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Integrity Ballistics |
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January 4, 2016 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Revolutionary New Less Lethal Ammunition for Law Enforcement that Pancakes on Impact and Does Not Penetrate the Skin |
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Founder and CTO
Integrity Ballistics
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – January 4, 2016
CEOCFO: Mr. Kolnik, how is Integrity Ballistics the ‘new frontier in less lethal ammunition? Mr. Kolnik: New frontier means we are bringing new technology to a market that has been stagnant for many years. We are the only company that brings Soft Polymer rounds to market. We are pushing the market forward. That is why we are the new frontier.
CEOCFO: What do you have? Mr. Kolnik: We have what we are calling a Soft Polymer round. It is a homogenous polymer compound that has a densifier in it. What it does is when it hits something it becomes very large, much larger than the diameter when it was shot – up to 2 ¾”. So it stretches out, it PANCAKES if you will, and disperses that energy over a large area. We can deliver that energy onto a person at a specific velocity so that it does not penetrate the skin, tear the skin, or lacerate it but also delivers that energy to that person administers a really hard punch per say. It is equivalent to being hit by a 110mph fastball. If you can imagine baseball being thrown at you at that speed. It packs quite a bit of energy and it renders somebody pain compliant is what we call them when they have been hit.
CEOCFO: Why would we want to use your ammunition? What has been the challenge in adoption? Mr. Kolnik: Traditionally, less lethal has been less effective. There is either this border when they try to make it effective enough it becomes dangerous. That is currently what the market is seeing. Right now, they are using the sole technology where they are shooting either steel or lead BBs wrapped into a Kevlar sock that is tied off at one end and then shot at somebody. To deliver enough energy to render that person pain compliant they have to shoot it fast enough that it becomes dangerous. It could penetrate the person. It can cause internal injuries. They pull these things out of the legs, muscle tissue, and fatty tissues. That is the dangerous part. So they back it off so that it does not actually do that rendering it less effective. The people do not experience the pain compliance that they should be experiencing when being shot with something like this. I think that is one huge reason why less lethal has that stigma of not being deployed to be a useful means of subduing a subject. On the other hand, there are these energy weapons like Tasers, which are the other spectrum of what is lethal. Tasers also have their drawbacks as well. You have to be very close to a person to be able to utilize the Taser. You have to get to within 15 feet. Usually when you are within 15 feet of a combat subject or somebody that is advancing on you or means harm to somebody then it dangerous to use a nonlethal weapon. You want to be able to subdue somebody at a much greater distance if they are posing that kind of threat. Our soft polymer round has opened that engagement distance up. We deliver pain compliance with a high enough energy that it renders a subject pain compliant, leads to a de-escalation of the situation, and is effective and highly accurate at greater distances. Up to 75 feet in fact.
CEOCFO: How are you able to accomplish what others have not? Mr. Kolnik: It is kind of a long story. The Thanksgiving shortly after 9/11, my family and I were sitting around and talking about how airline transport is going to change and how the airlines are going to need a weapon that could be deployed within an aircraft without rupturing the skin of the aircraft, without taking the whole thing down or even injuring or killing innocent bystanders. We asked the question, “Why do we not have a soft polymer round that splats and disperses its energy so it would not go through the skin of the aircraft and would also provide a less lethal measure that possibly would not injure or kill the wrong person?” The concept was easy to come up with, but with most things the implementation of it was difficult. That is where my background in material science and my Masters in Chemical Engineering came in. The idea sprung forth and we pursued the concept of supplying this product to the airlines. It took three years of development to prove the concept. I vividly remember the first day we shot it and saw that it worked amazingly well. It was better than anything I had seen, and at that time I was working for a less lethal company and learning about the world of less lethal weapons and ammunition. It was around then that my cousin, a Marine, was killed in the Iraq war. It was through that process of grief and meeting people with the military bereavement offices that we then determined that the world should move toward a time where less lethal should be considered a first option in most cases unless it absolutely cannot be. We decided to bring this product out and say “we have something that we have been working on for aircraft that can be deployed in any less lethal situation,” so why limit it. That was about the time frame that we opened up to the entire market, including law enforcement, military, wildlife, home security, corrections, and more.
