Milipol 2025: Austrian Ulbrichts unveils new screwless rifle-proof helmets for tactical teams.

Ulbrichts Protection introduced a new generation of screwless ballistic helmets at Milipol Paris 2025, highlighting rifle-capable designs for everyday patrol and specialized teams. The lineup signals a shift toward routine rifle threat protection as law enforcement agencies confront more long gun attacks in urban settings.

Ulbrichts Protection presents its new products on November 18, 2025, at Milipol Paris 2025. The Austrian specialist is unveiling a new generation of screwless ballistic helmets built around three flagship products: the ZENTURIO First Responder, the FORTIS VPAM 8 modular shield and the OPTIO Superlight high-cut. The common thread is clear: rifle-rated protection, controlled trauma and lower weight for patrol officers and special forces who increasingly face long-gun threats in dense urban environments.
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Ulbrichts' new ZENTURIO, FORTIS and OPTIO Superlight helmets deliver lightweight, rifle-rated head protection for police and special units (Picture source: Ulbrichts).

Ulbrichts is a recognized specialist of this defense field. Over the past decade, its titanium and POLYTANIUM helmets have become the reference for many German Länder, with a large majority of newly procured ballistic patrol helmets in key states sourced from the company, according to official police documentation and industry reporting.

At the core of the new line is the ZENTURIO First Responder, a patrol helmet that integrates rifle protection into what is intended to be an everyday service item rather than a niche heavy option. The shell uses a multi-layer hybrid construction with reinforced rifle plates in the frontal, forehead and upper temple arcs, protecting up to VPAM 6 against 7.62×39 lead-core threats while maintaining the mass of a conventional patrol helmet. Ulbrichts states that the protective surface extends to roughly 15–20 mm from the rim, dramatically shrinking the unprotected edge area that has historically been a weak point on bolted helmets.

Ergonomically, ZENTURIO First Responder is configured so that officers feel little difference from their legacy gear. The suspension and center of gravity are tuned to keep tilt to a minimum when visors, thermal clip-ons or night-vision shrouds are added, while the profile maintains compatibility with active hearing protection, radios and riot visors. For logistics planners, Ulbrichts is explicitly targeting a single-helmet concept: the same service helmet worn on traffic duty is already long-gun capable, eliminating the delay and complexity of issuing separate rifle helmets from an armory when an active-shooter call drops.

The company links this design directly to Europe’s last decade of attacks, from Bataclan to Vienna, where first responders often arrived under-protected against assault-rifle fire. In its Milipol briefing, Ulbrichts argues that long-barrel attacks are no longer statistical outliers but a core risk in European cities, and that patrol officers should no longer be sent into potentially dangerous situations with inadequate head protection. The implication is that rifle-rated service helmets will increasingly be seen as a baseline requirement.

For higher-threat missions, the ZENTURIO and OPTIO families can be paired with the FORTIS VPAM 8 forehead shield, a modular add-on plate that clips to compatible helmets in seconds using a simple front interface. In tested configurations, FORTIS raises the main impact zone to VPAM 8, defeating 7.62×39 hard-steel-core armor-piercing ammunition at realistic urban engagement distances while keeping residual energy transferred to the head below the critical trauma threshold defined by the VPAM HVN standard.

Operationally, this gives SWAT, MEK/SEK units and military special operations forces a way to approach rifle-plate levels of head protection without committing every assaulter to a full ballistic shield. A breacher or first-in element can run FORTIS-equipped helmets, maintaining a normal shooting stance and full mobility inside stairwells and narrow corridors, while other team members rely on the base shell. For patrol units, a modest pool of FORTIS modules can be issued as an overlay capability when intelligence points to armor-piercing threats, using the same underlying helmet fleet.

The third pillar of the Milipol showcase is the OPTIO Superlight high-cut, presented as the world’s lightest VPAM level 3 helmet at roughly 1 kg, including the inner harness and straps. Built from POLYTANIUM, a titanium-aramid hybrid, the screwless shell trims around 20% of weight compared with comparable composite helmets without sacrificing protective area. Coverage and trauma performance are kept consistent across almost the entire surface, with verified protection up to about 15 mm from the rim and residual energies kept under the 25-joule safety threshold.

The high-cut geometry is clearly aimed at modern and networked units. Cut-outs over the ears leave room for over-the-ear headsets and multi-band radios, while rails and a front shroud allow mounting of cameras, strobes and night-vision devices using NATO-standard interfaces. As with other OPTIO variants, Superlight can be upgraded with FORTIS shields up to VPAM 8 for operations against AK-pattern rifles and armor-piercing ammunition, giving commanders a scalable system that moves from routine patrol to counterterror entry work without changing helmet families.

Beyond the product sheet, Ulbrichts is offering an implicit critique of older standards that focus solely on stopping a projectile. VPAM HVN tests not only penetration but also the energy transmitted into the headform, with 25 joules set as the upper limit for survivable trauma. Titanium-based hybrids such as POLYTANIUM help keep that backface energy low while maintaining stiffness, which is why several European police technical guidelines now point to VPAM HVN as the preferred benchmark for rifle-threat helmets.

On the procurement side, the company is publicly recommending pilot batches to validate comfort, integration and upgrade drills before a full rollout, arguing that a unified screwless platform for patrol and special units simplifies spares, training and long-term sustainment. The tone of its Milipol white paper is blunt, citing a decade of European shootings and warning that those who fail to take precautions today are effectively deciding how vulnerable emergency services will be tomorrow, while a police union representative stresses that this isn’t about equipment but about survivability.