Weaponology (2007–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Body Armor - full transcript

You're watching the military channel go behind the lines

It's every soldier's fear somewhere out there. There's a bullet with your name
on it

Bombs, rockets, bullets. The soldier lives in a permanent hail of hot twisted
metal

And the only thing standing between him and certain death is his body armor

I felt like somebody kind of teed up with a sledgehammer and just took me right
off my feet

Get locked and loaded as we go back through generations of technology to
discover how body armor became the last line of defense

Three, two, one

It's time to go ballistic

Body armor

For today's soldier, it's the difference between life and death

Changing threats and changing weapons mean it's always evolving



And dragon skin is the key to the evolution of the body armor

Changing threats and changing weapons mean it's always evolving and dragon skin
is the latest off the block

Lighter, tougher, more flexible and more durable than the competition

This dragon can take plenty of fire and still come back for more

Initially I thought I was dead

I knew I'd been shot and I was like wow this isn't good

A combination of hard, highly advanced ballistic composites and soft ballistic
fibers

Dragon skin's fish-like ceramic discs create an ultra-tough exterior

It flexes and molds to the body, allowing maximum mobility while stopping high
velocity armor piercing rounds

Now weaponology will unlock its family tree

Going back through generations of technology to reveal how steel plate, cotton
and Kevlar have evolved into the most advanced body armor system on the planet

Dragon skin

The story of armor can be traced back to the 15th century when European
blacksmiths learned how to forge sheet steel

This achievement led to an evolutionary high point in rigid body armor



A world of medieval knights with full metal jackets

They are the pioneers of body armor

When people think about knights in armor in the middle ages, they tend to think
of knights in full plate armor

They actually only came in right at the very twilight of the period

Because the limitation was in making large plates of steel

Early iron producing processes could only produce small sheets of steel

So the Romans had their Lorica segmentata with thin plates

You take a series of simple strips of metal, easily forged by even the dimmest
blacksmith

And then you bend them into a rough shape and allow them to ride each on the
next so that a blow against a Lorica segmentata is distributed widely so that it
becomes harmless

By 1450, Italian armorers found a way of making large plates of steel

They were able to build steel suits protecting the knight from head to toe

Plate armor gets its strength from the shape

If I take this as a flat piece of 16 gauge steel, if I put it on these blocks
and stand on it, then I think it will just bend very easily

It's quite flimsy

This is exactly the same gauge of steel, exactly the same dimensions

But I've hammered it out, I've domed it out as an armorer would

And now I think we'll find it's a lot stronger

It actually will take my entire weight

But steel in itself wasn't enough

Many knights added an extra layer of soft padded protection beneath

If you imagine putting a sheet of metal on your arm and hitting it hard with a
sword, that is still going to hurt your arm

So you have to have a thick layer of padding on the garment underneath that
absorbs the blunt trauma

Hundreds of years later, the knights in their hard rigid armor had left the
battlefield

But padded protection hadn't

The roaring 30's, prohibition, gambling and gangsters

Mob hits have become part of everyday life

And if you wanted to survive, you'd need more than a gun

As late as the 1920's and 30's, American gangsters were using this principle of
multiple layers of padding to protect them

They made bullet proof vests out of multi layers of silk

That could slow the bullets of the handguns of the day

Any bullet traveling up to 1000 feet per second was slowed enough not to cause
mortal injury

In fact, it directly led to Smith and Wesson developing the 357 Magnum

As a marketing ploy, Smith and Wesson said this is the gun that takes the proof
out of bullet proof

Downtown shootouts, drive by's, Chicago was covered in gun smoke

In the end, a vicious murder would lead to the invention of an entirely new form
of body armor

In 1893, the mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, was shot in cold blood in his
own armchair, wiped out by gangsters

Chicagoans were shocked

Something had to be done

What it took was some divine inspiration

This is the parish where brother Kazimir Zeglin invented the bullet proof vest

Kazimir Zeglin was a priest at St. Stanislaus Church, Chicago

Shocked by Mayor Harrison's death, he set off on a divine mission to create a
bullet proof vest

