A firm named Nanocomp Technologies is being funded by the Pentagon to develop lightweight vehicle and body armor. CNN reports:

In April, Lashmore had a mechanical multicaliber gun shoot bullets at different versions of his sheet, each less than a fifth of an inch thick, at a speed of 1,400 feet per second. Four sheets were breached, but three showed no damage. Lashmore and his 35 employees were ecstatic.

“We didn’t expect it to work at all,” he admits.

According to Nanocomp’s website.

our spun conductive yarns exhibit breaking strengths up to 3 GPa expressed or in other terms: 1.5 Nt/Tex or 450,000 psi and with fracture toughness that is higher than aramids (such as Kevlar® or Twaron®). Our CNT sheets have breaking strengths, without binders, that range from 500 MPa to 1.2 GPa depending upon tube orientation. Aluminum breaks at 500 MPa, carbon steel breaks around 1 GPa.

…

Extremely Lightweight – Less than half the weight of aluminum

Not being an engineer or physicist, I really don’t know what to make of their claims. Feel free to chime if you understand this stuff.

Many thanks to Mark for emailing me the link.