Does dragons skin work or is it like Zylon? How long does it work since its mini ceramic plates? Is it good for longer than 5 years like normal body armor?

Sucks ass. It had something to do with the plates separating under heat, but I'm sure someone else here can give you a better explanation.

A poster at professionalsoldiers.com did a nice little writeup covering the whole dragon skin controversy here. The problem is exactly as odie says, high temps cause the adhesive between the little plates to weaken, allowing them to shift. Dragon skin passed NIJ testing, but failed DOD testing with several first shot failures because of the extreme temp requirements among other things.

I think it worked great in the lab, but when you start subjecting it to real world variables, it failed miserably. From what I read, the inventor threw a fit and instead of going back to the drawing board just started suing.

Why not use an adhesive unaffected by temp variations? Is there not one available?

Here are the problems:





1) DragonSkin did NOT pass NIJ testing, even though Pinnacle said it did.





The reason for this, is that it was 'tested' against 5.56mm, rather than .308 (Level III) or .30-06 AP. (Level IV)





This means that it will NOT withstand a 7.62x54R (PSL, PKM) hit in combat. Which makes it unacceptable.




When the Army re-tested it PROPERLY, it failed.




2) The aforementioned problem with the plate adhesives





3) The weight. It is significantly heavier than a conventional vest, and troops are already overloaded.