Like think about this for a moment, most deaths in a battles are caused by explosions and shrapnel. With a plate carrier stuff like your neck is still fucked, and chances are you will die before any battle takes place so you'll be blown to bits before any Steven Seagal oper8r PrepHoleino CQB action is gonna take place. Now you see that plate carriers are wasted money and you should get a flak vest and rely on that instead, shit like pic rel will do a much better job at saving your life than a shitty plate carrier will ever do.
Do you work for a company that produces flak vests?
nope, i am a welder
center mass is statistically the most likely place to receive a gunshot by an unbelievably high margin. incidentally, most of your vital organs are also center mass. I'd rather have peace of mind since the "mobility stat" in real life is meaningless since you'll never outrun a fucking gun.
I believe its survivorship bias; all the other samples are left dead in the field thats why we only see people with wounds in the chest. Hence we need plates for the limbs and remove all chestplates.
dude the wound data since like I don't even know what war, wwII? is publicly available
Anon, that's not what that data says. Bullet wounds (and really penetrating wounds in general) to the upper chest are vastly more likely to be deadly than anywhere else (except the head obviously). That's why rifle protection started there, with head protection coming next after they were able to get the weight down enough.
Does anyone issue rifle-rated helmets?
I thought only a handful of them existed, and they were all overpriced, overweight and of questionable effectiveness, and every decent military on earth still hands out helmets that are effectively level IIIa
ECH is better than IIIA but not a full III. You can get ceramic plates for the front of any helmet which stop a AKM btw.
Slaap plates are 2lbs, too heavy on the head and only protect the very front top bits of the helmet and of course, your brain
Slaap plates and things alike are probably only worth it for long range shooting behind cover or if you are a machine gunner whos mounted onto a vehicle or in a situation where the primary target on your body is your forehead
>You can get ceramic plates for the front of any helmet which stop a AKM btw.
Lol what. Where
Some helmets have them, arent popular due to being front heavy , and just plain heavy for your neck to carry
Mobility is not meaningless. Its the backbone of combat.
the difference in mobility between a guy with plates and a guy without plates is so insignificant in a combat scenario that it makes no sense to ever go without them
>it makes no sense to ever go without plates
Ruck 30 miles for deep recon with a plate carrier and get back to us on the experience. There's a place for every configuration.
>t. neverserved but know enough to know bullshit
ah yes, because GENERAL INFANTRY are gonna fucking ruck for 30 miles instead of using satellit- WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Plates become more useful for units like SWAT or mechanized infantry who probably aren't walking a ton
Please wear heavy ceramic plate body armor in a tropical jungle setting.
>dies from shrapnel to the neck
There are plate carriers that have side plates and where you can attach neck protections
You are also statistically more likely to get hit by artillery than small arms fire
For actual warfare? Yes. The only reason they caught on is because the combination of people who want to LARP GWOT high speed low drag special forces, and people who get their idea of what real war is like from video games where bullets do the majority of the killing and explosives regularly don't do shit unless you're stupid close to them. It's why the Army stuck with plates that require a soft armor backer, because they're meant to be used in an armor carrier that already has soft armor coverage for fragmentation protection beyond what the plates would cover.
Consider something like BALCS. also neck armor makes it a pain to look around and get a good cheek weld on a rifle, But it's up to you.
cheek weld is kind of a meme, and it's worth it to not to die
Im talking about tall neckguards not short or slim ones. Slim and short ones do interfier but not as much.
Not having a tall neckguard does not necceseraly mean you are going to die, or survive,
Not getting a good cheekweld means you can not efectively (quickly) aim your gun when the shit hits the fan, which is your job as an infantryman. You defend a position requiring fast precision , or use supressive fire to get into position for precision fire.
Going prone and trying to shoot with a neckguard is anoying at the best of times and too slow and restrictive at the worst.
Most explosions come from above or below. From above your helmet PROTECC
From below frag has a lot of shit to go through to hit a small target that is your neck , it also has your face to mangle.
Why does no one except beez makes vests like that?
>Are plate carriers a meme?
Yes. Just like the "lol you dun need a helmet bro!" narrative.
bro are you literally twelve or something?
Armor-carrier vest, AKA outer tactical vests, used to be the most typical body armor type circa OIF. Interceptor, IOTV, etc, are still widely available.
They still see extensive use in many countries, where the backseat units wear them as "flak vests", soft-armor only, while the more forward-operating units wear them with plates.
I meant something that's currently produced. Besides surplus multicam IOTV there's nothing close to that on the market right now.