CEOCFO: Is there a regulatory body that you must satisfy? Mr. Kolnik: We have been looking for approval. The big thing about this industry is breaking into it because it is a conservative industry and for good measure. There are many lawsuits if something goes wrong. The implementation is the major roadblock that we have been dealing with for a long time and we just started breaking that down. It started happening over the last year. We started getting a few prison systems and police agencies to start using our product and it has been performing in real time exactly as had been tested against cadavers and in a ballistic laboratory. We knew it had the properties to function but we did not have that solid data used on perpetrators yet. This has all been happening in the last year. We have had a few bounty hunters use our product and give us testimonials. It has moved into prison systems and they’ve given us testimonials saying it is a great thing. Just recently, we have gotten the U.S. military involved in it and they have earmarked a fast a track project where they have put $2 million onto it to push it into a high profile transport and security project. With this acceptance of our product, I think that is what you were talking about. Who do we need to accept this thing? It is the military. Once this is over and they have accepted our product I think it will be fully implemented and accepted everywhere. I think that is the massive wall we need to bring down.
CEOCFO: How do you reach out to potential users? Mr. Kolnik: We have approached this several different ways. One of them is we have our website up so if people hear about us, or Google less lethal projectiles or ammunition they can find us. Another and slightly more effective way to reach out, since we are unknown, is we attend trade shows and conventions like Shot Show, the Mock Prison Riots, or the International IWA Outdoor Classic next March, or Police Chief Association conventions and places where they demonstrate new weaponry, tactics, and products that can be used. It is though these different demonstrations and shows that we have been able to develop a network. People that are starting utilize it, talk about it. That is how we are breaking into this industry.
CEOCFO: How have you stayed positive and not been frustrated through the process? Mr. Kolnik: Because we believe in our product and we know it has the capability of saving lives. Every time I hear on the news that somebody died because they were shot 15 times even though they were unarmed and they did not deserve to die, or maybe they were mentally unstable and was shot and killed, I think if weapons like our were being used and people were trained to use them then more people would survive and change their life around. Maybe they were just in the wrong circumstance at the wrong time, things elevated and they did not deserve to die, and this type of projectile would give those people a second chance.
CEOCFO: Would you say this is a replacement for the standard weapon a police officer would carry or something additional? Mr. Kolnik: I think it could completely replace a Taser deployed in the right situation. There are people that make pistols, one is from a company called Bruzer, that can shoot this 12-gauge round that we make right now, so instead of carrying a Taser around they could have a 12-gauge pistol that could shot this less lethal projectile. Further development, we want to shrink it down and put it into more standard ammunition but that is farther down the road. I do not think it would be a full replacement for lethal weapons because there is always going to be a need to use a lethal in certain circumstances. If things go completely wrong in certain situation then a lethal weapon can be warranted. This projectile, however, could open up the front end of the engagement with a suspect whether it is the first option and the lethal one is only drawn if things get completely out of hand.
CEOCFO: Does it put more of a burden on a police officer to decide if they need to use a lethal weapon or not? Would standard training make that decision easier? Mr. Kolnik: Ultimately, it is up to the police officer to make the decision because they are the ones that are protecting their own life in certain circumstances. I think one of the positive aspects of our rounds is that it is intended to be shot at soft body parts like the legs and the abdomen, maybe the arms, but if you are in a circumstance where you have a weapon loaded with our projectile and you needed it to be lethal and you close to the suspect then if you shot the suspect in the head or the face with it then it would not be good for the person being shot. Therefore, the accuracy of our rounds provides officers with the option of body placement, where they want to put it on the body that would cause more pain compliance if they absolutely had to.
CEOCFO: Where are you today? Do you have the funds to continue on the way you would like to get the product out in the mainstream? Mr. Kolnik: Where we are at today, right now we are operating out of pocket and small investors. Business partners that we bring on we bring on for a percentage of the company and they want to be a contributor as well as an investor in the company. That is how we have been going so far. We are getting to the point now where we are actively looking at the possibility of a larger angel investor or someone that has deeper pockets that can take this to the next levels. We always have our fingers crossed hoping for a big contract that will get this business up and running. I think we are at that point where we need to make that transition between when we are making enough money to support our small operations but expanding it and getting it to full blown manufacturing where we could supply millions of these we would have to go to the next level by getting an investor.
CEOCFO: Why is Integrity Ballistics noteworthy? Mr. Kolnik: Our product is unique in the sense that it brings a new technology to an old market and there is definitely a place for it. The big thing is that we want to bring back and deliver less lethal that is more effective, not less. We want it to be used as a safe and effective alternative to lethal circumstances and we want it to be the first option. |
“We are the only company that brings Soft Polymer rounds to market. We believe are we are pushing it forward. That is why we are the new frontier.”- Joseph Kolnik
Integrity Ballistics
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