For 15 years he experimented

Steel shavings, hair and moss were all included in his cloth designs

Nothing worked

But then he tried silk

Silk is stronger than steel and has the ability to stretch 30% longer than its
original length without breaking

A spider's web hit by an insect will absorb and displace the kinetic energy

Zeglin applied this principle to bullets

But the problem was to find the right weave

Only when Zeglin visited the great silk weaving mills in Europe did he find a
technique to produce the perfect four ply weave

He came back to Chicago, he wove the silk together into the cloth and invented
the vest

Determined to prove the effectiveness of his invention to the skeptical
residents of Chicago, he came up with the ultimate demonstration

He believed so strongly in what he did that he went to a Chicago theater and
demonstrated

He wore the vest

As the crowd watched, an associate, Ashley Weber, pointed a gun at Father Zeglin

The bullet hit the vest

Fired a shot

It didn't penetrate

The vest withstood the bullet

He believed in what he was doing and again I suspect that deep down in the inner
sanctum of his soul he felt that this was his call from God

And he was going to put his name to this, this was his vocation so God wouldn't
let him down

Zeglin's soft bulletproof vest was a massive breakthrough

But it was no quick fix for soldiers on the battlefield

In 1914, a Zeglin vest could cost as much as $800, almost $15,000 in today's
money

The result, in World War I, body armor was limited to just a few elite troops

Military men are traditional types, they're reluctant to let go of old ideas

And the French are still putting in 12 regiments of cuirassiers, people who are
wearing the back and breast cuirass and the helmet that was worn by their
regiment in the Napoleonic Wars

Some German elite troops also wore body armor, but it was too heavy, not
protective enough, and slowed them down

It was right out of Napoleon and I'm not going to wear something like that
because if you got shot with anything it was going to go right through it

It was just the dumbest idea that you've ever seen in your life and when they
got them in the trenches it just didn't work either

Armies had effectively abandoned body armor and soldiers were paying the price

To find out why, we have to return to the age of the knight

Many historians believe that armored knights vanished when guns exploded onto
the battlefield

The logic? That bullets and shrapnel could penetrate the old steel suits, making
them useless

There's a huge misconception that firearms killed off the knight in armor

Armor was not killed off when the knight was killed off, it's only in the 18th
century that you start to see armies going on with no body armor at all

The knight however does go at the end of the Middle Ages, but he didn't go
because of firearms

Firearms had been around for a hundred years by then, and to be a knight you
needed to be wealthy

To put yourself in the battlefield you need several war horses, like a grand
prix driver with his pit stop crew, and it was economics more than anything else
and social change that killed off the knight

On the battlefield, expensive metallic suits were replaced by cheap brightly
colored uniforms

This gave soldiers a form of protection

Battles were chaotic, mistakes were made, and if you couldn't tell who was on
your side, you risked getting shot by your own men

But bright colors also attracted the enemy, and with the arrival of accurate
rifles, it invited trouble

Warfare is now starting to be conducted at a greater distance

Because of the technology of weapons, which for the first time allowed rifles to
be used on the battlefield

So this starts to become an advantage in not being seen too clearly

By the Civil War, dull colors were in

Greens, grays, khakis

Survival on the battlefield was about staying concealed

But in World War I, there was nowhere to hide

Bullets and shrapnel caused millions of casualties

The only protection soldiers had was their helmets

And even then, some armies didn't like the idea of using them

By 1914, most armies considered the helmet to be an emblem of cowardice and to
kill offensive spirit

War is geared to offense

Firepower is everything

But what happens when the rounds are incoming?