Add a kevlar warbelt and you're golden. I guy from our unit got killed by boobytrap shrapnel that went right through his unprotected lower back
I actually only have an old Eagle Industries "low visibility armor carrier" right now, and it's got balcs panels in it. It's got pretty decent coverage, and I can slide plates in front of the panels as well.
I figured I'd just throw an h-harness over top of that, but now I'm actually thinking about picking up a MAR-CIRAS carrier too.
The big problem with the balcs panels is the extra bulk, they can be a real pain in the ass to adjust to, and if the temp is over 60 they get stuffy in a fucking hurry.
I dont see how you are supposed to fire a rifle properly with this inflexible collar on though. Not to mention it and your helmet competing for space when trying to fire from the prone or knee
Depends on the enviroment.
Cqb, urban clearing where hand held grenades and rifles are used? Platecarrier is likely to keep you from dying unless you take a bullet to the brain or get captured by talibabas, or a sniper might decide to aim for the chest or not compensate for drop.
>pic related
All out warfare with asstilery , tonks , jet frighters, drones, quadcrapters ecc where a lot of big and likely highly explosive shit launches a lot of tiny rocks and metal fragments, woodsplinters and bones, a flakvest will do you good there.
Multiday recon? Just an unarmored vest.
>t. a blue board teenager who spends a lot of time on the internet
When your time comes it doesn't matter what you have on.
Just look at what most militaries do today, they issue a kevlar vest with insets for plates in the front and back, and options to attach side plates with MOLLE
Why not both? When I was zogbot we wore a combo frag vest / plate carrier. Soft kevlar armour with a ballistic plate insert.
Too heavy and uncomfortable to wear, as well as your body overheating in a hot or warm environment
Gotta remember plate carriers and flak vests are designed (usually) with the weight:protection ratio in mind
More protection = more weight
Less weight = less protection
Also depends on what materials its made out of and how expensive etc.
Build in a thermal management system
https://funker530.com/video/lucky-soldiers-plate-stops-30mm-round/
There's no flak vest in the world that's gonna save you from a direct bombing. Just get the plate carriers...
There's plenty of flak vests that will save you from near misses of drone dropped grenades, which we've seen a shitload of people dying from lately
Plate carriers are absolute shit against any sort of indirect fire. Also the modern day "plate carriers", AKA armor carriers, double as both flak-vests and plate-carriers.
>no kevlar kilt
ngmi
>survive in war
>look like a gay nerd doing it
actually super tough call
how does the third guy to the right even get a cheek weld
What is that giant ass groin protector on that 3rd guy
It's actually pretty smart and amazing since it protects your whole abdomen AND hips. I don't know why we regressed so much in terms of armor design since there's nothing similar to that nowadays.
the kilt guy looks like a fag from a sci-fi b-movie. I guess he would distract the enemy by making them laugh in visual range.
dark helmet there looks pretty good. when is spaceballs 2 coming out?
imagine all of USA and NATO troops dressed like the kilt guy but in LGBTQ flag colors and make-up.
This is amazing. Time for the nukes to fly, humanity is a joke. gay chud army 2023.
Death to USA and NATO death, death, death.
jokes aside, the more armor you add and sort of exclude body parts form damage the more you expose others to damage at least from people actually aiming at you. Bam in the face.
only based take here. Anybody who says otherwise will get his balls blown out
He's ready for some frags.
We really should start putting faulds and tassets on armour again. A good deal of the guys who bought it got murked by drone shrapnel to the femoral artery.
Pl8s are dumb for civilians. The reasons they make sense for military is precisely why they don't for random schmoes.
>plates don't make sense for civilians
they are worth it simply because of the existence of retards at public ranges
really what makes the most sense for civilians is pistol rated vests that can be worn under clothing. Offers better coverage and doesn't stand out. You are by far most likely to get shot by a handgun, and if you see someone with a rifle you should be leaving immediately regardless of how you are dressed.
Flak vests with plate inserts would be the best option protection-wise. I would also say having soft body armour covering the neck and groin would be ideal however at that point and beyond you really are inhibiting mobility. Pretty much try to cover everything that you can’t get a tourniquet on.
This
Soft vests cover more of one's torso, are more concealable, and are less obtrusive than those plates that YouTube LARPerators wear.
