Foster-Miller’s Light-appliqué Armor Systems Technology (LAST® Armor) was developed in the early 1990s in response to the perceived need to further protect military vehicles from hostile fire. It is a lightweight ceramic/composite armor mounted to a Velcro® base so that it can be rapidly installed or removed.

Both the US Army and US Air Force were instrumental in its development.  The Army was looking for a way to apply ceramic armor to its lightweight ground assault vehicles and the Air Force wanted to use armor to protect transport aircraft and crew from ground fire on low-level missions in hostile territory, but needed a way to do it that would not add excessive weight to the planes.

In the Army application, hexagonal ceramic armor tiles have a Velcro® backing applied and then these tiles are put onto vehicles which have had the mating Velcro® material mounted on all external surfaces. The Velcro® not only provides the structural fastening of the ceramic armor tiles, but gives a degree of shock resiliency essential to the survival of the brittle ceramics subject to the high-velocity impact of projectiles. The aircraft application works in a similar fashion and allows for efficient installation and removal.

We have delivered more than 600 LAST® Armor systems to the Air Force with 200 more still under contract which will provide protection to virtually all C-17 and C-130 aircraft and a good percentage of the C-141 aircraft still in service.  We have also provided 50 C-130 systems to our allies and three systems to Spain for their new CASA C-295 aircraft. This has resulted in $70 million in business over the past 13 years.

For further information, visit the LAST® Armor pages in the Products section of this web site.

Return to Robotics

Printable Version