You're going to need a good defense

And that's what armor does for the soldier

Helmets are a critical part of his protective system

Everywhere the soldier goes, his helmet goes with him

But at the start of the 20th century, armies thought helmets were a sign of
weakness

By 1914, most armies didn't even like the idea of wearing helmets

Not helmets that are going to stop or deflect a bullet

The army considered the helmet to be an emblem of cowardice and to kill
offensive spirit

But armies decided they had to offer some protection

The British equipped their troops with the Brody

The Americans with the Doboy

This is the style of helmet that the British and Americans wore

And it's positively medieval

This was the type of helmet that was worn in the Middle Ages by the British

It was worn in the Middle Ages by archers

You'll notice the shape of the helmet is very flat

And the reason for that is it's not to protect against rifle bullets being fired
from the front

It is to protect the head and shoulders and neck from shrapnel balls or shell
fragments that are fired up in the air and explode

Concerned about troop losses, the Germans came up with an innovative helmet
design

To rapidly reduce the number of head wounds being suffered in the trenches

They adopted in 1916 the Stahlhelm steel helmet

As you can see, it's also known as the coal scuttle helmet because of its shape

German designers take on the idea of building a helmet that gives full
peripheral vision

But still maximum protection to the head

In order to do this, you take a bucket that comes down far enough to protect the
occipital lobe at the back of the head

And then you cut away all the parts where you want to be able to see

The result is the Stahlhelm

The Stahlhelm was one of a number of helmet designs that emerged on the
battlefield

Bashford Dean was the curator of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum in
New York

And he was a classicist, he dealt with Greek and Roman helmets and that sort of
thing

But he was contracted by the American government to design helmets during the
First World War

And one of the helmets he came up with was this

And it's positively Greek in style

And it's a very, very good helmet indeed

A couple of problems with it however

One, it looks very similar to the German helmet of the period

And here's the German helmet

And the other problem with it is that once you had this on, you could not see
nor could you hear very well

But 70 years later, the German design was back in fashion

The reason? Soldiers need to see around themselves on the battlefield

When the United States decides to get rid of their old washing bowl helmet in
the 1980s

And get a more protective helmet made of Kevlar

They use the same kind of methodology

The US Army says we want to cover the maximum amount of the head

And we want to cut away enough so that you can see

Helmets have evolved

Different needs, different shapes

And in the 21st century, they face new challenges

We're not facing someone who's shooting at us quite near as much

What we're facing is IEDs, improvised explosive devices

Suicide bombers in vehicles

And so that threat is no longer the bullet, but it is blast forces

The pressure is on

If body armor doesn't adapt to the new danger, an attack could end in tragedy

The modern US combat helmet is good at stopping bullets

But it has one major flaw

This original helmet has what's called a web suspension system

Which keeps your head from contacting the Kevlar

It has a single two-point chin strap

But frankly, it's not real comfortable

And it's not very stable

It can wiggle around a lot

Up and down, side to side, left and right

Hey, let's go!

Hey, their vehicle's on fire

Enough!

Medics from all over the services complain about the fact that when they run up
to a troop

And they've got this helmet on

They run up, and what do they do to take care of someone?

They lean forward, and the helmet will slide down into their eyes

So to take care of someone, they take the helmet off

Now they're uncovered

We upgraded the helmet

And that upgrade system consists of a four-point chin strap

The second part that we provide is a padded suspension system

And there are seven pads that go into this helmet

I can hit this helmet really, really hard

And I am not hurt

If I were to sustain a 200G impact with this helmet

You're going to the hospital

You're not going to be feeling well for a while

There have been cases where someone should have survived an impact injury

Turns out that they didn't because the helmet itself, it becomes the killing
instrument

With this helmet, with the pad suspension system in it

That same hit generates 78Gs through to the brain

That's a mild to no injury zone

Since 2004, Mark Meador's charity, Operation Helmet

Has shipped over 30,000 helmets to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq

Comfort and safety

The modern helmet delivers both

In the 20th century, a new breed of Maverick inventors

Would try to apply these principles to body armor

Their motivation, soldiers put their lives on the line

So should we

Three, two, one

Soldiers do one of the hardest jobs in the world

A bad day at the office could be your last day at the office

And nine times out of ten, it's not mail that's incoming

It's why soldiers the world over rely on their body armor

During World War II, a new type of bulletproof jacket hit the battlefield

The flak vest

Flaks combined ballistic nylon and hard steel plates

They were too heavy to be issued to mobile infantry troops

Instead, they got issued to flyboys

Protecting the crew from flying debris and shrapnel thrown by anti-aircraft guns
known as flak

