The luckiest soldier in the army

[Ken L]

I watched this story unfold last week and am suprised that nobody else has made a reference to it.

 

The guy was hit by a round from an AK47 and it passed through his helmet not once but twice.

Surely there is a problem with British army headgear if it's it's incapable of stopping a round from the very weapon thast is most likely to be fired at it's wearer !

 

There's the bit at the bottom of the article that says

"The British Mark 6a helmet is made of layers of strong Kevlar armour and offers a high level of protection but it is not designed to stop a direct hit from a high-velocity bullet."

That's fair enough I supose. I wouldn't really expect a helmet to stop a .50 Cal round but this wasn't a .50 Cal round or anything like one.

If a standard AK47 bullet went through the helmet twice then logically, a round with just half the energy would still go through once and kill.

 

So is the kit dodgy or an I missing something ?

[Newt]

Military helmets are designed to stop low velocity objects such as shrapnel after it has traveled a bit. None that I know of have ever been intended to stop a direct hit by a bullet of any appreciable size and fired from within the weapon's normal range.

 

Certainly they could be made strong enough to stop any small arms round but with the currently available materials, they would be so heavy as to be useless to ground troops.

 

For instance, when I was in Viet Nam, we had flak vests that used hardened clay inserts for protection (pre-kevlar). They worked after a fashion but were too heavy and too hot. Many soldiers refused to wear them and quite often destroyed them while in combat situations so they could not be forced to do so. Heat stroke or exhaustion was more of a threat to a trooper than shrapnel.

 

Draping one over a claymore mine and detonating the mine did a nice job of it, I might add.

[Emma two]

So is the kit dodgy or an I missing something ?

 

As Newt points out, helmets are not designed to stop high velocity rounds, the AK 47 fires HV 7.62mm.

The contemporary British one is far superior to it's predecessor, I have used both during my service. The old ones being phased out in the 80s. They are for stopping shrapnel and in roits bricks bottles etc. A helmet so strong as to halt HV rounds would have been so heavy as to be more of a liability to the wearer then not having one at all in most situations.

 

 

In the early years in Ulster we were issued with the US type flack jacket, the same type that Newt speaks of. They are really 'fragmentation vests' and were not designed and would not stop HV either. The only time I saw practical evidence of their use was after a riot one of our soldiers found 2x.22 bullets lodged in the shoulder of his, the riot had been of such intensity that he hadn't even been avare he has been shot at. (please be assured that they were nothing like the civil disturbance/'protest marches' we see in London.)

 

By my last tour we had much more effective body armour, but that still only protects the vital organs located in the torso.

Edited April 24, 2009 by Emma two

[severus]

Draping one over a claymore mine and detonating the mine did a nice job of it, I might add.

 

Why, you wouldn't destroy government property like that, would you, Newt?

[Ken L]

Interesting replies.

I honestly thought they were tougher than that.

[Steve Walker]

There's an article here on the history of the assault rifle - it seems that the ability to penetrate body armour and helmets has always been a design consideration in these weapons, and so presumably if you design a better helmet, someone will design a better weapon.

[gozzer]

Maybe they should wear these on their heads.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8015242.stm

 

John.

[corydoras]

If a standard AK47 bullet went through the helmet twice then logically, a round with just half the energy would still go through once and kill.

 

So is the kit dodgy or an I missing something ?

Your forgetting the Inverse Square Law. A round with half the velocity would only have 1/4 the kinetic energy.

[Newt]

Severus - I would certainly not ever destroy a flak jacket on purpose but I did have the worst luck with mine for some reason. :D

[Ken L]

Your forgetting the Inverse Square Law. A round with half the velocity would only have 1/4 the kinetic energy.

 

You're assuming that I'd ever heared of the "Inverse Square Law".

 

Seriously though, I didn't mention velocity directly, just "energy" (a function of both velocity and mass) so my statement holds true - unless passing through the helmet halved the bullets velofity.

Edited April 25, 2009 by Ken L