Silkworms Will Make Ballistic Spider Silk for the U.S. Army

Bulletproof silk? That’s pretty much what Kraig Labs has just received a contract to produce for the U.S. Army.

Yesterday, they announced a contract to produce “ballistic shoot packs constructed from its proprietary Dragon Silk™ material for performance testing. These shoot packs will be tested and evaluated for critical Soldier protective applications including ballistic impact.”

What the heck is Dragon Silk, you ask? Well, according to Popular Mechanics, it is essentially spider silk produced by a silkworm. Spider silk is much stronger than silkworm silk, but spider farms don’t really work out, since spiders are essentially rebels. Solution? Snag some spider DNA, mix it up with some silkworms, and farm the heck out of the new silk, which is said to be “just as strong as spider silk.”

Cool thing about Dragon Silk: Since it’s stronger than silkworm silk, which is often used for sutures because it’s biodegradable, thinner threads of Dragon Silk can be used for the same purpose “in sensitive areas such as the eyes and brain.”

Kraig’s contract is worth almost $100,000 in the first stage, and if the Army likes what it sees after that, it may ultimately be worth a million bucks.

Why Dragon Silk instead of Kevlar? One word: Flexibility. Per Popular Mechanics:

Dragon Silk’s primary advantage over traditional Kevlar is its flexibility. Kevlar is slightly more durable than Dragon Silk, with a strength of 3 gigapascals (GPa) compared to Dragon Silk’s strength of 2 GPa. However, Kevlar only has an elasticity of 3 percent, meaning it’s almost completely inflexible. Dragon Silk has an elasticity of 30 to 40 percent, which offsets the slightly reduced strength.

So perhaps not all genetic modifications are bad things.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.