In 1943, the United States Army Air Forces adopted a flak jacket

Meant to protect the torso from fragments in all directions

It also would have an additional groin plate here underneath

And it's very heavy

In Korea and Vietnam, the jackets were reinvented for general combat use

Manufacturers ditched the old heavy steel plates

And opted for a lighter design incorporating multiple layers of dense nylon

Body armor slowly became as much a part of the soldier's kit as his rifle

And like his rifle, it was a love-hate relationship

It was heavy, it was hot

The temperature could go to 120 in the sun

But when the temperature got down to about 40 degrees, and it would up in the
mountains

You could wrap up the thing and keep warm

Not that soldiers in Vietnam needed heat

They lived under fire and touched down in hot LZs

Tested to the limit, they soon found out how far they could trust their armor

A flak vest is good for fragmentation like out of a hand grenade

But it is not good for being shot, it's not a bulletproof vest

Flak vests weren't enough, soldiers were dying

A revolution was needed, and in the 1960s it happened

Lightweight, ultra-tough, bullet-stopping Kevlar

The world has always been gripped by concerns about renewable oil supplies

But panic at the pump isn't a new phenomenon

In the 1960s, chemical giant DuPont was trying to invent an ultra-light tire

To make cars more fuel efficient

Bright young chemist Stephanie Kowalek was working on the project

We started out with the intention of making a very strong and a very stiff fiber

But we also wanted something light to save on gasoline

In her laboratory, Stephanie and her team experimented with nylon-based
chemicals

Mixing up her formula, she spun a fiber that turned out much stronger than
expected

Was it a blip or a major discovery?

She had to be sure before she told her bosses

I didn't want to be embarrassed, to be frank

And so I checked it out several times

And when they always came back the same, the same numbers and so forth

I knew then and there that this was the fiber of the future

Stephanie's discovery would become the biggest brand name in personal armor

Kevlar, a fiber with a strength to weight ratio five times greater than steel

Nylon has a very flexible chain and it's sort of like cooked spaghetti

Now here I have uncooked spaghetti

This is what Kevlar might look like

Or like logs that float down a river

In order for you to get more logs into that stream

They have to line up parallel to each other

And this is the identifying mark of rod-like polymers like Kevlar

Very strong and very stiff

The combined strength and flexibility of the new fiber gave it several
applications

But the most obvious was body armor

Could this be the ultimate bullet stopper?

Delivering higher ballistic performance in a vest

I need the right fiber, I need the right structure

I need the right number of layers

And Kevlar brand fiber delivers all of those attributes

Kevlar's potential led other inventors to use it in body armor

Men like Richard Davis

Richard is one of the most successful manufacturers of body armor in the 20th
century

Okay camera people

Three, two, one

Time and time again he's put bullets where his mouth is

To prove the value of his vest

I think it's 201 times in the shot total

But that's like asking a 62 year old professional boxer how many fights he's had

Richard's fascination with body armor goes back nearly four decades

On July 15, 1969

The world was watching Apollo 11 as it blasted off to land the first men on the
moon

Meanwhile in downtown Detroit, Richard Davis was a humble pizza delivery boy

Others followed every step of the Apollo mission

But Richard hit the pavement with another stack of boxes

It was a night that would end in tragedy

The night after Apollo 11, the world was watching Apollo 11

The next night I had to do some blasting on my own

I came up to a house and there's nobody home

And I heard somebody around the side of the house

And I had a pizza sort of here like this

And I had the 22 revolver and a waistband here

So I said, did you guys order pizza?

