Buying Armor and NiJ Certification

Matt Landfair

Matt Six Actual
Staff member
Administrator
Obviously, understanding the materials and rating system regarding body armor needs to be established before making any purchases. If you don't have this foundation you will be more susceptible to misleading marketing.

Armor NIJ certification is a big deal and it is one of those factors that help you more easily navigate the purchase process. There is a lot of sketchy and questionable information being pushed regarding armor and many vendors use the ignorance of the buyer as a means of manipulation.

Being certified versus being compliant or tested are very different things. To say products meet a requirement but don't have the certificates to prove it, for me, casts doubt. The testing process is expensive and requires upkeep.

Some aspects of NiJ testing that people don't know-

They are done in 3rd party labs- not done by NiJ.

If the lab messes up the test (which does occur), the results are still sent to NiJ for publishing but can be updated with more current testing information.

If a company releases plate model AAAA10 and it gets certified, the certification is continual and will be retested to remain certified. If the plate is end of life and is getting replaced by AAAA20, testing on AAAA10 will no longer be conducted. That means, AAAA10 will no longer have a current cert. Does that mean AAAA10 is all of a sudden a faulty plate? No. If/When AAAA20 gets its cert, it will have its own independent testing and cert. It makes zero sense to update a cert of a end of life/discontinued product.

There are some misleading narratives being pushed to sell items - not to sell on their own merits but to sell because of a pushed inaccurate perception of another competing brand. I have found many people who don't quite have a grasp of this stuff further push that narrative of having a cert removed is automatically a strike against a company, when in reality it is normal business. Being hyper focused on one aspect and ignoring the big picture is not an educated perspective.
 
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