B5 Systems

Delta Shield

5Delta Shield is a Swiss company which develops and produces body armor. Their Delta 3SA is a patented Level III armor plate, NIJ-certified, designed to resist against multiple hits wile severely mitigating the trama experienced by the wearer.

Deslta Shields No Trauma Demonstration from MN Reserved Space on Vimeo.

Delta Shield provided a brief video which is intended to demonstrate how their armor mitigates trauma from blocked shots.

Delta Shield will be present at the upcoming SHOT Show 2018, where they will be meeting with potential partners to distribute or even produce their products within the USA.

www.deltashield.ch

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10 Responses to “Delta Shield”

  1. xdarrows says:

    Any idea on cost per unit? Side plates?

  2. Greg K says:

    I’ve been thinking, it must be a low temperature caste polymer-elastomer blended Titanium Carbide metal matrix, it’s the only thing that makes sense.
    the thing bounces bullets like they’re made of rubber, a company from Finland called Exote pioneered the process for blending the material but Delta Shield must have figured out how to mix it with some sort of elastomer, similar to the way Carbon Black is used in car tire production.
    Nice work!

  3. Vernon says:

    How about we use Occam’s Razor instead? It’s much more likely that we’re looking at steel over polyethylene, like Armored Mobility’s TAC3S, which would also “bounce” bullets and exhibit reduced BFD if the projectiles are small enough or ricochet. The weight and thickness of these “Delta Shield” plates also matches up with this possibility.

    And that video they posted was the sorriest thing I’ve ever seen. They never mention what those projectiles were! Could have been .22lr, for all we know.

    • Greg K says:

      Well the only problem is the outer layer of ‘rubber-like’ material exhibits zero perforation during a strike, like it would if it was a lining/cover material, no matter how tough a lining is it would chip, tear or puncture. This points to the plate being a complete monolithic ‘something or other’ that dissipates shock very quickly, they also compare its performance to PE, ceramic and steel plates on their website which would point to it being not made from a blend of those materials either, it seems to be something secret, as they make zero reference to the composition of the plate anywhere on the website.
      The only clue is Delta acknowledges it’s certainly not a ceramic, so an exotic blend along the lines of Exote’s TiC metal matrix would fit the bill.
      Also Exote touts the superiority of it’s multi-hit, AP, and BFD performance in suspiciously similar ways to Delta Shield.

      • Vernon says:

        You ever test a plate with a built-up polyurea coating? If the bullets are small enough, and/or the velocity low enough, it can be almost impossible to pick up on the damage to the coating at the point of impact. In some cases, the damage is nearly invisible until the plate is examined very closely.

        So, again, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions, because it’s impossible to tell what they hit that “Delta Shield” plate with. It could have been a .22lr or a plastic-tipped .17 HMR. It could have been subsonic FN Five-SeveN ammunition. The fact that they posted a gimmicky ballistic test video with ZERO information on the projectile and its velocity is indefensible.

        • Greg K says:

          Hmm, I guess.
          But I think the start of the video clearly implies the test ammo was regular 7.62×39 FMJ’s.

          • Vernon says:

            It’s implied. Can’t say for sure. They could have been a lot clearer about it, anyway.

            As it turns out, I was correct. The “Delta Shield” is a built-up steel-polyurethane plate, with an optional aramid/PE/e-glass spall liner. They can obfuscate on their website, and in their videos, but they can’t play those games with the patent office:
            https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017187317A1/

            Also compare their video to:
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwyS-7vZYgI

            Same thing, innit? And, when you get right down to it, it’s the same sort of plate, too.

            • Greg K says:

              Ahhh, nice sleuthing. So it’s got layers of elastomer between the ballistic elements, but that outer layer wasn’t acting as a spall liner like that Paxon in the AR500 vid, I wonder how that works, I’ve never seen anything that tough!

              • Vernon says:

                >”that outer layer wasn’t acting as a spall liner like that Paxon in the AR500 vid”

                What would it look like if you hit an AR500 plate with a reduced-velocity round? Much the same, I think. There’s already minimal damage at the point of impact.

                Any difference in the spall coating’s apparent toughness could be due to impact-response differences between polyurea and polyurethane. The patent claims that their elastomer is “polyurethane based.”

                Thickness also probably has something to do with it. The built-up AR500 plates are .5″. (12.7mm) The Delta Shield plate is around .67″. (17mm) Subtract the thickness of the steel panels within the plates, and the Delta Shield plate has a super-built-up elastomer component nearly twice as thick as the AR500 plate’s coating.

                But the bottom line is that, fundamentally, the Delta Shield plate is a steel plate with a built-up coating. It’s not an ultra-exotic elastomer reinforced with titanium carbide nanoparticles, or anything like that. Hell, it’s steel, it’s the opposite of exotic. They’re just laying it on thick with misleading marketing claims. Their website and PDF never mention the fact that it’s a steel plate, which is the single most important thing about their product.