Infantry Discussion Thread part 11: Gallas Razor edition.

[Gallia-]

Just google "shear thickening fluid, body armor" and pick from any of the stuff that comes up.

No, because it's all from 15 years ago and worthless lol.

I'm, asking you to compare to kelvar or UHMWPE,

I don't have to compare anything.

These exact dumb memes have been regurgitated on NS for the past 11 years, because 15 or 20 years ago some guy named Dr. Eric Wetzel working for Natick invented a method of doping Kevlar with corn starch and speculated it might be useful for body armor. Turns out it was too stiff, too heavy, too hot, and not much better than the UHWMPE used in actual body armor. This doesn't matter to the international capitalists who profit from intangible ideas rather than actual goods so I guess it's sticking around in the memesphere despite having been refuted a mere 2-3 years after its invention because someone bought the patents but those are the same guys who sold the US Army shitty body armor that literally melted when it was put in a Humvee.

It's found a use for things like motorcycle wear and now Dr. Wetzel is thinking it should go into socks and knee pads to give GIs ankle support, which is its most useful quality. I think Underarmor makes some STF liners or something for helmets and some support clothes like ankle support socks, and motorcycle companies like Klim are starting to make socks and boots using STF fabrics for the same in motorbike crashes. Klim and Icon make D3O pads which go into jackets and other shit which is a STF foam and it's super shitty because it's hot, melts, and is stiff, but I'm sorta stuck with it. At least it was cheap! I suspect pure STF will disappear in all but the sleaziest technical wears since it's bad and will be replaced by STF doped Kevlar in areas that are prone to twisting action but don't require a lot of flexibility, like knees/elbows/ankles, and possibly palm pads on gloves, and then newer generations of Kevlar and PVC nitriles will move into the rigid armor scene to thin up the backpads.

Don't ride with memes kids Kevlar is still king of the streets.

[Doppio Giudici]

Everything that came up for me is 2015 or later, half of it is 2018 or later, and three out of ten links are 2019.

I am not happy with you.

EDIT:

"Kevlar with corn starch and speculated it might be useful for body armor."

That's retarded, I'm not talking about that.

"The key component of liquid armor is a sheer thickening fluid or STF. This fluid is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic and it can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard nanoparticles of silica form the other component of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties.

STF is soaked into all layers of a Kevlar vest to make liquid armor."

[Gallia-]

Everything that came up for me is 2015 or later, half of it is 2018 or later, and three out of ten links are 2019.

That's because Google caches things periodically (approximately every 5-10 years), so naturally things from 2003 now are going to say they're "from" 2013. Lol.

https://www.tonyrogers.com/news/liquid_body_armor.htm
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ing_fluids

STF body armors were made by the US Army and worn and they were basically too hot, too stiff, and tended to shed their STF through fabric sweating, which increased the degradation of ballistic fibers from sunlight exposure. This is all obvious now, which is why people lost interest in the idea for body armor. Now they're thinking about ankle support socks and knee pads, which are far more boring but also more practical.

I am not happy with you.

Then maybe you should read a book lol. You, on the other hand, are exactly as I expected you'd be: you don't read the links you allegedly cite and you don't care about facts of things rather "what's cool".

Here's the facts: Kevlar/Dyneema is basically the top tier of armor protection and nothing has changed in the past 20 years since the last generations of Kevlar were made in the 1990s. The ultimate "soft armor vest" is still defined as "20 layers of the latest Kevlar, sandwiched between some ripstop cotton or a 50/50 cotton-nylon, and made into a camouflage vest". And it will be that way for the foreseeable future.

You can get away with using PASGT in the 2050s no one will shame you except Marxists like Elon Musk or Ray Kurzweil but their opinions are worthless.

[Triplebaconation]

I think they actually use kaolin silica nanoparticles.

[Doppio Giudici]

Two videos form 2015, one from 2012.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/liqui ... armor1.htm
Doesn't say, likely last year.
https://www.zmescience.com/research/mat ... -06042015/
This is from last year
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/liqui ... or-3331922
This year
https://www.popsci.com/poland-develops- ... uid-armor/
2015
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovati ... 180965272/
2017

All of these are 2012 or earlier, again, most of them are from 2015 and a lot are from 2017,2018,2019.

You didn't read a single one of these, because nothing you mentioned had anything to do with these articles. Never in any of these articles is the word starch or corn even mentioned.

You are literally shutting down materials you know nothing about, based on something completely different, from 15 years ago.

Also, this is very recent, experiments run by the actual US Army, not some guy mixing corn starch with armor.

