Ottawa - To impress his customers, Peter Fabian has to literally blow his product to pieces.

Not that he has a problem with that. The president of ACE/Security Laminates Inc. of Ottawa loves to put a few bullets through his window laminates.

That's what he's been doing for the past few days for the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, at an elite security demonstration at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. Police and military officers have been shooting, bombing, and smashing windows treated with laminate to see how much they shatter.

"This is the who's - who of protective gear and equipment for military purposes," say's Mr. Fabian, on the phone from the Quantico demonstartions. "For the past few days we have outperformed all the big conglomerates who are here... we're just blowing them out of the water.

"ACE/Security Laminates makes a window laminate that is as thin as paper and makes windows bomb and bullet-resistant for about one-tenth the cost of bullet-proof glass. The transparent security laminate simply rolls on existing windows like wallpaper and keeps them from shattering. "It takes about ten minutes to retrofit a window with our laminate," says Mr. Fabian. Once it's on, its so strong that bullets can't penetrate the glass.

"For the demonstrations we were using military theater bullets, 9 millemeters out of a long-barrel assault rifle," Mr. Fabian said. "Shots 10 feet from the glass showed no penetrations.

"In fact, the military officials asked the testers to step back 30 feet after the bullets ricocheted off the glass during the early tests, putting soldiers in danger. "We shoot back," Mr. Fabian joked.

Previous tests at Quantico have yielded orders from the U.S. government. "For the Joint Chiefs of Staff to buy from a Canadian you either need to have a very good product or something you can't buy from anyone else. We have both," he said.

Customers include governments, banks, embassies, airports, technology, companies and other businesses that want to protect themselves from robberies, shootings, and other damage.

Arnie Mierins, a customer who owns a luxury clothing store in Ottawa called Bucklands Fine Clothing, credits the window film with preventing thieves armed with a sledgehammer from breaking into his store. It's also the only window laminate that the Canadian government will accept in its safety specifications.

The laminate, made of polyester and special adhesives to stick it to glass, also prevents windows from shattering during bomb blasts - a growing type of terrorism around the world.

"Terrorism has changed. It used to be on bullet, one victim. Today, it's more likely on bomb, many victims," he said.

That's where window laminates come in; 85% of all bomb injuries are caused by flying glass from smashed windows. For example, when 19 U.S. soldiers were killed in a terrorist attack on their barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, in 1996, 12 of them died as a result of flying around impaling people, " Mr. Fabian says.

Windows treated with the laminate were blasted with a 50 pound bomb 30 feet away. "We were a quarter mile away in the witness stands and we could feel the heat and the wave blast. But there was total glass containment, " Mr. Fabian said.

Selling this type of protection gave ACE/Security Laminates $20 million in revenues last year. It employs 340 people worldwide, with a manufacturing plant in Ottawa, ON.

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