Sanctor Fiber Vest
Capabilities
Disclaimer: To demonstrate the capabilities of the Santor Fiber Vest, comparisons must be made to other products, of different types, which will be referred to as if a "Brand X".There are four types of vests currently on the market, which this product is actively competing with: Type K, Type A, Type X, and Type Y.
Type K vests are made from Kevlar, and for lighter applications, the cheaper cousin of the Sanctor, does the sale job for less money. For stronger but still low cost options, the Sanctor Fiber Vest comes in and is available with multiple types of reinforcement. If you are able to afford body armor, the least you can do for yourself is get the ALPA or the "Hometown Hero" Sanctor Fiber Vest (In UHMWPE). You're either going to get more for the same money, or the same for less money.
Type A vests are models such as the Interceptor, Ranger, and Modular Tactical Vest. These are also very generic vests that use technology dating back to 2008, at least, if not a decade earlier in some components. Still, you are likely to be paying around 800 NSD for one of these vests, unless you manage to luck out and get a really cheap one bundled with hard armor, and yes, you can buy a soft armor vest by itself for 800 NSD, people really charge that much. The "Hometown Hero" model of our vest does the same features for less then half the cost, and our "Baseline model" is more protective or lighter, depending on which one you choose, for the same price. On top of that, Type A vests use... Velcro, lots and lots of Velcro, which fails miserably in combat conditions. The baseline model of the Sanctor Fiber Vest uses straps, latches, plastic buckles, and hinges.
Type X vests are charging you between one and two grand, for the same, tired, old UHMWPE and 500D/1000D Cordura. If you get the "Hometown Hero" model, you save at least six or seven hundred dollars. If you get the "Baseline model", you save 100 NSD, AND, get better protection or considerably less weight.
Type Y vests are just that "Why", as in "Why does this exist?". A Type Y vest is a Type X vest with "Dragon-Skin" technology, which leads to Fivs, (which leads to more nightmares for the writer, those who served have a dark sense of humor), or, it involves graphene or another "wonder-material" reinforcing lackluster outdated materials. The application of reinforcing other material has already been proven to never be cheaper when using carbon-nanotubes (organic fullerenes), while the Dauntless writeup in 2008 proved that any inorganic fullerene is " easier and much less expensive to produce, is chemically stable and is dramatically less reactive and less flammable. Not to mention that, "organic fullerenes are also considered to be highly toxic".
An additional problem with "Dragon-Skin" technology is that just looking at it should tell you why it doesn't work. According to one expert "Because the "Scales" have to overlap, you will always end up with more material(and therefore weight) required to protect the same area.".
Finally, "Wonder-Materials" come with a serious question associated with them, besides "Why", and that is "How can you afford this"? The Dauntless Vest costs several thousand dollars, per part, and it's a miracle that a nation like Lyras had the money and resources to make their concept a reality. Imagine if someone in a first world nation sold you a brand new Glock for 81.08 NSD. You would have some questions about where this item came from, right? The writer and Pentagonal Armaments can't be sued for just asking questions to potentional customers.
History
Disclaimer: The entire history of the Sanctor Fiber Vest involves several nations and companies which can't be named for reasons legal, polite, and professional. Firms will have placeholder names instead.The entire process for the develpment and design of the "Sanctor Fiber Vest", started with the first vest made in Vadia, that wasn't made of silk or nylon, the first serious ballistic fiber vest. In 1983-1984 (Records were lost in a fire, record keepers died in during one of two wars), the PASGT vest and helmet were adopted by the nation of Vadia, just in time for both of the "Han Wars". During both conflicts, the PASGT vest and helmet were turned out in the hundreds of millions and issued to very far, and very wide. Many soldiers, and civilians just trying to not be killed in the endless bombing campaigns of the enemy, found the vest to be comfortable, effective against fragments and handgun loads, and easily acquirable due to the mass production. It is estimated that out of every four Vadia people wounded in both conflicts, two of them would've been killed or maimed without the vest or helmet. The protection that the vest and helmet provided, encouraged and motivated soldiers to be more aggressive, and they used this aggression to take the fight to the enemy. Once the fight was fully taken to the enemy during the Second Han War, the nation of Vadia could finally know peace, even if for a short while. In the aftermath, the PASGT vest became a symbol of Vadian pride and honor, but it had limited replacement with the "Ranger Vest" during the 1990s.
