User blog comment:773066/What happens to Altairs Armor./@comment-1461869-20100728151241

Altair's gun design was massively ahead of his time, since three hundred years later Leonardo da Vinci didn't even think such a thing was possible until he saw the schematics. And in any case, Altair created the design for use by Assassins, I doubt he created the armor to defend against his own weapon.

however, this is still a moot point, we won't know until the beta comes out (for PS3 users) or until mid-November (for 360 users like myself).