Not long ago, the SOFIC exhibition (Special Operations Forces Industry Conference) was held at the Tampa Convention Center in Florida, USA. The name is strange, isn't it? Anyway, the group of profiteers who supply special forces united to hold an exhibition.

Exhibited The products include tactical kayaks, tactical thermal imaging cameras, tactical small drones, tactical jetpacks, etc. It seems that if the name displayed does not contain the word "tactical", it would be embarrassing to say hello to others.

Although most of these are designed for people, at this exhibition, we still saw small gifts prepared for dogs: K9 krypton gold dog head suit-K-9 tactical dog helmet.

Cool or not?

What is K9?

It is necessary to first explain why most police dog equipment starts with K-9. People who don’t know it think it is a model number. In fact, K-9 is another name for Canine in English, and Canine means dog. Slightly different from dog-Dog, it mostly describes domesticated dogs, especially medium and large working dogs. Therefore, when you see something starting with K-9 in the future, don’t think it is a model. It specifically refers to dog equipment.

The equipment I saw prepared for dogs in the past were all basic cargo vests or bulletproof vests. During World War II, there was even a death suit - the Soviet anti-tank dog suit.

Anti-tank dog

The structure of the dog head suit

Nowadays, dogs have caught up with the good times and do not have to die in the war. Would it be uncomfortable for military dogs to wear this helmet? What is the tactical role it achieves? Let’s start with the helmet parts.

A: The shell of the helmet is made of 3D printed nylon shell, which has good impact resistance, but don’t worry about bulletproofing. This helmet is not meant for dogs to fight in the first place.

B: UV400 level lenses. This logo is commonly used on our sunglasses, indicating that the lenses can block 100% of ultraviolet rays. The curved spherical lenses are large and allow the dog's field of vision to be unobstructed.

C, D: This is an ordinary elastic chin strap.

E: This thing is the same as a leather rail, allowing you to install a camera or flashlight on it.

F: This fulcrum is used to prevent the helmet from tilting when the dog shakes its head.

G: Foam padding, fixed with Velcro, so it is easy to replace. After all, every dog’s face shape is different.

H: It’s just a belt buckle.

I: For the fasteners used for shell disassembly, replace them wherever they are broken to avoid scrapping the whole thing.

Seems like this too It doesn’t have any particularly powerful functions. The official website says that this product is designed to provide protection for German shepherds and Malinois (they all look like wolfdogs anyway). The top of the helmet in the picture is a small attachable MOHOC camera.

However, I always feel that this helmet is more cool than practical. Maybe it will have a good effect on search and rescue dogs in the ruins. Not to mention the complex environment, the key is that it is gray and smoky. After the dog enters It is inevitable to get scratched on the head by steel bars and the like, so bring a camera and flashlight so that people can observe the situation inside from the outside. I really can't think of other uses. Could it provide some defense during fighting? There is also a camera installed on the rail which is quite entertaining. You can observe what your dog is doing all day long from the perspective of the dog’s head.

But having said that, dog helmets are nothing new. If you search for dog helmets online or go to Amazon to search Dos's helmet, you will find a lot of them. However, most of these helmets are just for you. Our own Uェ*U is just cute. K9 is the first company to seriously use helmets as tactical equipment to cause trouble.

However, Harley still feels that this product is not very reliable. Although Harley has dogs, he doesn’t know if dogs like this kind of thing. After all, I can’t directly communicate with the dog and ask him if he feels comfortable. no.

This tactical helmet is not officially on sale yet and will have to wait until the second half of 2018. Nowadays, some promotional and test videos thrown out by manufacturers are regarded as marketing behaviors and are of no use. Although this thing is very cool, no one in the United States pays attention to it. It's good for eyeballs, but its practicality is worrisome.