Transparent Armor to Be Installed on Combat Vehicles

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Glass windows have always been a concern for defense forces. The material is simply too fragile to be confidently installed onto helicopters, airplanes, armored vehicles and other combat vehicles. Many efforts to eliminate windows as a necessity have been tested such as unmanned vehicles or manned windowless vehicles, and many of them have shown some sort of promise. In another attempt to solve the glass window problem, the Air Force Research Laboratory have developed a transparent ceramic armor that can be fitted as windows.

The transparent armor can be installed as windows in both ground and air vehicles, and provides better ballistic protection than its traditional glass laminate counterpart. The transparent armor also comes in at less than half the weight and thickness of traditional glass laminates.

In the above picture you can see on the left the exit whole created by a projectile in ballistic glass. On the right you see a bulge, yet no exit hole created by the projectile on the transparent armor.

The transparent ceramic armor is known as ALON. The name comes from the materials it is made from, aluminum, oxygen, and nitrogen. The material starts out as a powder that is later formed into certain shapes. In order for the material to become transparent, it goes through very high temperatures and pressure.

Phys.org reports that the United States Air Force Research Laboratory have been working on this material since 2006.

Up until fairly recently the largest ALON printed was less than 3 feet. However now, a small company known as Surmet Corporation manufactures the ALON windows. The windows manufactured today are often up to eight square feet in size.

The transparent armor is currently used on several U.S. Army helicopters such as the Black Hawk. Even NASA have been interested in using the material for windows on the International Space Station.

The next phase in ALON’s evolution will be creating a curved window, however different materials will have to be used in order to accomplish this, thus probably giving ALON a different name.