Quote History Quoted:
I've seen the past post re: the skepticism re: AW. Most of the criticism is due to the AR680 plates it seems. Beyond that, I cannot find where any of the people mentioned have actually tested the ceramic based plates (please link me if I am mistaken).
From Soldier Systems:
"Matt, I was looking long and hard at those plates as well. If you dig into the company they are affiliated with a textile company that legitimately did nylon work for the Corps. So their nylon stuff is likely on point. The owner of the company is also listed on the LLC filing for a “ceramiche” company so they are likely manufacturing their own ceramics for their plates.
The sticking point with the plates is that they aren’t NIJ certified. There is nothing saying that they have to be certified. If they stop the rounds, they stop the rounds. That is all that matters. They claim that they will provide testing reports upon request. I requested and while I got a response I didn’t receive the report as I had asked. In fairness it was SHOT show week so stuff gets lost…
The other thing, and decide whether this matters to you or not, they have Yeager wring their stuff out. You either love the guy or hate him. To me he’s like the Tom Cruise of the tactical world. Either you like his work or you think he’s the world’s biggest tool bag. That’s up for you to decide and then how that influences your decision about the plates."
http://soldiersystems.net/2015/05/13/armour-wear/
There are also threads on Lightfighter about this and people on that forum seemed to have received the independent testing reports.
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I have had plenty of reasons to dislike the practices of AW in the past based on what was clearly disingenuous behavior. I won't dig them all up again. However, I would like to make a few observations about the quote you posted.
1. You link a quote from another website, posted by a seemingly random person named "J.D.", which provides vague positive comments about the company. If you have some particular information about who J.D. is and what gives him credibility, I would think that is worth sharing. I am uncertain what this is supposed to prove but even more curious why you feel it substantiates anything at all.
2. J.D. says
"If you dig into the company they are affiliated with a textile company that legitimately did nylon work for the Corps. So their nylon stuff is likely on point." When I was running my company, we were "affiliated" with nearly everyone in the industry at the time. If my company had been a bag of dicks, would that have made the entire industry a bag of dicks? Also, Nylon makes a good outer liner for armor. Nylon has nothing whatsoever to do with the ballistic qualities of a plate, except where containment of ceramic ablation might be a factor.
3. Next line,
"The owner of the company is also listed on the LLC filing for a “ceramiche” company so they are likely manufacturing their own ceramics for their plates." Wow, that's quite the assumption! The chances of them making their own ceramics are almost zero. Maybe less. The equipment required to make your own ceramics is a giant hurdle. However, the
knowledge of how to make your own ceramics is an even bigger hurdle. Ask me how I know, if you're particularly bored, but there is a reason that the Chinese can only make 1" wide tiles of anything that isn't chemically sintered garbage. I only know of four companies (I may be forgetting one) that can fire Alumina Oxide, and only two companies that can fire B4C, and all of them stay very busy.
4. And...
"The sticking point with the plates is that they aren’t NIJ certified. There is nothing saying that they have to be certified. If they stop the rounds, they stop the rounds. That is all that matters." No, it is not fucking all that matters! How high is the backface deformation? Does the back spall? Does the round splatter off the front? All of these things matter in the same way that having holes in your parachute matters; the parachute opened but you're still pretty much fucked. You aren't screaming "at least it opened!" as you plummet to your death. The NIJ06 requirement is a maximum on the first two shots (for hard armor) of 44MM BFD. 44MM still hurts like hell and can cause some internal injuries. The worst case that I ever witnessed while personally conducting testing was a hard plate that extruded eight inches on the first shot.
Eight inches! Anyone wearing it would have been dead, possibly suffering
more damage than just getting shot without the plate, but hey... it stopped the round!
5.
"They claim that they will provide testing reports upon request. I requested and while I got a response I didn’t receive the report as I had asked." I asked for a copy of those reports a while back. They would not respond. I still have yet to see these unicorn reports posted anywhere and I suspect I know why. If someone has them, post them here.
6. AW used to claim NIJ06 testing. Now their products say
"found to comply with level 4 performance in accordance with NIJ STD 0101.04 / 05". I didn't know anyone still manufactures to the 04 standard but whatever. If this is true, it shouldn't be asking too much for them to say who tested it (what lab) and whether it was a full test or "it stopped a bullet, yay!" test. On a side not, if it does actually comply with NIJ04, that still means it wasn't required to pass the very nasty drop test that NIJ06 requires, so there will be no protection at all for the ceramic component.