I was just reading an article this morning on the liquid body armor by BAE. I wonder which would be lighter and more effective.
I was interested until about the :38 mark. "powerful enough to stop a rifle round," hm that's pretty impressive. They they said something like "fired at half power," and showed what looked like a .22. A .22 at half power isn't moving very fast, 1240 fps / 2 = what, 620 fps? A match-grade pellet rifle fires 650 fps. So if I understood the video correctly, then yeah, I'm not real impressed.
Here's the one I was talking about: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/05/forget-kevlar-liquid-body-armor-hardens-on-impact/
Now THAT is pretty interesting. It also looks like it would disperse the kinetic energy, so you wouldn't die of internal injuries even if the bullet failed to penetrate.
Stopping a .22 at half the normal velocity isn't a great feat until one considers the membrane that was used to stop it was thinner than a piece of scotch tape. What it lacks at this stage is any kind of impact retardent, making future generations of this perhaps the perfect material to make a tent out of unless a plate or frame is intended to be worn under it. The huge advantage that the liquid viscous armor concept from BAE has is that it functions as its own trauma plate; rounds that impact shear thickening fluids (like the BAE and other prototypes can do) disperse the impact across a broad surface. What I've read, though, is that theoretically shear thickening fluids can be defeated with a high enough velocity, which can cause them to shatter.
Haven't they been talking about that stuff for years now? http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/science-fiction-news.asp?newsnum=108
