Body armor with electrical power supply patented
Inventors: Vavrick; Daniel J. (Fredericksburg, VA), Nechitailo; Nicholas V. (King George, VA)
Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy (Washington, DC)
Appl. No.: 12/322,957
Filed: February 3, 2009
By Jodi Lawaich
Body armor for our armed forces has been bandied about for many years now, and it is standard for military personnel in the field to wear torso body armor to help protect the upper half of the body. The current body armor is quite cumbersome, weighing in at an additional 25 pounds per soldier, and, as stated above, only covers a portion of the body. It is bulky and has no ability to carry any kind of electricity unless the wearer loads up with batteries, adding more weight to an already heavily-laden apparatus.
The Navy has been working on a better version of body armor that is lighter, covers more body space and is capable of producing electricity. Made of a finely woven Kevlar, the Interceptor – the name of this new body armor – consists of an Outer Tactical Vest (OTV) and two Small Arms Protective Inserts (SAPI). The OTV is lined with finely woven Kevlar.RTM. aramid. These two parts of the vest are both bullet and heat resistant.
The vest was tested to stop a 9-mm 124 GR full metal jacket bullet (FMJ) at 1,400 ft/s (426 m/s) with minimal deformation and has a V-50 of roughly 1,525 ft/s (465 m/s). Thus, the bullet must travel faster than 1,525 ft/s to have greater than a fifty-percent chance of breaking through the armor plates. These plates come in five different sizes and are placed into the front and rear of the vest. The Interceptor vest stops other, slower moving fragments and is also equipped with removable neck, throat, shoulder and groin protection components. The vest has a quick-release feature in which a quick tug would drop the plates off of the vest when necessary.
Two things to keep in mind with the Interceptor: first, it does not represent a Level III-A vest, which is standard for military; and second, it isn’t cheap: each Interceptor has an individual price tag of $1585 each.
Abstract
An armor plate is provided for a body jacket to include provision for electrical power. The plate includes a flexible substrate, a ceramic cover disposed on the substrate, and a battery. The cover includes cavities along the substrate, with the battery disposed within the cavities. The battery comprises sheets disposed within the cavities. The battery includes a first metal layer disposed on the substrate, an electrolyte layer disposed on the first electrode layer and a second electrode layer disposed between the electrolyte layer and the cover.
