Counterfeit Body Armor From...

[Diamondback]

Let's put it this way... 5'10" crazy ex-ballerina around 42B-C/30-36/48 depending on seasonal/diet & exercise conditions and "apple" body type, trying to put together a medieval/Dungeons & Dragons cosplay. Maybe not exactly a Cindy Crawford or Claudia Schiffer but even farther from Roseanne Barr or Rosie O'Donnell... LOL

[SteyrAUG]

Let's put it this way... 5'10" crazy ex-ballerina around 42B-C/30-36/48 depending on seasonal/diet & exercise conditions and "apple" body type, trying to put together a medieval/Dungeons & Dragons cosplay. Maybe not exactly a Cindy Crawford or Claudia Schiffer but even farther from Roseanne Barr or Rosie O'Donnell... LOL

Didn't know, had to ask. Also seen lots of plus size girls with a perfect hourglass so not always a bad thing.

[Sam]

I love how quick the thread shifted from fake body armor to lingerie. Lol

[titsonritz]

Didn't know, had to ask. Also seen lots of plus size girls with a perfect hourglass so not always a bad thing.

Gina Carano is my kind of thick.

[titsonritz]

I love how quick the thread shifted from fake body armor to lingerie. Lol

No cares if the latter comes from China, it just gets thrown on the floor unlike quality ceramic plates.

[yoni]

Shifting back to body armor, for a second.

After 10-7 well meaning people started buying body armor and sending it to Israel. Thousands of ITAR violations, but such is life.


All the vest got hung up in customs and part of what they did was test a sample of each type of vest sent . I was shocked when I told that 70% of the vest from a lot of name brand companies had failed.

Before anyone asks for a list of the companies either good or bad I don't have that info

[Alpha-17]

I'd be really curious to know exactly where the plates fell on the protection scale. We talking Level III plates cosplaying as Level IV? Or ceramic dinner plates trans-ing into body armor?


Yoni, not terribly surprised a lot of big companies are selling crap. It's an industry that would be very difficult to hold accountable, because so few people actually will need their plates to perform their intended task.

Makes me glad I've still got my ESAPIs. Not that Uncle Sam has never been swindled before, but at least they should have been lot tested or something similar back when they were accepted.

[Averageman]

I'd be really curious to know exactly where the plates fell on the protection scale. We talking Level III plates cosplaying as Level IV? Or ceramic dinner plates trans-ing into body armor?

It was the placebo body armor left over from testing.

[Diamondback]

Frankly, I'm surprised it took China THIS long to get to counterfeit and substandard armor. Though a real horror is who knows how many of their counterfeit parts are flying on the world's airliners since Boeing dropped the "OEM as sole source for spares" policy and killed the company's historic cash cow..

[Defaultmp3]

Shifting back to body armor, for a second.

After 10-7 well meaning people started buying body armor and sending it to Israel. Thousands of ITAR violations, but such is life.


All the vest got hung up in customs and part of what they did was test a sample of each type of vest sent . I was shocked when I told that 70% of the vest from a lot of name brand companies had failed.

Before anyone asks for a list of the companies either good or bad I don't have that info

What kind of testing? Are we talking about testing tailored to the specific threats that the armor claimed to defeat? Or was it more generalized? Plenty of Level III armor out there that would meet defeat M80 just fine that can get smoked by M855 or M193.

There's also the fact that many of the "name brands" are not considered reputable, such has HHV, AR500, Spartan, etc.

Beyond that, the original news article is confusing, and conflates a lot of issues. Typically, when I think of "counterfeit", I think of something masquerading as a specific thing, i.e., a counterfeit plate to me would be like someone making some plates and passing them off as Hesco U210s or something. Is this what happened here? Or was it more of an issue of poor QA/QC that meant that some plates defeated the claimed threats fine, and others did not? On the topic of PRC origin, was this simply something that was obscured by the seller, or did they actively mislead the buyers, given that many places simply advertise in a way insinuating American origin, but never actually ever state that the product was made in the USA. There was also talk of how the plates did not meet NIJ standards. Yeah, well, plenty of quality plates do not, such as the Hesco U210, TenCate 6450, etc. Special threat plates basically by definition do not meet NIJ standards, but are often some of the best plates for practical use.

Everyone wants to talk like PRC goods are inherently dogshit, but that's clearly not true, they are more than capable of high quality manufacturing. Many iPhones and other Apple products are made there, and have excellent build quality. Hell, even Holosuns are typically quality products these days; I've known several high volume shooters whose opinions and observations I respect, and they've had much better luck with their Holosuns than their Trijicons when it came to pistol RDSes.