IIT Asked To Make Lighter Bulletproof Jackets, Produced Lightest In The World

An Army Major in the year 2008 requested IIT Delhi to focus on lighter bulletproof jackets. And when it comes to IIT, they know how to do it all. They must have smiled and said give us a tougher task. Now, Researchers at IIT Delhi have created the lightest bulletproof jackets in the world. It can stop eight bullets fired from an AK-series rifle. The jackets are more than 2 kg lighter—weighing 8.2 kg—than those now worn by the Indian Army. Another design of the jacket weighs 9.5 kg. It is capable of stopping up to six shots from specific sniper weapons. Currently, the bulletproof vests worn by Indian soldiers weigh roughly 10.5 kilograms.

15 years of hard work

The jackets were created over a 15-year period in partnership with the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), according to Professor Naresh Bhatnagar of the Centre of Excellence on Personal Body Armor at IIT Delhi.

“In 2008, an Army Major requested us to focus on lighter bulletproof jackets. The jackets that they used at the time used iron as the primary material and weighed 22-25 kg. The Major, who had been shot at in the line of duty, stressed on the need for drastically reducing the weight of the jackets so that the soldiers could operate effectively on the frontlines,” Mr Bhatnagar said.

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The lightest Bulletproof Jackets…

The new jackets, according to the professor, are constructed from polymer and ceramic elements. According to him, there has been so much research done on the jackets that 25 M.Tech. students and 12 Ph.D. students have written theses on various facets of them.

Dr. Hemant Chauhan, a senior scientist at IIT Delhi, said the testing on the jackets was done internally. “We fire ballistic bullets using gas guns to carry the tests,” he said. The jackets have got the approval of the Bureau of Indian Standards

The IIT researchers stated their anticipation that the equipment will soon be saving the lives of Indian soldiers as they announced that they would be exhibiting the jackets at a NATO meeting in Germany the following month.