An excellent publication that attempted to answer this question was released in 2011 

"Opportunities in Protection Materials Science and Technology for Future Army Applications"  Committee on Opportunities in Protection Materials Science and

Technology for Future Army Applications; National Research Council, USA.

The major recommendations were to revisit older ideas about penetration mechanisms in light of new characterisation techniques. New materials such as cermets (metal/ceramic composites) are seen to be promising, whether these are made through established CIP/HIP methods or maybe through the newer 3D printing techniques is something to ponder.  Polymer matrix composites are a given considering their success along with high-performance fibres such as Dyneema and CNT. A greater push will be on the computational material science to better mimic the observed crystallographic properties of metal armour or other nano-properties through multi-scale approaches. Current FEA endeavours are also becoming much more accurate in their predictive abilities and this will surely drive more rapid prototyping. A new organizational approach to marry academia, industry and national labs is required but this is often hampered by rigid frameworks for classification and IP protection, there are plenty of good examples though to work off. 

 All in all this will lead to 'big data' and all the associated problems that come from having too much information with a highly de-centralised work model. I think innovation will come from data management and that peculiar human trait to clobber the disparate parts together to achieve functionality.  

Responses via LinkedIn:

Chris Taggart

Director of Operations

It will rely on tweeking the composites we already have, much like the auto industry has done with car frames for automobiles and safety crumple zones to achieve much better protection while minimizing weight as well as cost?

Max Anderson

Experienced First Response

I'm seeing knee pads and shinguards variants in Advanced Warfare, DARPA like, online gaming. I suggested years back, inserts over sensative areas, like shins, thighs, arms & elbows. Disposable cuts custom tailored to each soldiers size. Of course this would mean changes for the BDU. What used to be cargo pockets, could easily be transformed into slips for disposable armor. Flexability in joints areas in the BDU is important for flexability in a battle ready enviornment. Exoskelaton can be defined difinitavely in several ways if we continue to use human soldiers on tomorrows technological battlefield.

M

Michel Baikrich

Baikrich Technology Ltd - United Kingdom

Hello Nevin

Sorry, I speak only French and Spanish, but Google Translator is not a problem

Les miracles n'existent pas. De plus on travaille aussi sur des nouvelles munitions

En ce moment je termine la mise au point d'une gamme de Baby ball (BMP Ammos) pour remplacer la venerable 9mm Luger et deja on penetre n'importe quel protection level IIIA NIJ & BR4 EN-1063

L'eternel duel entre le projectile et le blindage

Salut

Michel

Chuck Hargreaves P.E

. All of the above! !

Frederik Coghe

Lets try to do this systematically: 1) New materials: Probably very little in this field, at least nothing that is economically viable. UHMWPE fiber seems to have some further development margin (theoretically quite a bit even), but for the rest??? There however seems some promising work to be going on in the development of hybrid systems to reduce the back face signature. New layup systems (UD followed by quasi-isotropic, eg. ARL hybrid system for helmet shells), material combinations (poly-aramid combined with UHMWPE), or new 3D weaving techniques will all help in decreasing the blunt trauma 2) System approach Very little possibilities for really 'brand new' schemes. The human body is what it is... Personally I however feel like relaxing on the typical BABT requirements for bullet-resistant vests. The current clay methods have very little link to the real injury mechanisms and risks and are very likely leading to unnecessarily heavy designs. Nevertheless, relaxing on the BABT requirements still needs further biomechanical and medical validation, and in the end, some (or a lot?) of political and economical goodwill 3) Re-discovery of old technology This is a simple one: there simply is no old technology to rediscover. Ballistic resistance is determined by local material behaviour. So the only possibility here would be to re-discover a long-forgotten material. With only about 100+ elements in Mendeliev's table, chances are fairly small we missed one... 4) Innovations I don't see how this is not covered by the previous paragraphs :-), but I will treat this as my personal view on further tracks of development. Firstly, we still have some work to do on the helmet side. It is very bizarre to use increase the torso protection to the highest level ever, and on the other side introduce lighter and smaller helmets offering close to no effective bullet protection (i.e. including the BHBT aspect). Secondly, we need to reconsider in my opinion the treat level. We do not always get shot at with high-velocity heavy WC armour-piercing bullets. Reduce the burden of our soldiers by lowering the protection levels of their ballistic protection gear might in the end be saving lives. It is up to the medics and the statisticians, coupled to survivability modeling, to dive into this. This is similar to the relaxing on the BABT requirement, but on a higher scale. In the end, I do realize that I sound a little bit skeptical, especially working in this field myself. I hope to get surprised of course during 2015 with something I haven't thought of myself. So to all of you, I wish you a creative 2015!

Erik Carton

We can not afford to use a single approach; all route to better protection systems are welcome. Re-use of old solutions is the best, but requires a long memory (did you know that the first electric commercially available cars date back from 1910?). Testing/shooting at new materials will always be done and has its pro's (fast results). However, as a materials scientist active in the ballistic field, I expect the most largest innovations from the hard way: understanding the interactions between projectiles and armour systems. At TNO we have 4 Excel sheets that describe such interactions for ductile materials (in-plane and out-of-plane materials flow), fabrics and ceramics. The models only incorporate the main failure mechanism that dissipates energy (like ductile hole growth, or denting in metals), yet they are accurate up to 90% compared to our experimental results using real bullets or FSP's. As the failure mechanisms are known, one can take measures to delay or avoid these from happening and thereby increase the protection provided. Some of these engineering model have been described in ISB (2011 and 2014) and the ceramic model will be presented this month at the ICACC (Daytona Beach, USA). Best way to innovate is to search for material combinations that provide a synergy, they work better than the sum of each component (1+1 = 3). We have examples of such synergetic material interactions that reinforce each other. OK, it will take some R&D but this route is going to bring improved armour systems through innovations.

Pedro Morales

In the past I worked on vehicle ballistic protection. Only dense materials were found to blunt incoming projectiles. Composite substrates would disperse the energy. Unfortunately such combinations tend to put great load on transmissions and other mobility necessities. Some was solved by geometry but that can only go so far. I wonder myself how body armor can be improved.

Projectile-armor target interactions are complex and vary depending upon the specific parameters of each involved. Obviously, complete dwell or interface defeat of the projectile without