After decades of isolation, healing, civil-war, rebirth, and finally, exposure to the rest of the world again; the people of Vadia were ready for newer and better body armor. Now there was a second nation founded by the people of Vadia, Doppio Giudici, and after the two nations settled their disputes, they founded the "New Timathin Alliance". Around the time that the "NTA" was changed to "Neo-Terran Alliance", both Vadia and Doppio Giudic started inspecting the world marketplace for new technology, new designs, and something they could quickly buy the production rights to. Hastily, in 2012 they bought up the production rights from a firm known as "Hell", for a blue peacekeeping vest, at the tune of tens of millions of NSD.
The vest, now referred to as the "WA Vest", met a lot of the requirements for a replacement to the PASGT vest. It was just as light, had a breathable inner material, a protective collar that could be folded up or down, additional addons for the neck, shoulders, and groin, came with plenty of velcro slots, came with it's own ammo pouches, was protective against blades, and was capable of accepting hard armor plates. One of the issues that came up was that most soldiers wore "Large" hard armor plates, when they used the Ranger Vest and it was widely accepted that many other nations did likewise. The WA Vest was sold with NIJ III plates, but the NTA found itself wanting to use different hard armor plates. However, most of the "Large" size hard armor plates in service around the world, and for sale, didn't fit the "WA Vest". There was also issues with the first few generations of hard armor used by Vadia and the NTA, along with the 'trauma pads' issued with them. Due to these issues, the "WA Vest" was made slightly larger, given more 'padding' on the chest and back, and had the slot for the hard armor plates changed to standard 'large' hard armor plate dimensions. In less then a year the vest and it's users were introduced to "Fourth Generation Warfare", during a series of "brush-fire" conflicts, "police actions", and peacekeeping operations.
This led to the NTA signing lots of paperwork and aligning itself with the International Coalition for Expansion (Actual name), this further led to the NTA being introduced to a second nation, "Mentat". Mentat had a well arranged and capable firm which was working with lots of very effective and cutting edge technology. Thus, in 2013, less then a year after the WA Vest was adopted, it was being replaced by the "Coalition Vest". The Coalition Vest was.. (The writer himself has been issued both vests), issued products from Mentat. The firm sold it's own brand of glasses, which were close to perfect. The firm sold uniforms, close to perfect. Helmets, a little expensive, close to perfect. The Coalition Vest was very adaptable, going from plate carrier to full armored vest, while also being comfortable and having good weight distribution. There was no indications if 1000 denier Cordura (Coalition Vest was made from said material) or Kevlar were better material to make body armor out of, only that Kevlar was cheaper and easier to work with. The product had velcro, zippers, breathable air-pockets, and hugged the body very well; which was a big deal during the crawling, crouching, and climbing of conflicts around the world.
The nation of Mentat had discovered the technology for the hard armor plates in their Coalition Vest and had been heavily motivated because of the nation's military needs, to put heavily work into getting their vest and the hard armor plates within it, ready for military applications. Partially through the process and the testing of the product, it turns out that Mentat was informed by their researchers, reporters, and other nations, about Lyras and Dauntless Armor. Deliberately, to avoid lawsuits or claims of stealing technology, the designers, researchers, and engineers at Mentat deliberately kept themselves in the dark about Dauntless. This came down to be a very fatal problem, as while the Coalition Vest was very well designed, and appeared to have great materials, it wasn't lacking in complications (Outside price and raity) like Dauntless Armor was. The design firm claimed that their use of Dragon Skin technology was fine, that the original designers who they licensed the technology from, had assured them that it worked. On top of that, many independent and small scale military tests didn't indicate any issues. The vest only failed and failed horribly in large scale "US Army" tests. There was also a lot of rumors that the technology was widely adopted by: high level body guards, experienced private military contractors, and intelligence operatives. In fact, Mentat had done a lot of due diligence to 'fix any reported or possible issues' with the technology.
Most of the tests on the original "Dragon Skin" technology involved using cartridges and calibers that could easily be shrugged off by NIJ III plates far and wide, and the host nation for the technology rejected applications that the technology had a NIJ III rating. Back in 2013, less then a year after the Coalition Vest was being sold, the host firm for the technology had lost all of it's lawsuits, didn't have any qualifications that its technology worked at all, and no persons in the host nation or any other nations in a 25,000 mile radius used it either. Mentat's firm that sold the Coalition Vest went bankrupt or stopped selling internationally in 2016, eight months later another nation started selling vests using some of the same technology, without crashing into any copyright problems.
