A hundred people decide whether this helmet exists.
Full-face coverage has meant handgun protection. Ours included: the Ronin you can buy today is Level IIIA, and that is what a certificated full-face helmet is.
We took the same frame, put rifle-class armour on it, and shot it with 5.56×45 NATO. It stopped. We filmed it, and the film is below.
Turning that into a helmet you can wear takes a production run, and a production run takes a hundred orders. That is the whole proposition: reserve a place with a deposit, refundable in full until we build. Reach a hundred and it exists. Fall short and everybody gets their money back.
Counting the places taken so far…
| Helmet price | 7,600 USD |
|---|---|
| To reserve a place | 1,000 USD |
| Balance before delivery | 6,600 USD |
Nothing is charged beyond the deposit until there is a helmet to deliver, and the deposit comes back on request until we start building yours.
It stopped the round. The dent behind it was small.
Stopping a round is the easy half. The half that decides whether the wearer walks away is backface deformation: how far the armour punches into the head behind it. A stop with a deep dent is a fractured skull.
Ours was shallow. That is the result worth building a helmet around, and as far as we know it is the first time a full-coverage ballistic helmet has done it.
Fifteen years of frame, a new skin.
We are not starting again. The Ronin frame is the part that took a decade and a half to get right: the load path, the fit, the sight lines, the mounting. It is not being touched.
What changes is what hangs on it: ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene instead of the ballistic aramid composite. UHMWPE is what makes this worth attempting at all: it buys rifle-class protection without buying it in weight, which is the trade that has kept rifle-rated full-face helmets off the market.
| Base structure | The existing Ronin frame |
|---|---|
| Armour material | UHMWPE |
| Demonstrated against | 5.56×45 NATO, one filmed test |
| Estimated weight | 2.5 – 2.8 kg (estimate, not yet weighed) |
| Coverage | Full face, as the current Ronin |
| Certification | None yet, see below |
A hundred places, and no date we cannot keep.
1 · Reserve
A deposit holds one of a hundred places, paid by PayPal or bank transfer. Your price is fixed from that moment, whatever the material costs by the time we build.
2 · A hundred, or nothing
At a hundred we order material and start tooling, and we write to everybody to say so. Short of a hundred, the run does not happen and every deposit is returned. We would rather not build it than build it badly on half a batch.
3 · Build, then balance
We write before we begin building yours. That is your last chance to take the deposit back. Photographs when it is finished, the $6,600 balance then, and it ships once that clears.
There is no delivery date on this page, and that is deliberate. We know the material, the frame and the result of one test. We do not know how long certification and a first production run will take, and a date we invent today is a date we break later.
Where it goes after that.
3D-printed titanium armour laid over the UHMWPE would raise the threat the helmet can take beyond what the polyethylene does alone. The manufacturing route exists and we intend to build it.
It has not been built and it has not been shot at. Nothing on this page is a claim about what the titanium version stops, what it weighs or what it costs, and it is not part of what a preorder buys.
What is tested, and what is not.
You are being asked for money for something that does not exist. The least we owe you is a straight account of what we have actually proven.
| The 5.56 test | A development test at a private range, filmed above. One helmet, one session. It was not conducted by an accredited laboratory and not to NIJ-STD-0101.06 or any other published protocol. |
|---|---|
| NIJ certification | The Ronin NIJ 3 is not NIJ-certified and is not listed by the National Institute of Justice, NVLAP or NIST. The name describes the protection class we are building towards, not a certification the helmet holds. |
| What is certified | The current production Ronin was tested by Oregon Ballistic Laboratories in February 2022 (report 31411) against .357 SIG FMJ at NIJ Level IIIA: five shots, zero penetrations. That report covers today's helmet, states that the full system was not tested, and by its own terms may not be used to claim certification, approval or endorsement by any federal agency. |
| Estimated weight | 2.5 – 2.8 kg is an engineering estimate from the material and the frame. No production helmet has been weighed. |
| Delivery | We are not quoting a date. A preorder holds a place in the first production run; we will write to you before we build. |
If you need certified rifle-rated head protection today, this is not it, and we would rather tell you that here than after your money has arrived.
Be one of the hundred.
Counting the places taken so far…
| Helmet price | 7,600 USD |
|---|---|
| Deposit now | 1,000 USD |
| Balance before delivery | 6,600 USD |
Your deposit is refundable in full until we begin building your helmet. We will write to you before that point, and you decide then.
What you are buying
One of a hundred places in the first production run of a helmet that does not exist yet, at a price fixed today. Payment is by PayPal or bank transfer; only the deposit is taken now, and the balance is asked for when there is a helmet to deliver.
If we do not reach a hundred
The run does not happen and your deposit is returned in full. The deposit is also refundable on request at any time before we start building your helmet, for any reason at all.
Export
Ballistic protection is controlled in many countries. The price is before shipping, duty and export licensing, and we will confirm we can lawfully ship to you before taking the balance.