotected spots on a soldier, such as pelvic region, and even arms and legs for some things.

Either way, there could be tons of applications for thsi that people much smarter than me will think of.


----------



## rounder (29 Oct 2004)

> Either way, there could be tons of applications for thsi that people much smarter than me will think of.




Lets hope so...


----------



## JBP (5 Nov 2004)

I honestly don't really know how expensive armour is, but I bet $300.00 for the size of one of those bags is MUCH cheaper than the equivalent size of armour on a LAV... New types of armour (reactive etc) are quite advanced... The materials I imagine aren't expensive but the fabrication process is probably.

For example the stuff on the M1A1 Abrams. Chauff armour I think they call it, invented by US+Britain. Apparently that stuff is made from porcelin (toilets, lol) and steel! How the HECK you mix those two I have NOOOO idea... Seen a special on that on discovery channel couple years back.

But those bags are wicked.


----------



## Storm (6 Nov 2004)

Recruit Joe said:
			
		

> I honestly don't really know how expensive armour is, but I bet $300.00 for the size of one of those bags is MUCH cheaper than the equivalent size of armour on a LAV... New types of armour (reactive etc) are quite advanced... The materials I imagine aren't expensive but the fabrication process is probably.
> 
> For example the stuff on the M1A1 Abrams. Chauff armour I think they call it, invented by US+Britain. Apparently that stuff is made from porcelin (toilets, lol) and steel! How the HECK you mix those two I have NOOOO idea... Seen a special on that on discovery channel couple years back.
> 
> But those bags are wicked.


Toilets? Not that far off. Laugh all you want, but the original discovery of this was with enamel just like on cast iron bathtubs before the days of fibreglass.

Ceramic armour is actually a pretty simple concept where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's basically just a steel plate (or other tough material) with a ceramic layer over top. The initial impact with the hard ceramic deforms the projectile, and helps to shear some of the mass off (less mass means less energy to stop). Ceramics suck at absorbing energy though, as anyone who has put anything through a window can attest to, thus the thougher steel. With a deformed projectile energy is absorbed more readily (less steel needed, therefore lighter armour).   

Put another way, picture a sharp knife vs a dull knife with less force applied to it. Which cuts better?

It looks like he's just taken the time to expand the 1+1>2 concept to include more than two materials. It's not the first composite armour to be studied. You got it bang on that the make or break issue will be finding a viable manufacturing process. Proving that it's more effective than other developments in armour will also be key.


----------



## HollywoodHitman (7 Nov 2004)

Very impressive video. Hopefully this guy gets some funding to assist in it's development.


----------



## starlight (10 Nov 2004)

Troy has done it again........I know his brother......very inttelligent verry well spoken........and even though some may think he's out there........he does not BS


----------



## scm77 (10 Nov 2004)

There was a movie/doccumentary about his bear suit on this afternoon.  It was pretty funny and also incredible the dammage that thing could take.


----------



## Long in the tooth (13 Nov 2004)

Starship troopers here we come!


----------



## CF_Lifer (6 Dec 2004)

Incredible Stuff. Being tougher than Kevlar, and more Fire Resistant than Nomex.....what more can we ask for?
Those rifles Capt (Ret) Keith Cunningham was using are TOP quality rifles too. Used on Provincial, National, and International Matches. You can bet no _BadGuy_ over in Afghanistan is going to have a weapon like that. Or be anywhere NEAR a good shot as Keith for that matter.

[modified not to offend]


----------



## Slim (6 Dec 2004)

> badguy



...Thank you. ;D

Slim


----------



## SigOp Guy (6 Dec 2004)

Wow.... just, wow. All I can say is, when I'm done all my training, and if I ever get deployed anywhere, I hope I'm riding in something protected with that stuff!


----------



## CF_Lifer (8 Dec 2004)

Sorry, my Bad. BadGuy is definitely the..err..appropriate word. Sorry about that.


----------



## CrimsonSeil (9 Dec 2004)

Amazing. thats some tough SHIT for $300.   :threat:


----------



## Dogboy (12 Dec 2004)

what will this guy come up with next.
he may be a littel eccentric but hey we need people like him around. 
those bags look a lot lighter then 10 lb.
so say 5 lb a sq.foot still heavy, but how much for a LAV?


----------