[Gallia-]

Also, this is very recent, experiments run by the actual US Army, not some guy mixing corn starch with armor.

"Some guy mixing corn starch with armor" of course is "literally the guy who invented 'liquid armor' and works for the US Army doing all these experiments recently, previously, and in the future" lol.

The fact that you don't know that Dr. E.D. Wetzel is the god-king emperor of this stuff is fascinating, since you supposedly know so much about it and I am but a lonely boi who knows nothing. And I actually read the Smithsonian one, that's where I learned Dr. Wetzel is still studying STF doped fluids at Natick, and is thinking of applying it to torsion resisting socks and corsets for paratroopers brave enough to mount the dreaded Womack Pack or Javelin Missile Jump Pack and take it in the ankles or lumbar like a real man, since the body armor thing failed many, many years ago.

I think they actually use kaolin silica nanoparticles.

Ye Dr. Wetzel's ethylene STF was silica particles t. his dank PDF from back when men still wore BDUs.

Apparently they'd dipped it in the doped ethylene glycol and let it evaporate in an oven or something.

[Doppio Giudici]

What was that nonsense about corn starch then?

[Gallia-]

You didn't read a single one of these

Haha this guy thinks I know how to read lmao.

What was that nonsense about corn starch then?

Flippancy, duh.

I'm a millennial. Flippant irony is literally our only contribution to American culture.

[Doppio Giudici]

What makes you think this stuff shuts down in the heat, when source after source insists this stuff loves the heat?

Where are you getting this data? Some long lost article from 2005 or something?

[Gallia-]

Some long lost article from 2005 or something?

Yes, which was the last serious research done on the aspects of ballistic protection using STF doped Kevlar lol.

Everything else since that has focused on this specific, niche application has been contributing basically nothing to human knowledge.

Dr. Wetzel has been trying to sell it for body armor use coming up on the past 20 years, and it hasn't stuck. Tony Johnson blogged about it in 2004, and on your post "this year" he's still blogging about it, with Dr. Wetzel, 15 years later. Shock. The only difference is it seems E.D. Wetzel has recognized that body armor is a lost cause and he's starting to push into more manageable things like STF doped ankle supports and stuff. i.e. things that are practical work. Body armor is a solved problem. If this were discovered in like 1950 I guess it would have been cool and a reasonably futuristic material, but it wasn't. It was discovered long after the twilight of the "soft armor vest" and well into the era of the "hard armor plate carrier".

If it were as cool as you think it is it would have shown up in Soldier Protection System. I have no doubt Dr. Wetzel was involved in that since he works at Natick and is a senior researcher there. Perhaps he's working on helmet straps for the SPS ECH and retention straps for the vest or something. Maybe an SPS corset so paratroopers who jump with the Javelin Missile Jump Pack and the Stinger Missile Jump Pack, or the M240 and a thousand rounds of .30 cal, aren't busting their lumbars like my dad did. That would be in line with his most recent work, i.e. helmet retention and joint supporting garments.

Instead, the US Army went with a new generation of Kevlar. Probably because DuPont invested millions in between their last investment of millions into the stuff and it probably works just as well against most things.

Actual future body armor is going to be finding stronger, lighter fibers like M5 fiber (itself a meme, but nowhere near as meme-y as Dr. Wetzel's work since it was invented by a collective aggregate of production engineers and not as a culmination of one man's life work) and stronger, lighter body armor plates.

[Doppio Giudici]

Are you familiar with UHMWPE rifle plates?

[Triplebaconation]

(Image)

Have you switched from wikipedia to funnyjunk.com?

[Gallia-]

Are you familiar with UHMWPE rifle plates?

They, like all soft armor "rifle plates", are worthless. Because if you thought ceramic plates were fat and unwieldy, you ain't seen nothing yet!

It only makes sense for PREPPERS and the like who are capital averse and also don't matter.

People who do matter (read: armies and police forces) will just buy boron carbide or aluminum oxide plates depending on the manufacturing capabilities of the local industrial base.

Body armor wants to be thin. It also wants to be light. Boron carbide hits a good spot between areal density and flexibility retention. Soft armor is bad at both, since it needs to be thicc as all hell and this reduces freedom of movement. STF doped armor is theoretically good but it retains too much heat and tend to retain water/sweat which makes them heavy in practical use. The ability to get around this has not yet been discovered and this is not for lack of trying, it was well known 10 years ago and one reason why Dr. Wetzel has moved on from trying to make STF doped armor is that all the good, breathable fabrics also have shitty ballistic quality.

