Army Scientists, Engineers develop Liquid Body Armor
By Tonya Johnson
Army News Service
April 21, 2004


ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- Liquid armor for Kevlar vests is one of the newest technologies being developed at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to save Soldiers' lives.

This type of body armor is light and flexible, which allows soldiers to be more mobile and won't hinder an individual from running or aiming his or her weapon.

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

"During normal handling, the STF is very deformable and flows like a liquid. However, once a bullet or frag hits the vest, it transitions to a rigid material, which prevents the projectile from penetrating the Soldier's body," said Dr. Eric Wetzel, a mechanical engineer from the Weapons and Materials Research Directorate who heads the project team.

Full Story at Military.com

Pretty awesome if you ask me! I want a set of that armour...

Me too, first swords became obsolete for combat. I wonder if guns too would be obsolete if perfected.

I wonder how warfare would change if guns were made ineffective by this?

If I didn't misunderstood, liquid body armor just covers torso same as the body
armor they have now except liquid one hinders mobility less.
So guns would be as effective as now even the liquid one replaces current one.
Besides, those scientists are better at making new weapons than armors.
And gun isn't the only weapon. They got bombs, doing better job than millions of
bullets.

I'm sure I replied to this post already, but I'm not here

It would be a funny world if in a war people had such perfect armor that they were safe from any injury . Sadly that most likly will never be ......

We make better armour, they then build a better weapon so we build better armour and they build a better weapon.........see a pattern here.

That's the problem with making war so surgical, we forget the brutality. You guys remember the Trek episode where two planets fought a computer war and the casualties reported to a destruction booth. Kirk stopped that and forced them to go back to blowing themselves up or establish peace. A good lesson there.

The armour sounds cool, but as it probably only covers the torso area of the body, they can still get shot in the head so how much use would it have ben wearing it in the first place?

Military history goes in cycles. Armour improves, then weapons improve, making the old armour obsolete. It seems sensible to assume that if armour technology is set to improve, someone, somewhere, will be working on how to beat that armour.