ASL GRP is a dynamic armour company with over 30 years’ experience globally across marine, land and airborne vehicles. It has an impressive history for delivering advanced protective solutions all around the world.
The Gravity Industries Jet Suit is a truly revolutionary product that incorporates cutting-edge technology and requires the highest quality of protection for its pilots. Gravity Industries currently offers unique flight experiences at its hangar outside of London, as well as the opportunity to commission your own custom-built Jet Suit.
ASL GRP has been collaborating with the Gravity Industries team to design and manufacture protective cones for its innovative Jet Suit. The cones provide protection against any fragmentation or debris for users in the unlikely event of mechanical failure. A Jet Suit consists of five turbines, which are capable of producing 130kg of thrust and over 1000hp.
The fragments potentially liberated from a turbine explosion would be small, sharp and incredibly fast moving, up to 600mph – the speed of a bullet from a gun. The ASL GRP protection is designed to catch these fragments and slow them down gradually, allowing the cone’s material fibres to stretch and absorb the energy of the fragment. The ASL GRP cones for Gravity Industries are manufactured to such a level where they can resist the fragmentation and blast effects matching that of a hand-grenade explosion, whilst being light enough to still allow flight.
After creating the specialist tooling, ASL GRP will use Vinylester infused layers of Aramid fibre – a class of heat-resistant and strong synthetic fibres to build the Gravity components. Commonly used in aerospace and military applications as ballistic-rated body armour, this solution is utilised across ASL GRP’s product range to provide protection against a fragment velocity of 1,312ft/sec to V50 standard.
Jonathon Diffey, Founder and Managing Director of ASL GRP, comments, “For ASL GRP to be involved with such a pioneering project is testament to the quality of our team’s work. Although we hope our fragment protection will never be needed, we are pleased to provide that extra peace of mind to future pilots drawing on our knowledge and experience from the armour and defence industry.”
Richard Browning, Founder of Gravity Industries, adds, “Although failures of the Jet Suit have been incredibly rare, we recognise the need for the highest levels of safety and security when piloting our product. Since our launch in 2017, we have flown the Jet Suit at over 100 events across the world, setting multiple World Records in the process. We are looking forward to using the new lightweight ballistic protection from ASL GRP in our upcoming race series. The first event being in Bermuda on March 21st!”
To see Gravity Industries’ World Record-holding Jet Suit in action, follow this link.