The Technical Power Holding Company, a subsidiary of the Russian National Technology Group, successfully completed the impact test of the ceramic armor plate. The group stated that as part of Russia's future composite armor, the ceramic armor can provide protection for personnel and can be equipped with military equipment. This armor plate made of alumina ceramics exhibits high-strength protective performance, comparable to steel armor, but is smaller in size and lighter in weight. The product plans to start mass production in the near future.
Ceramics have been used in the field of bulletproof since the 1960s, when the helicopters and crews of the US military in the Vietnamese jungle were often killed by light weapons on the ground. In order to reduce equipment battle damage and occupant casualties, in 1962, an American aerospace company first developed a composite armor with hard ceramics on the front. Alumina ceramic blocks were glued to a ductile aluminum backplane about 6 mm thin to resist Shooting of 7.62mm armor-piercing projectile. It was during this period that the US military opened a precedent for the large-scale military application of bulletproof ceramics.
For armored vehicles, ceramic composite armor has become a "secret weapon" to improve its protective capabilities. Main battle tanks such as the British "Challenger 2", French "Leclerc", and Russian "Amata" are all equipped with this type of armor. It is reported that a British army "Challenger 2" tank was hit by 14 RPG rockets and 1 anti-tank missile, but there were no casualties inside, which shows the "shield" ability of modern ceramic composite armor.
When heavy equipment was put on light and high-strength ceramic "armor", people turned their attention to the soldiers who shuttled through the rain of bullets. In fact, as early as World War II, steel bulletproof breastplates appeared. Because of its bulkiness, it was not welcomed by soldiers. In the 1970s, the U.S. Army introduced soft and lightweight Kevlar body armor. Although it has a good performance in protecting low-speed bullets and explosive fragments, when encountering high-speed bullets fired by a rifle, the protection is often "powerless".
In order to improve the protection ability, scientists thought of making bulletproof ceramics into inserts and using them in conjunction with soft body armor, just like the "heart guard" on ancient armor. In this way, the protective ability of the core part of the human body can be greatly improved, and the mobility of the wearer can be taken into account. In the beginning, small pieces of ceramics were used to splice into boards. With the advancement of technology, more and more monolithic ceramics are used to eliminate the weak points of small ceramic pieces due to splicing gaps, and some are also made into curved surfaces to fit the human body. This is also the basic style of the current bulletproof board.
Currently in the foreign body armor market, products from the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan and other countries are more popular and of better quality. The materials of bulletproof products are mainly high-performance organic synthetic fibers, such as the aramid fiber (aramid) "Kevlar" from Dupont, the Twaron fiber from Akzo, the Dyneema fiber from DSM, and Allied Signal from the US (Now Honeywell) Spectra ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber.
Because Russia's firearms are more powerful than European and American countries, coupled with advanced steel armor, its domestic personal body armor mainly uses hard (bullet-proof steel plate), soft (heterocyclic aramid), and a combination of soft and hard. A large number of soft bulletproof materials are industrialized, such as aramid fiber and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber. For a long time, the huge investment and military needs in the military have been a huge driving force to stimulate the development and application of bulletproof ceramics. my country's defense bomb ceramics were first used in bullet-proof armor, and their development was relatively slow. Bulletproof ceramic raw materials, molding processes, the use of adhesives, the research of the interface layer, and the design of backing materials are far behind foreign countries.