Are Troops Equipped With the Best Armor?

House committee investigates report on effectiveness of new type of armor.

ByABC News
June 6, 2007, 8:20 PM

June 6, 2007 — -- The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing Wednesday about the merits of a new type of body armor called Dragon Skin that's said to be more flexible and more effective than the current Interceptor body armor used by troops in Iraq. But it soon discredited the new armor and the company that makes it.

It all started when NBC aired a long report on May 17 alleging that Dragon Skin was a better body armor and the Army didn't want to believe it. NBC did its own very basic test and called on expert Philip Coyle of the World Security Institute to witness the test and comment. In the report Coyle said the Dragon Skin performed better than the Interceptor.

A few days later the Army held a briefing to dispute the NBC report and released its own previous tests on Dragon Skin that showed it performed poorly. In the Army tests, Dragon Skin was penetrated 13 out of 48 times. The Army discourages its use. Yet the controversy has caused some soldiers and parents to think the Dragon Skin is better and some parents are spending $5,000 on it for their kids in Iraq.

There was so much confusion over Dragon Skin that the Armed Services Committee held a hearing with the head of the company that makes Dragon Skin and the military leaders who evaluated it.

Murray Neal, head of Pinnacle Armor, the maker of Dragon Skin, insinuated that the Army has not been fair in its testing. "When the smoke clears," he said, "you will see that Dragon Skin has the capability to save American lives." He disputed the Army's tests even though he had witnessed them.

Coyle accused the Army of being overinvested in proving the NBC report wrong. He said the advantages of Dragon Skin are that it is more flexible than the Interceptor body armor, covers more of the torso, performs better against multiple shots, reduces blunt force trauma and resists more lethal weapons.

Dragon Skin armor is made up of a series of small discs linked together to be more flexible. The Interceptor uses hard ceramic plates that don't bend. Coyle called for an evaluation of the two types of body armor in a side-by-side test administered by an independent group.