re: Why don't soldiers wear bullet proof vest/armor?

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Meh I've never run a combat patrol so I can't speak to it being a good idea or not. I've never shot at anyone but supposedly most rifle rounds pierce BA. I've never tested that though.

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The current ceramic plate system that we all wear now is designed to spot a 7.62 rifle round, and will stop multiple round providing the spacing between the ceramic plates isn't greater than 1cm (I think that's the number).

We always had mission briefings before we rolled out, and we did checks on each other...your IBA was a mandatory item.

Didn't know of or know anybody that neglected to wear it.

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I've never shot at anyone but supposedly most rifle rounds pierce BA. I've

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The trauma plates that protect the organs do a pretty good job of keeping those from being fatal wounds - but still - repeated hits, hits to the spaces between the plates - you can't have trauma plates everywhere - but, again, they are working hard at making the protection better and lighter (which is the same thing in this field - the lighter it is, the more you can wear, the better protection you can make, the lighter you can go for the same protection level.)

But, yeah, particularly for the armor that most people know, that is a pistol/secondary projectile protection first, and rifle/machine gun protection (i.e. the threats you will actually face in an operation) second - which is why the love/hate relationship with the stuff.

Extremely hot and extremely heavy - thank goodness I was too old for all that running around with that stuff on.

The other thing it does is reduce mission endurance - having to wear heavy armor means you can't carry more ammo, food and water.

I wore that shite for 3 weeks straight once. Not even taking it off to sleep. fricking miserable.

I never heard of that happening, but there are documented cased where the troop was shot in the shoulder or some place around teh armor and as the bullet exited the other side struck teh plating and bounced back into him.

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ceramic plates

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1 rd of 9mm 124 grain fmj, 1 rd 55 grain 5.45x39 and 9 rounds of 5.56 m855. The 9th rd of 5.56 penetrated it

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