Suppose someone had discovered a way to create bulletproof vests similar in weight and effectiveness to modern Kevlar. Assume the cost and workmanship needed to manufacture it was comparable to high quality plate armor.
How would combat and therefore history have changed?
Actually, high quality plate armor is about comparable to modern kevlar, or better, at least when dealing with the relatively low-velocity high-mass bullets from muskets and early rifles.
Not much. There has always been a “race” between firepower and defense.
The modern Tank/APC is the armored knights of old. (The armor is big enough to hold more than one soldier, and can move itself. 
) Usually, defense means armor. But it can also mean stealth.
I am gonna guess that you think that Kevlar in the Dark Ages would have slowed or stopped the development of the gun.
I think the opposite. It would have accelerated the “arms” race, as tinkerers would have sought ways to defeat the kevlar. (Indeed, I don’t think kevlar is impervious to some military grade special ammo. Think kevlar bullets!)
I think they already had the means to defeat kevlar. AFAIK, kevlar doesn’t stand up to cutting damage, so I think that arrows could have been easily modified to slice through kevlar.
Heck, wouldn’t a couple of layers of chain mail be pretty effective against musket fire?
Mail prevents slicing damage, but does little to reduce blunt force impact, if I recall correctly.
Getting hit at 50 yards by a musket shot may still cause internal damage. (And is probably a bit of a morale shaker.)
That’s conflicts with my memory, I’d read somewhere that chain mail would spread the force of an impact over a wide area. The problem is I can’t remember where I came across that information.
Kevlar bullet-proof vests mainly stop penetration as well but don’t eliminate the blunt force impact. It is just fancy fabric after all. It would hurt like hell and maybe cause enough damage to cause substantial injury while wearing a Kevlar vest even if it stops the bullet penetration.
Still, I would imagine the casualty rates of ancient battles like the American Civil War would have been lessened with Kevlar, no?
With Civil War era medics, would you rather have bruised ribs, or a bullet lodged in the gut?
For some reason I thought that kevlar vest spread the impact energy out among the fibers, instead of having all that energy in a 1/2 inch area. Now I can’t find a cite. Hmmm.
But kevlar probably does it better than (chain)mail. But I have to admit that now I am doubting myself…
blinks at you Well, I’ll take whatever hurts less for $200, Alex. hehe.
History would more likely be the same, but the war would still get fought. The fabric itself doesnt prevent wars, just helps reduce casualties. For the OP’s opening question, I don’t think that gets changed.
Tactically speaking, the fabric changes battles a little. But if there are two armies slugging it out with the intention of anihilating each other, they will find ways to do it, Kevlar or no.
It does. I wear maille for exactly that reason when I go paintballing - it eliminates those annoying welts by softening the blows somewhat. Without stiffening plates for either kevlar or maille it’s the elasticity of your body that determines the spread.
What? Wait a minute…
Lets say I put on a mail shirt. (Which is semi flexible. It “puddles” in the corner if it didnt have my bones holding it up.) You pick up a 10 lb sledge hammer, and let fly at my chest.
Broken ribs, possibly worse, right? But the shirt is undamaged. All that impact was transmitted right through.
Let’s say I go over to the plate armor. It is rigid enough to be propped up in the corner. I put it on, you hit me again. While I may be knocked over, the internal damage I suffered is less. Why? Because the suit is rigid, and it took the impact and spread it out across the whole breastplate.
At least, that is how I understand it…
Well, the physics of it are fairly easy to explain. The fabric (kevlar or maille) is a lot less stretchy than the body under it in most places even though it’s flexible, so as a ballistic object deforms both a somewhat greater area is available to resist the force required to decelerate it than if the fabric were absent.
I imagine the function of force over area looks somewhat like a gaussian curve with most of the force right under the bullet still, but with a good sized “tail” in all directions. Assuming you don’t get hit right over a bone like the top of a shoulder or something, which sucks because the little rings dig into your skin.
I had a hard time finding a good cite for this, but the HowStuffWorks article isn’t bad at all, and has a little animation of a kevlar vest deforming much like a pool of water with ripples.
They also make an analogy with kicking a ball into a soccer goal - the whole net basically absorbs the energy (but of course to a much greater degree where the ball hits it). If you can imagine the ratio of elasticity of the net vs air being somewhat comparable to a vest of either type and a human body.
Naturally a rigid armor is going to be much more effective, but the soft armor is not ineffective - if it can resist penetration and doesn’t stretch much relative to what’s beneath it than it can spread force the force of impact noticeably. Even for slower-moving stuff like your sledgehammer example.
Seriously… There must be some other SCA guys here that can vouch for this.
But my point was that mail is much more effective in defending against slashing damage, as compared to punctures or blunt force impact. (Not that it doesn’t at all.) Of course, the same can be said of plate vs. slashing attacks, I suppose… hmmm.
But I don’t think that Kevlar would have changed the politics of war.
At the very least, it quite likely wouldn’t be Teddy Roosevelt on Rushmore.
Thanks for the backup Thrasymachus. I’m nearly sure that I read about it in relation to a proposal to use it as possible shielding for a/the space staion to prevent micro meteor impact. I can’t find a thing on Google to support that, so I guess I should start going through my science mags.