And they said yeah, bring it around back

I'm still hoping this time that these guys are going to hand me ten bucks

And I can have the pizza and that will be the end of it

There's three guys standing in sort of V formation

I was probably about five or six feet away from them

And all I did was look at this guy with his nickel plated automatic looking
right square in my face

I didn't look at him, I didn't look at his friends, I looked right at his hands

He keeps the gun leveled right at me

I look at his hands, I look at his hands

I look at his hands, I look at his hands

He keeps the gun leveled right at me

I look at his hands

And then his hands just started tightening around the gun

And I knew that was it

1969, downtown Detroit

Richard Davis, a pizza delivery boy is staring down the barrel of a gun

It's a fight he's ready for

I had to shoot him in the head

Hit him in the chin somewhere and came inside his jaw, came out his ear

Second one was about an inch off his heart

Third shot was a little bit too fast

And the fourth shot hits the second guy

He's turned around like this immediately

Now he still has his hands back here so I didn't know if he was going to come up
empty handed

Or if he was going to come around, he's got a gun

Hit him right dead center of the spine, right there

Bullet lodged between the two vertebrae right behind his heart

He went face down in the concrete

In a brave act of self defense

Richard wiped out one of Detroit's most feared gangs

Shocked by the ordeal, the pizza boy began cooking up a plan

My goal then was just to deliver pizza and make an honest living in Detroit
after dark

Silly me

But what I realized then was that the policemen were out there getting killed
all the time

Richard realized there was a real need for body armor

And began developing concealable vests that could be worn 24 hours a day

My idea was designed that you're going to give up the really high powered rounds

You're going to give up side coverage and all the way down to the groin and
knees and everything

You've got to give that up

We're just going to cover the critical kill zone

We're going to stop most of the bullets most of the time for most of the people

First he used ballistic nylon in his vests

But then Stephanie Kowalik discovered Kevlar

If body armor was aviation, Stephanie's the person who invented the jet engine

And I didn't invent body armor either

Nicest thing someone said about me, if body armor was automobiles

I'm not the German guy named Otto who invented the first motor car

I'm Henry Ford

I made the stuff practical and mass produced that guys could actually buy and
work the thing

It would actually work, you know, and work in real life

Body armor gives officers the second chance that criminals won't

Today's vests can catch bullets traveling more than twice the speed of sound

And they make it look simple

But how do they do it?

Like all great designs, modern vests are deceptively complex

Unless of course you've grown up with a father who has shot himself over 200
times in the name of self protection

Matt Davis now runs the family business

Although his father is never far from the scene

I can't do it, I can't do it anyway

It ain't worth it Matt, it ain't worth it

3, 2, 1

This vest here is a ballistic vest worn by law enforcement

And as you can see it's very easy to put on

Typically it's worn underneath the officer's uniform

It's got side straps here and also shoulder straps in the front

It also has a pocket here in which we can insert additional ballistic plates

For added trauma protection over the heart

At an awesome speed of nearly 1,500 feet per second, Matt's bullet blasts into
the vest

When the bullet impacts the vest, energy is transferred throughout the pad

So it really sends a shockwave throughout the pad

The energy that doesn't go into the pad goes into the vest

And then it's transferred to the vest

And then it's transferred to the vest

And then it's transferred to the vest

And then it's transferred to the vest

So that's where the bruising and that type of effect takes place

We had a really good impact there

And as I peel this back you'll be able to see the impact on the clay

You'll notice there's a slight bit of rupturing to the backside of the armor

Which is a good sign

Nothing too serious there

And the depth of the cavity is fairly shallow.

When I bring this out, you can see that we've got about 34 millimeters of blunt
trauma.

That's very acceptable.

And the officer could expect to see some serious bruising, but nothing more than
that.

Normally the bullet, as soon as it hits the pad, it begins to mushroom and
deform.

And that's really when the ballistic fibers can really start taking effect,

because they're getting more surface energy to grab and to try to grab that
bullet and stop it.

Since Richard invented concealable body armor, it has saved the lives of more
than 3,000 cops

who are alive today to tell their story.

Oh my God, I've been shot.

The only thing I did was reach back to make sure there was no blood or anything,
I wasn't feeling anything wet.

And I didn't feel anything, so I said, okay, I'm okay.