Hard plates have their place, but if you're planning to take multiple rifle rounds, you'll need more than a chest plate. You'd probably want to go full juggernaut with something like a UARM system and a helmet.
we went full circle
Not yet
visualise the aroma
conceptualize the fragrance
>most deaths in a battles are caused by explosions and shrapnel
discounting disease and starvation in all of history you're far more likely to be killed by gunfire or a complication from gunfire than explosions.
in the recent past like iraq, sure explosions were the major problem but there are extremely limited situations where a typical plate carrier with level 3+ plates didn't save you but a similar weight flak vest would have. infantry simply can't run around and kick doors in with an additional 150 lbs of explosives protection on. ever see the bomb squad michilin tire guys walk around? nimble they are not. with a 25 lb limit to armor 95% of the time if you're dead with a plate carrier you're still just as dead with a flak vest. add in you're somewhere between 3 and 25x as likely to be shot as blown up depending on what statistics you look at.
>Light plate carrier
Not worthless but close to it. Ultimately will be a relic of the GWOT days thinking war was going to be nothing but glorified swat action overseas. Modular vest like the MSV or whatever it's called is the way to go. Up it to flak, down it to plate, adjust as necessary.
>In recent past like iraq sure, explosions were the major problem
And Iraq war 1
And Lebanon
And Vietnam
And the Angolan/Namibian Bush War
And Afghanistan for the Soviets
And WW2
And Korea
And WW1
Please cite the wars where getting shot is more common than getting hit with explosives because:
War on the Rocks - 60% of US fatalities in Iraq and 50% in Afghanistan were IEDs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2966158/
>In conflicts since World War I, penetrating injuries from fragmentation weapons have caused 60–80% of all casualties. (9. Roberts P. Pattern of injury in military operations. Curr Anaesth Crit Care. 2002;13:243–8.)
The NCBI study finding 75% injuries being from fragmentation weapons.
You'll dismiss any citations I bring out of hand anyway, but I know from recollection WW2 has much the same +55% of casualties from battle (Not disease) are explosive, more often in the 70% range.
Being saved from a would-be lethal gunshot to your vital organs is no meme, but you do raise a decent point about shrapnel and flak in general.
The solution, of course, is to do both. IBA and IOTV type vests should be a lot more common, as they provide the best body protection to this day. You should be able to get a front and back plate, side plates, and all-over soft insert coverage to make sure a spray of flak or a lucky pistol shot doesn't kill you by slipping between your plates.
Why does know one know that the "flak" grunts get issued is a kevlar vest with SAPI plate pockets? Just because you can't buy an IOTV or MTV doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
>you can't buy an IOTV or MTV
You can, you just need to deal with the deranged boomers selling them for too much and need to hope one of them doesn't live in fucking Reno. Because for some reason fucking ALL OF THEM live in Reno and refuse to ship it, which sucks if you live on the other side of the country.
1. English doc. Use it.
2. Zoom zooms born and raised by modern Call Of Duty only know of "muh plates".
3. You can literally buy armor carrier vest on Ebay. I know this as I bought two sets of IBAs back in early 2010s.
plate carriers are for tryhards
real meen use battleplates
Plate carriers only make sense for the SF, for the regular forces flak vests are still the only option that make sense because of the reasons you mentioned.
Are there not ceramic + kevlar vests to prevent just that, sharpnel injuries?
If you don't look cool, you might as well die.
Where could one find one of these hats or something similar?
One of my former instructors was a SEAL and he was a strong advocate of this based philosophy.
I was on pretty cool guy type team and that’s exactly what we wore. Soft armor/low vis type carrier, throw rifle plates over, top off with one of a couple issued chest rigs. This was peak GWOT. My carrier now is a Vel Tye Hugger, which I can easily change strip down to a concealable vest quickly or use more as LBE.
as a civi its very unlikely you're gonna get hit by arty
>He doesn't know.
Are you going to wear a flak jacket every day? The chances you will be wearing any protection when an ied goes off is basically 0.
No but I wear turtleneck outer layers for neck coverage just doing daily shit.
Fine, ruck 5 miles up to that mountain valley we can't get a Blackhawk into, surveil this target and ruck back, with all your battle rattle. There are different loadouts for every mission for real reasons.
vest like the MSV or whatever it's called is the way to go. Up it to flak, down it to plate, adjust as necessary.
>The MSV has a four-tier configuration, allowing it to be scaled up or down depending on the threat and mission requirements
>Concealable soft body armor
>Hard armor plates and soft body armor
>Carrier with ballistic plates and soft armor
>Carrier with ballistic plates and soft armor as well as a “ballistic combat shirt" with "built in neck, shoulder and pelvic protection and a belt system to move items from the vest to the hips.”[4]
>belt system
LBEchads win again.
>retard insists on sending GI grunts to do recon work instead of sending recon
>retard STILL doesn't know what sat surveillance and spy planes can do
my god the retardation here.