Mail was meant to prevent cutting. Padding was worn underneath to absorb impact and give backing to the mail. In an informal test I saw reported, a gambeson underneath the mail greatly improved the ability of mail to resist a cut, so you got two benefits from wearing the padding: reduction in blunt injuries, and improved integrity of your armor and thus resistance against a cut. Getting broken bones was survivable, getting cut often meant an infected wound and death.
Some plate was “proof,” which means it was tested against certain damage, like a musket ball. This was expensive armor, and often heavier than armor that was only designed to be effective against edged weapons and arrows, but it was certified bullet-proof. Like everything in warfare, you reach the point of diminishing returns. If it’s too expensive to be widespread, too heavy, too prone to failure, too difficult to get the raw materials for, whatever, you’re going to stop using it and you’ll try to find a way around the problem.
Plate was probably already on its way out when firearms came on the scene, though. Guns just hastened the process. I’m not enough of a scholar to be able to quickly and accurately summarize the arguments, but there were contributing factors in areas other than effectiveness in warfare that ended the supremacy of the armored knight.
Well weight is an issue, but bulletproof vests far cheaper and far more effective than modern Kevlar existed into the late 19th century. Only the invention of cordite and smokeless powders allowed the use of high velocity mullets that could penetrate steel plate. In 1880 This guy manufactured a suit of armour capable of stopping the best military rifle of its day, and he did it himself on a home made forge using scrap iron. Trained blacksmiths and armourers using specific alloys would presumably have been able to knock up suits far superior to modern ballistic armour in terms of maneuvrability and protection.
But nobody did, because of the economics of the pre-industrial age.
And that’s the rub. A high quality suit of field plate was worth something in the order of a year’s wages. So let’s assume $40, 000 per soldier for armour. And such armour would need to be repaired after each engagement. So assume a minimum $10, 000/year for servicing, and that’s being lenient. So each soldier is now worth $50, 000 before he even sets foot on the battlefield.
One of the primary reasons why firearms were adopted in the first place is that it enabled the construction of large, cheap conscript armies. No longer were armies forced to rely on wealthy nobles who could equip themsleves and a small entourage. But if we supose that each soldier needs $50, 000 in armour suplies we are right back at the beginning again. Only the wealthy can afford to fight, and you’re better off spending your wealth on a horse and standard armour than on cnscripts with bullet proof plate.
Ballistic armour is popular now for three reasons:
Mass production makes it relatively cheap. And I say relatively. It’s still about a year’s worth of wages for a good suit of armour but the modern soldier carries so much other expensive equipment such as light enhancement and GPS that the cost is realtively low.
Skilled soldiers. The US army isn’t what it was even 50 years ago. Gone are the conscript grunts with no skill beyond an ability to shoot striaght and run fast. Modern soldiers need training in dozens of peices of equipment and hundreds of different tactics and scenarios. That makes soldiers very valuable. Almost as valuable as a knight was in his day. And it’s worth a year’s wages to protect avaluable asset like that. However that wasn’t the case even during WWII and armour was consequently of limited economic advnatage and thus wouldn’t have been utilised even if it was available. An interesting side note here is that the highly trained air crews of allforces in WWII were equiped with flack jackets that were not issued to most ground forces. Why? Largely because air crews were very valuable assets.
Public sentiment. Viet Nam proved conclusively that people don’t like to see body bags. Anything that reduces the body count is a massive asset in a world of electronic media. Soldiers can no longer be considered expendable. That makes armour very attractive, even essential, to prosecuting a war, especially an unpopular one like Iraq or Viet Nam.
Note that those factors would not have applied to any conflict that occured before Kevlar was invented. So even if ballistic armour had been invented it wouldn’t have utilised on a broad scale. Maybe for limited high value units such as air crews or commandos, but not as general issue.
Kevlar isn’t impervious to any military grade standard ammo. A high velocity rifle round will go straight through any usable thickness of Kevalr like a knife through butter. That’s as true of an M1 Garand round as a round from an Armalite M16. Action movies to the contrary Kevalar will only stop ricochets, shrapnel, handgun ammo and high velocity rounds at extreme range. Shoot some with any post 1900 military round at less than 100 metres and it will go right through.
Some top-of-the-line armour incorporates ceramic or metal plates in addition to Kevlar and these will stop a glancing hit from a rifle, but even here a direct hit at close range will go straight through.
Kevlar bullets? I’ve never heard of these, and a Google search only returns sites for role playing games. Any more information?
If you’re thinking of Teflon bullets, well, ignore bad Mel Gibson movies. Teflon bullets have marginally less armour penetrating ability than the stock standard full metal jacket. Teflon rounds were designed to minimise friction with the weapon’s rifling. Nothing to do with armour penetration.
We’d have 1720s style death rays?
It did.
An Italian priest devised a way to create vests & pants out of knotted silk (think macrame) that could block slow velocity/small calibre weapons.
But given the scaricity/expense of silk, it was rarely used.
And increasing the calibre/powder charge could have overcome this.