The soldiers of the future could use a type of body armor with roots in ocean life.
A Popular Science report details a program that is working to develop an armor that moves and flexes with a soldier as he moves around. That would be in contrast to today's military armor, which is thick, bulky, and, in some cases, rigid.
Researches at MIT are working on a solution, and their idea came from fish scales.
The team put together a metric to measure an armor's value, what it calls protecto-flexibility, "a new metric which captures the contrasting combination of protection and flexibility, taken as the ratio between the normalized indentation and normalized bending stiffness," according to the team's research cited by Popular Science.
What it means is that soldiers could someday wear armor that is thicker and more rigid in areas like the chest and back, but thinner and more flexible under the arms and at other joints. The theory is not a new one, as knights wore armor that was flexible where it needed to be to allow movement.
The new research, however, takes it a step further and uses the idea of fish scales, which vary in size, strength, and thickness depending on where they're located.
Testing is far from complete, but the team has used a 3D printer to create some samples. Now the researchers must see how the new armor defends against bullets and shrapnel.
A report last summer, meanwhile, said the Pentagon has reached out to Hollywood to help it create body armor that resembles the suit worn by Iron Man, a character that wears a full suit of body armor. The Pentagon wants to someday use a new armor suit for elite special forces.
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