>the entire world is 11Bs
Actually true, one of my buddies went back to the sandbox a third time as a doorkicker despite being in a Naval technical MOS.
Absolutely. I embedded the plate subdermally and can now comfortably sleep completely impervious to bullets and surgeons.
only in russia they are
>most likely scenario where civilian needs armor
Driving through urban center and having a jogger jog up at a redlight. Debatable if even a pistol vest will help here. Situational awareness is your real protection.
>most likely larp scenarios for civilians
Life WROL or government door kickers. In this scenario, plates make sense. You'll be facing threats up to rifle rounds.
In most civilian scenarios, armor doesn't make sense. In those that it does, use plates.
Yea plate carries are a meme like high cut helmets. In a real war I would much rather have a regular helmet and a flak vest than tacticool plate carrier and shitty fast helmet. Its the shrapnel that kills you anyway and this stuff is just larping delta force seal team 15 gay ops from Afghan. Its just people aping "spec ops" like soldiers in ww1 still using napoleonic outfits with plumes and red pants and no helmets cause it looked cool.
If a war happens against a near-peer adversary in the medium to long-term future, what you want is a CBRN suit with arc flash protection and quadgard with no SAPI plates, with a heavy helmet. Why? Because anyone intelligent realizes you'll be sitting in a trench attempting to hold territory until fire support and the air force win the war.
>Get nuked
>Get gassed
>Get shelled
Only way to provide that operational and strategic level protection without excessive weight is to get rid of the SAPI plates, which shouldn't matter that much, because you're only exposing your head 90% of the time.
Unpopular opinion:
In peer to peer conflict body armor for infantry is hindrance. It may be useful for soldiers who don't move on foot (drivers, turret gunners etc). But for infantry it does more bad than good.
Body armor becomes moral issues (we didn't even get body armor! *bwah! bwah!* sounds of conscript toddlers crying). So best solution is issuing lightest and less restrictive body armor possible aka ultralight plate carrier. Light frag vest is bad for moral because soldiers would test them with their rifles and would get impression that this weak and useless.
Maybe you could launch a new Koni-type campaign, but with the issue being child soldiers should get better gear. Troll potential is there.
As soon as mortars start going off any armor will be apreciated provided the weight is not too much for the enviroment and benefit.
Example of prolly not worth it, sometimes:
> vietnam war doron or nylon flak vests were not worn sometimes because it was hot, humid (humidity reduces sweating effectiveness in cooling down), and you had to move through a lot of mud (sinking in more due to more weight ) which is more exausting then a harder surface. And they would not stop a lot and the medkit was (compared to today) quite bad so even if the vest stoped nade frags, you would still likely bleed out
Relatively decent:
Pasgat: kevlar high coverage, used in a hot but not humid enviroment, sufficient hidration severely reduced the heatstress of wearing it. Would stop most frags, was thinner and less restrictive. Not as "glorious" as plate carriers but still quite good. Probably worth it
British flakvest: the first kevlar one: a heart hardplate and extremely thin kevlar, light in weight and protection, compared to other choices at the time, it was light and comfortable but on par with pre kevlar flakjackets in performance.
Plates+ kevlar vest with possible attachements, 3A kevlar shorts, collar, delt, axilar, collar, small of the back was a bit much for anyone to carry in the field along with other gear, but the regular vest, collar plate combo did just fine.
Mission and assets, moth yours and opponets are important, what are the main threats and is the infantry mechanised. Mechanised infantry can carry a lot more and be effective, muddy trenches require some comfort , dismounted infantry cant carry a lot of armor for very long (in terms of days and weeks) withouth a safe position to rest.
If there are a lot of snipers you want hard plates, going to bust down doors " hard plates. Ambushes? Soft and hard armor. Artillery ? Soft armor
>unpopular opinion
No, just retarded.
In a peer conflict fragmentation is ever-present, and something like an IOTV is damn close to ideal with its acres of soft armor, and ESAPI front back and sides. You want us to FORGO the item that protects best against fragmentation, because why exactly? Did your country never figure out how to make aramids?
Also mobility isnt some binary video game shit, you hump the extra 20lbs because it saves your torso from getting shredded. We arent rucking 45069825648734698miles like its fucking Nam, shove the "LIGHT INFANTRY/RECCE/HYPEBEAST" shit up your ass. Your advice would just get more people killed or wounded in a neer-peer conflict.
>In a peer conflict
In a peer conflict doctrine recommends bursting into flames along with the neighbourhood and then remaining radioactive for seventy years.