It seems the efficacy of the STF doping process is related to the decrease in breathability, which is to be expected if we assume the micro-spheres are filling voids and stiffening the fabric, so you're going to be retaining heat and sweat regardless if you do it properly. In a world where soldiers are at a real risk of dropping dead from heat stroke in high ambient temperatures, militaries are pushing for portable refrigeration air coolers for ground troops, and hot weather is only going to get bigger and badder, making the "stuffy hot uniform" problem worse is stupid.

The absolute best we have found is combining hard ceramic plates with a thin backstop of soft armor. This will stop all threats, pistols included, and if you only want to stop pistols then you can use a thick-ish vest of 20-odd layers of the latest Kevlar and that will stop basically all pistol rounds. You can shave around the vest if you want to reduce weight and increase breathability, but that's about as good as it's going to get. In the future we might have better fibers like M5 that will make vests thinner and lighter without compromising breathability, which is what STF doping is supposed to do for Kevlar but it really just makes them stuffy and difficult to wear. But M5 is hard to produce. The production bottleneck is the only real issue with it, though, unlike STF which is more like an intractable issue of how the thing works.

[Doppio Giudici]

Are you familiar with UHMWPE rifle plates?

They, like all soft armor "rifle plates", are worthless. Because if you thought ceramic plates were fat and unwieldy, you ain't seen nothing yet!

It only makes sense for PREPPERS and the like who are capital averse and also don't matter.

People who do matter (read: armies and police forces) will just buy boron carbide or aluminum oxide plates depending on the manufacturing capabilities of the local industrial base.

3.3 pounds is unwieldy? I can't even find aluminum oxide plates anymore, its all UHMWPE, with better protection, almost same cost, and less weight.

[Gallia-]

You aren't even a relevant buyer. You're probably getting the quality control production castoffs and test failed lots that have been squished together into a "UHMWPE rifle plate" to sell to American preppers who think they're going to be the next John Rambo or Mad Max when the gold apocalypse comes (you know, instead of being dead shot by a posse of motorcycle riding bandit cowboys or whatever).

e: Aluminum oxide ballistic plates are all over Alibaba.

[Doppio Giudici]

You aren't even a relevant buyer. You're probably getting the quality control production castoffs and test failed lots that have been squished together into a "UHMWPE rifle plate" to sell to American preppers who think they're going to be the next John Rambo or Mad Max when the gold apocalypse comes (you know, instead of being dead shot by a posse of motorcycle riding bandit cowboys or whatever).

e: Aluminum oxide ballistic plates are all over Alibaba.

You mean the under 100 dollar plates that people have tested and they suck, or are you talking about something else?

The Chinese stuff that admits it's Chinese, is garbage.

[Gallia-]

So are "UHMWPE rifle plates". Body armor is only good if two conditions exist that are true:

1) It can be mass produced quickly.
2) It is reliable enough to work most of the time when attacked.

Ceramic plates hit this easily. They're cheap to make, it's no longer the 1980s or whatever, and they are reliable enough for soldiers to not want to not wear them when their squad- or platoonmate is shot and the vest-plate combination stops the threat like 98-99% of the time.

"UHMWPE rifle plates" are the opposite of good body armor. They are expensive to make, and their efficacy is in serious doubt, because we know that 20 layers of Kevlar won't stop anything bigger than a small caliber pistol round, it's unlikely that 40 layers will do the same, but it's a great way to liberate money from clueless folks who are never going to get shot at enough to find out that it doesn't work. Which is the actual reason it exists and is $700 a set instead of $300 like good, reliable, ceramic.

Ceramic is ceramic is ceramic and Chinese ceramic is quality enough to work, but you're liable to get production castoffs and failed lots from Alibaba that is true. Then again, what do you think "soft rifle plate" is made from? The highest quality artificial silks spun from the strongest Dutch spindels of the land? No, it's made from surplus trash slapped together to avoid having to recycle and dispose of good product. And it probably makes whoever makes it money hand over fist selling to know nothings who are afraid of something reliable like boron carbide and would rather trust their chest with 40-50 layers of Kevlar instead of 20 layers and an inch thick plate of ceramic. Because it's lighter.

Once again the good stuff goes to people who matter, i.e. soldiers and police officers. The stuff that "private citizens" can buy is generally 1980s-type metals or 20 year old standard, SAPI pattern boron carbide plates at best.

[Doppio Giudici]

UHMWPE is very different from kevlar and I don't see how 320 a plate is expensive. One is a heat conductor, the other one repels heat. They behave differently when slashed...So on and so forth....

