In the modern day, when you are outfitting military personnel for an upcoming conflict or tour of duty, there are some things that you want to make sure they have. Rucksacks, boots, knives, rations, water, weaponry, and, of course, armor.
Modern armor is different from that of the past, as it has to deal with very different weaponry. Whereas before, most soldiers were fighting with bows, arrows, swords, and shields, now most are fighting with guns and artillery.
The penetrative power of these weapons has meant that armor has become a lot more standardized, universal, and stronger. Nowadays, most military are equipped with boots, bulletproof vests, sturdy trousers, and helmets.
But this gives us pause for thought here. The vests that protect the most important parts of the body are bulletproof, but it never says that the helmets protecting our brain are. Are helmets bulletproof?
In this article, we seek to answer this very question.
What Makes Something Bulletproof?
When it comes to armor, the most important thing is to understand the materials that are being used to make it.
Armor is made from many different materials, and it is up to the manufacturing of military equipment to choose which of these is used.
For instance, Kevlar is used to make body armor, but it is also used in making fishing nets. This means that it is a very strong material, but it is also very light.
If a fishing net is made from Kevlar, it will not be very heavy, which is something that people in the army want. That being said, the Kevlar used in fishing nets will not stop a bullet.
The next thing that you need to know is how the armor is used. Military armor is not meant to stop bullets completely, but it is bullet resistant, and it is also to stop the threat of being hit with shrapnel.
It is very, very hard to stop a bullet after it has been fired. It is hard to stop anything that travels faster than the speed of sound.
As such, military vests are bullet resistant, in that they will mitigate the damage done to you. For example, the vest may stop the bullet penetrating your body, but the blunt force trauma from the bullet may be quite large, like the bruises after paintballing.
Also, some vests do allow the bullet to penetrate but slow down so much, that the damage to the body is minimal.
There are a few different materials that you can use that are meant to stop fragments from a bullet, such as the aforementioned Kevlar and steel.
These materials are often used in conjunction with each other. That is to say, Kevlar is used to protect the wearer from being hit, and then steel is placed in the area that Kevlar protects to sure up any weaknesses.
Finally, you also need to consider how long the armor is meant to last. Will you be wearing it for an hour? A day? Or all the time?
This will affect the materials used and the weight of the armor. When choosing armor, you need to make sure that it is not too heavy, but it also needs to be able to protect you from a bullet for a while.
Are Helmets Bulletproof?
Helmets are not bulletproof or even bullet resistant, but they are being improved so that they can stop more than they used to.
There have been a few studies that found out that around 1 in every 3 helmet users felt unsafe while wearing a helmet.
While it is understandable that people do not want to feel unsafe when they are wearing something as important as a helmet, you should keep in mind that safety is the first priority.
While helmets are not bulletproof, that doesn’t mean they don’t help. Helmets are designed to protect against blunt or blunt force injuries and concussive effects.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has stated that the best protection against bullets is a skull, but having something in between your skull and a bullet will make the impact and damage taken considerably less.
While a helmet is better at stopping blasts than bullets, the shape and the materials used mean that bullets are deflected off them a lot of the time.
They may not stop point-blank shots from a few feet, but over a distance they are pretty good at keeping you safe. The best way to think about this is that helmets are meant to protect your head from blunt force injuries, but not from point-blank.
Why Aren’t Helmets Bulletproof?
Helmets are not bulletproof because they are not made from the most protective materials. The most effective way to stop a bullet is with a helmet made from Kevlar.
However, helmets are not made from Kevlar, they are often made with steel and other materials that can stop shrapnel.
The reason for their lack of bullet-proofing is that bullets aren’t the biggest risk to an exposed head. Most soldiers will shoot at the biggest target on the body to take someone down: the chest, which is why vests are made to be bulletproof.
A head is actually quite a small target that moves about a lot on top of our necks, so shooting them can be quite difficult.
The real menace to active military personnel is flying debris and explosives, which fly at you in a spread of metal and rock. While they are not as fast as bullets, the damage they wreck is intense, and so militaries have sought to reduce that damage using helmets.
This means that you still have a lot of protection when wearing a helmet, it’s just slightly lessened for bullets when compared with explosions and shrapnel.
Conclusion
Overall, helmets are not bulletproof, but they are extremely useful in protecting your head from a number of things that could attack and hurt you.
Shrapnel, explosions, hand-to-hand combat, sharp objects, and debris, are all protected against thanks to a military helmet, and while they don’t stop bullets completely, they do offer quite a lot of protection against them.
