{"id":13738,"date":"2016-03-27T15:17:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-27T20:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=13738"},"modified":"2016-03-27T15:17:06","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T20:17:06","slug":"military-defense-news-south-koreas-liquid-body-armor-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/27\/military-defense-news-south-koreas-liquid-body-armor-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Defense News: South Korea’s Liquid Body Armor Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"troop\"<\/h3>\n

Had the military not stopped this shady deal, 300,000 troops would have received faulty vests<\/h3>\n
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In 2007, the South Korean military became seduced by liquid armor, a new technology which promised to save soldiers from North Korean bullets. In theory, the experimental armor could even block armor-penetrating rounds from the AK-47.<\/p>\n

But in 2011, South Korea suddenly halted its liquid armor project. It turned out that the armor wasn\u2019t ready, and that a secret deal between the manufacturer, Samyang, and an official within the Ministry of Defense conspired to deliver the armor below the military\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

In exchange, the firm offered \u201cbribes and re-employment guarantees,\u201dNewsis<\/em> reported on March 23 and summarized by NK News<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most body armor is Kevlar, a synthetic fiber, which is often combined with ceramic inserts for even stronger protection. Liquid armor, however, is made from a mix of silica particles suspended in polyethylene glycol and layered within sheets of Kevlar. Think of the \u201cliquid\u201d as a\u00a0kind of gooey plastic.<\/p>\n

When a fast-moving bullet makes contact with the mixture, the silica reacts and hardens into a wall.\u00a0Not only is liquid armor more flexible than Kevlar, it\u2019s stronger.<\/p>\n

\"Corn_speaker\"<\/a>Above \u2014 an analogy to liquid armor is cornstarch on a speaker. The vibrations cause the liquid to thicken.Photo via Wikimedia<\/a>. At top \u2014 South Korean marines during an amphibious assault exercise. South Korean Ministry of Defense photo<\/h6>\n

The driving force behind the shadowy deal was an attempt by Samyang to\u00a0monopolize the liquid armor market<\/a> in South Korea, according to NK News<\/em>, a website\u00a0focused on North Korea which also tracks developments south of the DMZ.<\/p>\n

Besides the corruption, inspectors discovered that armor-penetrating rounds still<\/em>\u00a0punctured\u00a0the armor during testing, according to a report from the Defense Ministry\u2019s Board of Audit and Inspection. That\u2019s outrageous. Had the deal continued, soldiers in a potential future conflict with North Korea would die because of faulty body armor.<\/p>\n

NK News<\/em>\u00a0noted that \u201cSamyang would have provided more than 300,000 failed units to the South Korean military until the year 2025, at a cost of 270 billion Korean won,\u201d or about $240 million.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear if the scandal\u00a0raises questions about liquid armor generally. It could have just been the specific version produced by Samyang.<\/p>\n

There are other liquid armor projects around the world in stages of development. BAE Systems has developed one, as has Poland\u2019s Military Institute of Armament Technology. But no army has adopted them for regular use. One problem is that liquid armor combined with Kevlar is actually \u2026 quite heavy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heavier than Kevlar alone, in fact.\u00a0For soldiers, every extra pound of weight matters.<\/p>\n

Read the Original at War is Boring<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had the military not stopped this shady deal, 300,000 troops would have received faulty vests In 2007, the South Korean military became seduced by liquid armor, a new technology which promised to save soldiers from North Korean bullets. In theory, the experimental armor could even block armor-penetrating rounds from the AK-47. But in 2011, South…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,5429,1286,2820,2479,1898],"tags":[10660,10661,10662,10663,3913],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}