Boron Carbide is like twice or almost three times that. There are plenty of places offering Boron Carbide ESAPIs, they are heavy as fuck, and they are not cheap.

I never remember Aluminum Oxide being cheaper then 200 dollars a plate, and since no one in the US is selling anymore, I'm starting to think it's because it's been replaced by something better.

[Triplebaconation]

Anyway, if anyone's interested, most internet sources on the Toyota War are quite bad. The Milan was crucial to Chadian success, but they didn't win because they zipped around on pickup trucks with them.

A Chadian attack on a Libyan armored formation would almost invariably begin with Milans fired from camouflaged hilltop positions after the Libyans stopped for the night. Toyotas would then charge the opposite side and drop off fighters with RPGs and LAWs. These tactics were only possible because the Libyans almost never scouted.

However, most Libyan armor losses were vehicles destroyed after isolated garrisons fell to surprise attacks by FANT. Equipment that FANT couldn't carry with them or transfer to American and French forces for intelligence analysis was destroyed in situ.

Chadian accuracy with Milan was very poor, with dozens of missiles fired for every hit. Chadian Redeye and Stinger teams were also pretty bad.

Chad had astounding success because:
1) The Libyan army was extremely poorly led, and Qaddafi's split with his Chadian GUNT allies deprived it of experienced scouts and light infantry with local knowledge. Libyans were too poorly disciplined to bother with scouting or proper security, either on the march or in garrison.
2) For most of the war the French air force kept Libya's out of the air.
3) Habre and his commanders had a very good understanding of desert warfare and their own weaknesses.
4) The Chadians were able to rely on France for intelligence, aerial reconnaissance, and the logistical support to keep hundreds of trucks and armored vehicles (the Chadians had a fairly strong force of Panhards and V-150s) running, which was beyond them at the time. In some cases DGSE personnel would help plan and participate in attacks as well.

These factors were far more decisive than the equipment used by either side. Milan at best allowed FANT to counter Libyan armor, that they crushed it was due to tactical and strategic skill and outside factors. Against a more competent enemy with the same equipment the best the Chadians could hope for would be a draw like Operation Savannah.

[Theodosiya]

Can you train a fucking cat?

[Gallia-]

They are in sync because Gallans, like bees, run on pheromones.

[Mostrov]

What are good sources on it?

[Spirit of Hope]

Doesn't kevlar with STF commit the sin of being heavier than an equivalent protection level of just strait kevlar? That's what I remember from the last time I looked at the stuff a couple of years ago.

I don't see why you would want to use equipment that is heavier if it doesn't offer better capabilities.

-snip-

Proving yet again that proper tactics is far more important than equipment. This really shouldn't surprise anyone, yet people constantly seem to think if a nation can afford good weapons they must know how to use them properly, which isn't true.

[Triplebaconation]

What are good sources on it?

There's really not much in English at all. Armies of Sand probably has the best details of the background and tactics, and the Osprey technical book has a little on the vehicles. French sources are generally better for the esoteric details, but they usually concentrate on the air war and politics.

-snip-

Proving yet again that proper tactics is far more important than equipment. This really shouldn't surprise anyone, yet people constantly seem to think if a nation can afford good weapons they must know how to use them properly, which isn't true.

The Chadians could barely use their weapons properly either. What they did have was an understanding of the value of reconnaissance (the Milan being almost as useful in this role as it was as a missile launcher, plus satellite and aerial imagery didn't hurt) and a culture with generations of experience in desert raiding that allowed them to use far more initiative in...desert raiding.

FANT shouldn't be glamorized though. They were killing thousands of Chadian civilians at the same time and also used the Toyota as a particularly brutal torture device.

[Austrasien]

The idea is something akin to an automatic mortar, firing something of equivalent power to a mortar round. The argument of semantics is beyond dumb, as mortar is essentially a gigantic grenade luancher and vice versa, grenade launchers tend to share many attributes with mortars, they are just smaller. Your only argument is that due to an arbitrary requirements you made up, that it can't be considered a mortar launcher, even if it fires a mortar round. Which is basically what a mortar launcher is. The idea is to fire mortar rounds out of an automatic weapon, regardless of what that system is. The idea this must be a grenade launcher due to some made-up semantic reason is silly at best. It's annoying and pedantic and does nothing to actually further the conversation of how to effectively use or design such a weapon. If you want to give yourself rotor-cuff surgery becuase you're patting yourself on the back so hard for coming up with a made-up definition of what a mortar launcher is, then that's fine, but it really just bogs down any meaningful conversation.

But you already know the answer. You just keep pretending you don't know what it is called.