With forty million plus under arms, a success rate of 99.99 means a lot of coffins draped in flags. It was too bad that there were two, count them, two "Lust for Slaves" Wars. Three flags, the flag of the NTA, the flag of the mother country, and the flag of the people the soldier died protecting, were draped over each coffin, if there was a coffin at all. At first, the problem had been rumors, then "Freak Fatal ICE Vest Sydrome" or "FFIVS" (Fivs), then six thousand people were lost. A lot of NTA soldiers died in the fighting, from all kinds of other wounds besides ones that a vest could stop, but enough died due to Fivs that replacement hard armor was rushed out. The writer personally knows a woman, who as far as examination could tell, had died from Fivs. Her body wasn't fully recovered, she died from two .30 caliber rounds, likely AP, hitting her right on the back. A wide number of replacements were proposed and used, but only recently in 2020 has anything progressed further.
In 2020, three major things happened for the NTA (Now known as the Coalition of Human Rights and Ethics). First, the scientific capabilities of the founding members of the alliance rapidly grew, the alliance invested more attention into Lazarus while the region was in a state of Cold War, and the research projects involving body armor obtained additional resources and experts from one or more classified nations. Research into a number possible methods to solve issues with the WA Vest and Coalition Vest were investigated, and research was carefully brought, bribed, and bartered from around the world. At least eight of the most complex and enlightening studies came from DeepDyve, with a number of others coming from other sources. The research, design, and engineering teams actively looked at the writeups of all former and current competitors, talked to people highly skeptical of any advanced technology, and looked into hard/soft armor solutions. There was a lot of thought put into replacing the failed Dragon-Skin armor and the former Boron Carbide ESAPI plates. Multiple times teams mentioned that it wasn't clear if titanium disulfide (TiS2) could be rolled into nano-tubes at an affordable cost, and how effective they would be if they were simply formed normal ceramics or rolled into "micro-tubes" using micrometers instead of nanometers. Many questions came up about how the cost would be anywhere close to where it needed to be, how other companies charged 750 NSD a plate and not 2500-3500 NSD.
Considering these fundamental issues with the hard armor, that project was delayed for ____ days, while the RDE teams focused on the soft armor vest/plate carrier, the replacement or addons for the trauma pad, and any possible replacements for the helmet. Investigations found a lot of data and research involving adding things to kevlar to get better results, but there appeared to be two replacements for kevlar already, which both came up in the Coalition Vest and the helmet issued with it. There was a great deal of concern about soft armor being too 'hard' to be used as soft armor, along with a lot of research smuggled in involving completely incompatible measurement systems. Despite this, at risk of leaking out important data, the RDE team pinned down that as long as a material could be woven and used as a fiber, it was suitable as soft armor. Kevlar could be made hard as a rock, other materials too, and this led to a sigh of relief for the designers. According to one vital source, just because the size of the damage inflicted upon body armor was small, didn't mean the amount of energy absorbed was small. PBO fibers were thrown out as worse then Kevlar in another source. Another study that proved more useful for throwing things out then keeping them in, proved even unwoven materials were better then kevlar for body armor.
Thoughts and experiments came up involving adding stuff to one of the replacements for kevlar, as it was turning out to be increasingly obsolete, till finally the discovery and application of M5-1 Fiber began. It wasn't entirely clear if 500D Cordura or UHMWPE were better, but M-5-1 fiber was conservatively estimated and shown to be 53% stronger then kevlar, when it came down to compressive applications. There was enough research labs and low level companies working on getting M5-1 fiber setup for tooling applications and it almost appeared to be an "open secret" among international researchers on new ballistic protection technology. Despite this Zylon was found to be 1.6 times the tensile strength of kevlar, and it wasn't proven yet that it had less environmental resistance as M5-1. Zylon is also more resistant to wear and tear then UHMWPE, according to more research. Whichever was selected, it was very clear that blunt thoracic trauma was still a very serious injury, which was experienced even by those who survived being shot in the chest because of their vest. It was widely agreed that if a solution could be found for replacing the hard armor, that involved something lighter/thinner, then it would be easy to add more soft armor or a thicker trauma-pad behind the hard armor. Thankfully, the project was able to continue and choose a material, after Zylon/PBO was shown to heavily decay over time, when exposed to heat or humidity, even that which was provided by those wearing it.
After many hard weeks trying to get the project completely figured out, without leaking too many vital secrets, it was decided that the vest portion of the body armor system would be figured out first, and put into production first. With a massive order of 250 million "Baseline Sanctor Fiber Vests", before the final decision on which materials would be used, the decision to quickly finish tooling up all the possible factories, was made. The massive order was so big, that it would likely take over a year to fulfill, and that it would entirely pay for the massive costs of setting up one of the largest body armor production lines in the world. According to math and calculation, the internal civilian and military markets of CoHRE would fulfill future demand after the first year, for at least ten years. Afterwards, the cost of vests and M-5-1 fiber would be so low, that the factories to be retooled for potentially thousands of different products.