To ‘look after’ or to be responsible for the personal security and safety of another human being is truly one of the very best professions one can be part of.

But let us ignore the potential highlights of your future career within Personal Security Details (PSD) and allow me to focus this article about you and your own personal safety.

If you really understand how to gather all available information and how to analyse that information and how to turn it into real intelligence, then you will have already done a brilliant job in looking after your own personal safety, as good intelligence will allow you to plan ahead and put effective ‘safety nets’ in place.

However, sometimes things don’t go to plan, and sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances, where you really have to ‘shine’, create quick ‘dynamic risk assessments’, and often rely on the gear you have invested in, prior to your assignment.

A good quality concealable bullet proof vest must be part of this gear and this article will hopefully provide you with information, which will allow you to choose the right one.

Please be aware that beside your weapon… your concealable bullet proof vest will be the only piece of equipment that really can make all the difference between your life and death.

Ballistic Protection Standards

To start with please let me clarify that concealable bullet proof vests are always designed as soft body armour. Very rarely do they feature front and rear pockets for additional hard trauma plates… that’ something you will find in overtly worn body armour, primarily in use in conflict and hostile environments, such as. war zones or politically unrest countries.

Subject to their stated protection level, covert bullet proof vests can offer excellent protection from even the most handguns and ammunition. Protection can be offered from 22mm up to 9mm parabellum, 357 Mag, 44 Mag, 45 Mag and other ammunition.

Many countries around the world have 30-30 ammo 500 rounds   their own ballistic protection standard. However, the best known and most respected is known as National Institute of Justice (NIJ) standard. The NIJ standard is recognised and respected all over the world, in comparison to the British, German or other standards, which in most cases are more dominant within homeland security services in their country or region.

Looking at the most recognised standard, what would be the best possible protection level you should be looking for? Well, the answer is rather simple. Go with the highest possible protection level for ‘soft’ concealable bullet proof vests, the NIJ IIIA protection level.

This type of concealable bullet proof vest protects you against 9 mm Full Metal Jacketed Round Nose (FMJ RN) bullets, with nominal masses of 8.0 g (124 gr) at a reference velocity of 436 m/s (1430 ft/s ± 30 ft/s) and.44 Magnum Semi Jacketed Hollow Point (SJHP) bullets, with nominal masses of 15.6 g (240 gr) at a reference velocity of 436 m/s (1430 ft/s ± 30 ft/s).

Only a very few concealable bullet proof vests have taken protection even to another level and offer additional protection from Tokarev Ball 7.62 x 25mm and Makarov 9 x 18mm, which is of great benefits when being operational in Eastern European countries or the Russian Federation.

A number of specialised manufacturers have very recently developed ultra light, extremely thin, truly outstanding high performance concealable bullet proof vests which offer also ballistic protection from the above mentioned rounds.

Body armour technology, design and manufacturing capabilities have advanced a lot over the past few years. Body armour worn by the police and other enforcement agencies in most countries weight in excess of 5kg or even 6kg and are often thicker than 20 or even 25mm.

This is absolutely unnecessary. It is a well documented fact that such weight will lead to stress, fatigue and subsequently to potentially fatal human errors. Innocent members of the public could get severely injured or loose their lives if an Executive Protection Specialist suffers from fatigue due to the excessive high weight of his body armour, and subsequently makes the wrong decision within what will most likely be an extremely stressful situation.

Some of the best body armour manufacturers are now capable of developing covertly worn bullet proof vests less than half of the above weight, leading to a noticeable reduction and stress, fatigue and any other negative side effect.

I strongly feel that in case you are looking for a concealable high performance bullet proof vests, your body armour should certainly not weigh any more than 2kg in today’s day in age. Manufacturers have been competing hard in order to develop the lightest body armour in the world. They have pushed each other to completely new levels; hence concealable bullet proof vests weighing less than 2.0kg are now available to government as well the private sector, offering extraordinary ballistic protection.

Concealability

In order to be as concealable as possible (a key requirement many of your future principals will set) a bullet proof vest needs to be as thin as possible. The matter of fact is that your principal might well be introduce yourself to others as ‘Assistant’ or ‘Associate’, hence your body armour must be able to back this claim or statement up!

To create ultra thin bullet proof vests is not the easiest of all tasks. The reason behind is the extremely dangerous risk of blunt forced trauma injuries. All modern materials being used to manufacture bullet proof vests make it nearby impossible for a bullet to penetrate. The much higher risk is the risk of . The thinner the body armour, the more attention the manufacturer has to pay to the protection of the wearer from such injury. You don’t want to see your body armour stop the bullet… but die later on in hospital from internal bleeding or other internal injuries, do you?

Modern concealable bullet proof vest panels can be less than 10mm thin. In fact, some concealable high performance bullet proof vests are as thin as 7mm and with the assistance and backing of specially designed trauma liner they still outperform existing body armour, which used to be heavy, bulky and thick.