Home » Land » Pinnacle Armor Claims Forgery in Fight

Pinnacle Armor Claims Forgery in Fight

By Christian Lowe Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 12:38 pm
Posted in Land, Rumors

There’s a behind the scenes battle going on between Pinnacle Armor, the Air Force, the National Institute of Justice and the Army.

You’ll remember that a year ago the Air Force debarred Pinnacle after it found that the company had misrepresented the ballistic capabilities of its SOV 2000 armor claiming it was Level III compliant when it wasn’t. This ban of Pinnacle products came on the heels of the Army’s very public outing of Dragon Skin test results conducted by Army ballistics experts and witnessed by Pinnacle president Murray Neal himself.

But after the dust cleared, the tenacious Neal waged his own battle against the debarment, filing suit and compiling evidence that he claims shows Army testers forging test result documents and intentionally painting Dragon Skin in a bad light to the Air Force.

I spoke with Neal about this at length, and while he’s skeptical that the Army is resorting to lying and forging documents, there are some things that definitely look fishy about this case.

Neal sent me an example of a document that purportedly shows forged test results and failures of the armor that didn’t happen during tests conducted for the Air Force by H.P. White Labs. A lot of Pinnacle proponents point to a recent article by the bloggers at Soldiers for the Truth as explanation for the suspected forgeries and other skull duggery. We’ll let DoD Buzz readers make their own judgment on that.

But Neal claims that when the actual shooters at HP White were cross examined during depositions, they said that over two days of testing they did not see the failures tabulated on the result summary table. I asked Neal to forward me some copies of the deposition transcripts to prove that. What he sent didn’t seem to correlate with what he was claiming, prompting still more questions about what is actually going on here.

Neal appears to have at least has some cause here for fighting the debarment. Rumor has it the Air Force/NIJ is willing to settle and reverse the ban. I’ve been skeptical of Pinnacle’s claims and have chafed at the company’s absolutist claims and hyperbolic publicity stunts. But there’s a limited number of armor makers in the world and there’s no sense in keeping anyone out of the fold unless their product is totally bogus — which Dragon Skin is not.

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	Jeff July 2nd, 2008 at 2:57 pm Let’s ignore the publicity and the allegations. Reading what was sent here (documents and deposition transcripts) it seems safe to say the testers were not following fair testing protocols; using harsher standards for the dragon skin than is normal procedure. That alone shows that in the least dragon skin should get another test. Even up the standards retest and hopefully the govt. testing groups can correct their errors and we’ll seee the truth.
	Tyler July 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm I agree with jeff. We need an unbiased testing procedure. It would be a shame to give the troops less than the best, because someone wanted to make a few extra bucks.
	gary July 5th, 2008 at 6:44 am We need to change procurement procedures completely! The higher ups are not looking at what is best for the troops — they are looking to pad their retirement from the military in to extremely lucrative “consultant” jobs with whatever defense contractor pays the most! Just look at the Beretta — can’t stop a fly! How ’bout the m16 — a weapon so reliable it needs an assist lever built in! Stryker? VSTOL?
	Tomas July 5th, 2008 at 7:51 am Why doesn’t the test take place with dragon skin, and the current armor used next to it. If it is any better the results would be there for all to see. This current meathod is a complete waste of money. Using the current logic, boxing match would be done on the stats of the boxers then a computer would declare the winner.
	Joe Wells July 31st, 2008 at 3:03 am To my knowledge the Army has never released (or conducted?) similar multi-hit (>10 hits)ballistic tests on their Interceptor vests similar to those that Pinnacle has repeatedly demonstrated on their DS vests. There also have been NUMEROUS perforation events in the level III interceptor vests for std 3-hit tests which the army does not like to acknowledge. Is this why they avoid a fair and unclassified comparison test with DS? A real Level IV comparison is also necessary to clarify this situation.
	dragon pro December 30th, 2008 at 12:34 am When the inventor of the interseptor armor says that he thinks that dragonskin is better thats saying something. I have watched a video of a ballistics test for dragonskin and interseptor and the rounds that powderd the interseptor armor did not penatrate the dragon skin, and these were nasty round. I think you can still find the video on military.com.
	Ralph May 10th, 2009 at 12:29 am Whats going on with Pinnacle their website has been down for weeks, are they going bankrupt?
	Matt May 24th, 2009 at 2:03 pm i noticed that also about their website Ralph, i wanted to order some of it myself, if they would put up a simple site and offer a decent rate to civilians i am certain they would continue to generate revenue! CMON PINNACLE ARMS!! WE WANT YOU BACK! lol i would buy one right away!
	scott fredrics May 31st, 2009 at 9:26 am I also have been looking for this .I even have gone to the trade shows to purchase but have come up empty.Whats going on .We need the truth to save lives so lets have it.
	DensityDuck May 31st, 2009 at 3:09 pm Matt: just make one yourself, go to Wal-Mart and buy a set of dinner plates plus a plastic sack!
	William Snyder June 1st, 2009 at 3:40 am I fully agree they should say screw you the the military and open up sales to civillians if the military won’t buy. They would generate a TON of revenue and I woudld me one of the 1st to buy.
	William Snyder June 1st, 2009 at 3:46 am Their site is like gone but I have other company contact info and will try that. For those who care.
	Joe Auger June 2nd, 2009 at 1:52 am I order a set back in August 08 while I was working in A-stan, requested refund due to lack of delivery in October and had back and forth e-mails until Pinnacle Armor closure, somewhere in April 09, directly from Murray Neil. Every week or 2, the guy would say that refund was on its way. Never happened. After this experience and losing 6,200$, I wouldn’t be surprise it was all smoke and mirror.
	Matt June 16th, 2009 at 11:27 am So is Pinnacle armor still a company? or have they closed their doors?
	Justin Wesley August 23rd, 2009 at 11:05 am I’m currently on my second deployment to Iraq and I have seen our current vest barely stop one bullet, shit you drop the damn thing and it might crack. I’ll take something that stood up to 10 rounds or whatever the dragonskin took and take my chances on a failure.
	Greg C October 31st, 2009 at 7:19 pm So Pinnacle Armor is no longer around, I can’t get on their site and from what said they closed April of this year, if I wanted to get my hands on one of these vests how would I go about it? Or is there no way to them anymore?