1) I think they were trying to develop a product that would protect law enforcement officers, under the philosophy of "stopping bullets that come their way and shielding them". And it is correct, if you merely think along the lines of stopping incoming bullets - but ultimately, tactically, that is not the objective, because it can't be. Our philosophy is protect officers and innocents by superior training and tactics, and stopping the deadly bullets at their source (the bad guy). If it is an active threat where bullets are flying around from a bad guy, you have to get to the bad guy and stop the threat. If you merely deploy a shield, you can hunker behind it, but that doesn't stop the threat, and it puts you in a bad place to attempt to stop the threat, because you've put yourself in a box with clean edges, and anywhere you poke your head out, it's easily detectable (and therefore, shootable).

I also do think you are right in thinking they might have wanted an improvement to shields that are out there, but there are flaws there too, as I'll explain.

- I'll take 3 critical situations in which they might be thinking this could be deployed - active shooter, armed felon manhunt, and ambush. There are more, but these three are common. In active shooter, the LEO's life is lower on the priority list than the innocent citizens. Risk must be assumed by LEO's, and thus something like this shield wouldn't help much there, because you have to actively move, locate and find the shooter. Lugging around 50 pounds of mobile soft shield is way less effective than knowing how to clear a building, using the natural cover there, and quickly locating and engaging the shooter. This is done SWAT or military style - you move quick and fast to find and stop the threat. The objective of this shield is the opposite - to simply provide a soft barrier to protect ONLY the officer, in one place, from only handgun rounds. A manhunt also requires mobility, and in the situation of an ambush, you are much better off bailing out of your vehicle and immediately engaging in vehicle CQB tactics (because you've just been shot at and time is of the essence), instead of fumbling around to pull out and set up a barricade that has more flaws and weaknesses than your vehicle does - in reality, if you know vehicle CQB, the vehicle is a much better shield than this one.

The most critical flaw in this, is that if you are being shot at, the last thing you want is to get pinned down. THE LAST THING. If you get pinned down, it is really hard to get un-pinned, and usually relies on your buddies coming in and suppressing the location of the shooter with a lot of gunfire, enough to get the shooter's head down, which allows you to bail from where you were pinned and sprint like heck to a better place. In setting up this thing, if you come under fire, you have essentially just pinned yourself down where you are - and as I mentioned, you don't need armor and protection everywhere - just on your head and vitals.

Now take the current LEO shields - they are primarily used in 2 applications - warrant service and fugitive recovery. SWAT might occasionally use them on an active shooter, depending on the location. They are carried by the point man in "the stack" of guys doing the entry, and the shield man usually is on handgun around the shield. The shield would take any immediate blast and protect the operators, but can be easily tossed aside if necessary to gain mobility. This new shield is designed more as a set-down bunker, and far to big and bulky to be used in place of current shields - and the big kicker, lots of our hard shields are level IV ballistic - meaning they will stop big time rifle rounds, not simply handgun like this soft one. And as the picture illustrates, the stack is still pretty mobile, and has relatively fast moveable cover in the shield.



So, this is mostly opinion, but I don't think this shield (as is is now) can really be improved, because it is a flaw in the philosophy of it. Shields or protection are a trade-off in mobility and protection, and this is way too big a trade off in mobility. I've carried current ballistic shields on high-risk fugitive apprehensions, and they already are hard to handle, but are like a spartan shield and meant to be carried and not set down like a mini-fort. We can work with that, because when breaching a front door on a knock-and-announce, the protection it offers is worth the trade off (but only for that brief moment of breaching the building, then "the stack" takes over and clears room by room without the shield). The flaw in this shield they developed is it is designed to set down, but as I said, that gets you pinned down in a gunfight, which is really bad.

So in short, we need to protect officers, but make advances in areas where we still retain mobility. UHMWPE (Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene) was a huge advancement because it made our rifle plates and helmets lighter and stops greater threats. Firstspear's tubes system (for example) on carriers makes us able to don and doff a plate carrier faster, saving time when seconds count. Crye Precision, Ops Core, and Mtek's helmet system developments are lighter and more comfortable, and fit the head better. Areas like these are the ones that IMO make the biggest difference in critical situations, because the principle of mobility really is second to none when engaging a deadly threat in a gunfight.

They did mention they got input from federal agents, and it would be interesting to know what agencies and positions they were from. If you talk to a federal agent in white collar crimes or IT related investigations, their opinion could be vastly different from an agent on FBI SWAT/HRT, a US Marshal on the Fugitive Task Force, etc.

All that said, the engineering of that thing is very impressive. I've worked with ballistic kevlar, and getting that stuff to fold in that way, with a frame like that is ultra-impressive. It is really a cool thing, but I see it much more as a defensive tool for schools and students, or executives or protectees than for LEO's, just based on the tactics of it.