The vest definitely saved my life.

The doctor's waiter told me that had I not been wearing the vest, the bullet
would have ruptured my aorta

and I would have bled out in about two minutes.

In May 2005, Officer Bill Bergantino from the old Saybrook Police Department in
Connecticut found himself in a brutal shootout.

He was asked to a local hotel where a guest refused to leave.

Bergantino went into the room to check him out.

I'm looking around the room and I immediately see a bunch of syringes, needles
and drug paraphernalia on the bed.

Went over and got his identification, which he had on him.

My dispatcher ran him and let me know that he was wanted.

My senses were right off the bat that he was going to fight.

Just felt like something wasn't going to go right.

Detective Sergeant Heine, who was my initial responding backup, he arrived.

The perpetrator got up and actually had taken a couple steps towards the very
corner of the bed and he says,

well, let's end this now, you're dead.

The suspect fired one shot, which grazed Detective Sergeant Heine in the head.

I had just cleared the doorway when I got shot in the back.

It felt like a big wallop.

I didn't really feel pain.

I knew that I got hit and I knew that I couldn't get hit again.

He was shooting at me.

I fired, I'm not sure how many shots.

Bergantino proved that a cop should wear body armor at all times.

He survived and was able to save Detective Heine's life, who had appeared on the
scene without body armor.

For his brave actions, Bergantino was commended as one of America's top ten
officers in 2005.

Officer Bergantino took a bullet and lived to tell the story, but not everyone
is that brave or that lucky.

Survival on the streets and the battlefield is a lottery.

As you can see, it's gone all the way through the Kevlar, it's gone through the
front and through the back.

Body armor has revolutionized the battlefield.

In the 21st century, there are less casualties and a lot of lucky people walking
around.

The round struck right here.

It's a little hole, but it hurt a lot.

But armor only works if you get hit in the right place.

It doesn't cover the whole body.

In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the massive Austro-Hungarian Empire
visited Sarajevo,

wearing one of Kazimir Zeglin's bulletproof vests.

Just prior to the First World War, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was
riding in an open car and he had a bulletproof vest on.

The problem was the guy that shot him, shot him in the neck.

If you're going to wear a bulletproof vest, make sure the other guy shoots you
in the chest.

Ferdinand's death triggered World War I.

Zeglin's vest didn't stop the bullet and it didn't stop the war.

The truth is, body armor doesn't come with a money-back guarantee.

It's got limitations.

Bulletproof vests have never really been bulletproof.

And when the bulletproof vest is introduced, it is a marketing term.

The idea is you tell some VIP who is afraid that the anarchists are going to
come and assassinate him,

that all he's got to do is pay you a great deal of money for your patented
bulletproof vest and his life is now safe.

That idea is strong.

The idea that the bulletproof vest is going to stop a bullet is weak.

No body armor is absolutely perfect.

Every body armor ever made since ancient Babylonia can be penetrated.

If you know how to make a body armor that can't be penetrated, please God, tell
me.

The same is true of helmets.

They give soldiers confidence.

But how effective are they?

First we're going to try a 9-millimeter pistol round on two helmets, an M1 from
World War II and a United States Kevlar.

Let's say he has quite a headache, but it didn't penetrate.

The Kevlar also did not penetrate to the inside.

The bigger dent in the older helmet poses a real risk of brain damage.

While the M1 did not give the best protection, it did have its advantages.

You see here then you can actually use this as a foot bath or to cook soup and
this type of thing in if you have to.

And soldiers weren't supposed to do that because heat or fire underneath would
lose the temper or weaken the steel,

but they would do it anyway.

Shooting the helmets with a heavy caliber rifle has a devastating result.

Next we're going to try an 8-millimeter Mauser from World War II.

As you can see, it's gone all the way through one side and all the way through
the back.

The Kevlar has gone through the front and through the back.

Even the modern Kevlar didn't withstand a 60-year-old rifle.

The wrong gun, the wrong angle, the wrong distance and you're dead.

