Centurion composite tactical vest | Source: Honeywell
U.S. defence company, Honeywell, has launched a new composite tactical vest in India that the company claims achieves significant weight reductions for fully-kitted armed forces and law-enforcement personnel.
Honeywell’s Global Marketing Manager for Body Protection, Greg Davis spoke to StratPost about the product and said, “We’re launching our Centurion product for the first time in India, which uses our Spectra fibre in a fabric composite. Law enforcement personnel and military personnel continue to want to reduce the weight that they’re carrying.”
Davis explained there are two ways to do this.
“They can do that through reducing the weight of that armour, which we’ve done through the technology advancements in our ballistic products. We also decided to take that strength of the Spectra fibre and see if we can incorporate it in some of the fabrics that the soldiers are wearing and that the law enforcement officers are wearing. And we’re not talking about fabrics, necessarily, that would stop bullets, but that would help improve the garments that they’re wearing,” he said.
This is something that personnel already do with something called MOLLE, said Davis.
“In many cases officers and soldiers are wearing plate carriers or tactical vests – those are the vests you’ve seen on the outside. And those plate carrier tactical vests often have – MOLLE – Modular Lightweight Load-bearing Equipment. So what they do is they put nylon webbing across these garments and then they hook their pouches, ammo and equipment on to their vests – and they customise it with this MOLLE for the requirement of the mission. MOLLE webbing has been used for many, many years in tactical vests and plate carriers,” he explained.
Centurion composite tactical vest
Specifications of the Centurion | Source: Honeywell
“But with the Centurion composite fabric, they’re able to remove all that webbing and instead replace it with laser cuts within our fabric. So our fabric basically replaces the nylon that they use today and there’s no more need for sewing in all this webbing – it just totally remove the webbing – they use a laser cutter to laser-cut these holes with slits into the vests and now they can hook their equipment – same thing they do today – their equipment into the vest but without all that extra webbing that’s on the vest. So in doing that they remove 35 to 40 percent of the weight of the vest or the plate carrier. Just by removing that nylon webbing,” said Davis.
He explained that this weight reduction is with reference to the tactical vest, alone.
“This is a weight reduction only in terms of the vest. So a typical solider can carry 30 to 40 kilograms of equipment. Depending on what the type they’re wearing, the vests itself might be 3 kilos without all the armour and everything. So we’re talking 25 to 40 percent of that 3 kilos, which is a smaller number, but it’s still significant because if you’re taking out even a half a kilo, that’s half a kilo that the soldier doesn’t have to carry anymore or half a kilo where he can put on something else,” Davis pointed out.
Spectra fibre
The Centurion tactical vest is based on Honeywell’s Spectra composite fibre, manufactured in Virginia in the U.S. The company says the Spectra fibre is 15 times stronger than steel at the same weight.
Spectra fibre | Source: Honeywell
“Spectra has been used in ballistic materials that go into body armour, helmets, vehicle armour for over twenty years. We’ve got a very broad portfolio using our Spectra fibre that goes into our Spectra shield products – and those Spectra shield products are used in hard armour applications, as well as, soft armour applications. But we continue to invest in that technology to advance the state of the armour industry,” explained Davis.
He explained how the Spectra composite fibre has evolved since the mid-eighties to achieve it’s current strength and weight reduction.
“It’s still a polyethylene – ultra-high molecular polyethylene, which is our Spectra fibre, but over that time we’ve evolved that fibre significantly from where it was in the mid-80s to where it is today. In terms of strength and performance – so not only have we advanced the performance of the fibre itself but we’ve invested a lot of time, money and put a lot of effort into advancing technology of the unidirectional composite,” said Davis.
Bullet impact on Spectra fibre armour | Source: Honeywell
“The Spectra shield has been used in armour for over twenty years. In fact we had announced it was being used in the U.S. Army’s next generation soldier system body armour program,” he added, explaining, “Honeywell has had 5 major generations of Spectra that has led to armour weight reduction of over 40%. Over this time, Honeywell has nearly doubled the strength of Spectra fibre.”
Vehicular applications
Spectra also has vehicular armour applications and Davis said that Honeywell has also done ‘up-armouring of vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, boats’ around the world.
“It tends to play very well because of the fact that Spectra is really one of the most advanced armours that can help save weight – it tends to do very well in vehicle and aircraft applications where weight is really at a premium. Helicopters and aircraft tend to really value Spectra shield because of just the weight advantage and the fact that it can extend the range of your mission.
According to Vikas Kapur, Honeywell’s Business Director in India for Packaging and Composites, Spectra could be offered as a solution for India’s Future Infantry Combat Vehicle (FICV) program. “There’s a lot of interest in making it with composites instead of conventional steel. We don’t build vehicles. But we can help equip them with lightweight materials,” he said.
“Spectra can reduce the weight of vehicle armour by 20% to 50% depending on the threat and other requirements,” explained Kapur.