Since the helmet doesn't protect from rifle fire or close-fired pistol bullets,
you might ask why wear a helmet.

I think the wearing of body armor does make a psychological difference.

It makes soldiers feel invulnerable because there are bits of them which aren't
covered, but it does make a difference.

Soldiers are deeply superstitious.

In combat, some men get a reputation for being lucky.

Bullets go around them.

Bombs drop behind them.

These men are bulletproof.

Across history, people have often tried to persuade their soldiers that they
were bulletproof.

Sometimes this has been done by extreme forms of religion.

Sometimes it's been done by magic.

Sometimes, in a sense, military training has tried to persuade people that fire
doesn't really matter,

that you can impose yourself so effectively on the enemy that you can brush
aside their fun.

It really won't kill you.

Going back to ancient times almost, they get their men all hopped up on drugs or
alcohol or whatever they got.

Well, they're getting bullets or spears or arrows through them.

And they just keep coming and coming and coming.

For these men, there is no pain and no fear.

Their thoughts are closed off to the possibility of death.

But modern soldiers want modern body armor.

They can't rely on mind games.

They want physical protection, the best they can get.

For the American infantry, that means interceptor vests.

Weighing 16 pounds, the outer layer of the interceptor is lined with finely
woven Kevlar, 35 layers.

Inside, two ceramic plates stopping high velocity rifle rounds.

It's an effective system if you get hit in the right spot.

June 2, 2005, Baghdad.

Specialist Steven Shitterer is standing by his Humvee.

What he doesn't know is that 75 yards away, he's being targeted by an Iraqi
sniper.

This is my vest.

The round struck right here.

It's a little hole, but it hurt a lot.

It came through and opened up and hit my plate, which is behind this.

That's where the bullet stopped, thankfully.

Steven's life was saved by Kevlar, a bullet-busting ceramic plate, and the
sniper's inexperience.

A shot to the head, neck, or even lower body could have left Steven dead.

But instead, incredibly, he popped right back up.

Got up, quick look, didn't see anything.

Got some cover behind my Humvee.

I saw this one van that just stood out.

It was the only thing down there, so it just didn't seem right.

I started calling my other guys, hey, go down this road, go down this road.

They take off in the van.

We put down a warning shot, trying to get them to stop.

They didn't stop.

The two individuals inside then got out of their vehicle, and it was a foot
chase from there.

We ended up searching about eight homes following this blood trail.

His patrol eventually found the wounded sniper in a residential backyard.

Steven, a combat medic, found himself bandaging up the man who, moments before,
had tried to kill him.

That was my job.

There was no excuse not to.

Doesn't matter who they are, if they're hurt, they need help.

Steven had saved the Iraqis' life, and his interceptor vest had saved his.

If I didn't have my vest on, that round would have killed me.

I have no question about it.

The impact was directly over my heart.

As soon as I hit the ground, I would have been dead.

Shitterer is one of the lucky ones.

A few inches can prove the difference between staying alive or coming home in a
body bag.

But with each evolution in armor, the soldier's chances improve.

Dragon Skin is one of the latest and best.

The first flexible armor that can stop rifle fire.

It flexes and molds to the contours of the body, making it ideal for special
forces and police tactical units.

It's not cheap, but in the 21st century, life has a greater value.

Once upon a time, you couldn't afford to give everybody armor.

Now, you've got to give everybody armor.

If you don't, there'll be a sense that there's a difference between those who
are armored and those who aren't.

And no Western democracy making war at the beginning of the 21st century

can get away with not giving its soldiers the best armored protection available.

Today's soldiers wear body armor that truly is the sum of its parts.

Drawn together, the branches of its family tree reflect its unique genesis.

Fashioned steel led to knights in full plate armor.

A priest invented the first bulletproof vest.

A chemist stumbled across Kevlar.

A Detroit pizza boy became the Henry Ford of body armor.

And finally, combination vests resulted in the ultimate ballistic barrier,
dragon skin.

Weaponologically, it's the top of the tree.

You're watching the Military Channel Go Behind the Lines.