Body Armour

[Marcello]

Suhiir said:
The big problem with body armor is weight and cost.
Sure, there's stuff out there that can stop anything short of a nuke, but even the US Army can't afford to buy it for general issue.
That and the classic weight problem.
it seems that very few people that haven't been a mud grunt themselves really appreciate that adding an extra 20-40 pounds of high-tech body armor to their load just ain't gonna work.

As far as I know Interceptor has been a standard issue in Iraq for quite some time. There were shortage issues in the early years of the war, just like it happened for armored cars but eventually production caught up. Now interceptor,like the up armored HMMWVs, may not be the absolute best but it is good enough and has been available in quantity for some time.
The cost issue: given all the money which is spent training, recruiting etc. an american soldier issuing everyone deployed a set of body armor that stops AK rounds and the like is no big deal. It was not possible/practical/economic some years ago but now it is (IIRC it took some advances in composite materials technology during the early 90's).
The weight issue: like all things it comes down to trade offs; additional weight limits your mobility, the armor traps the heat etc. No doubt there may be times and circumstances where it is not worth. But at least in Iraq it seems to be deemed worthwhile most of the time and vehicles are used extensively anyway, it is not like troops have to climb mountains or march 20 Km in the jungle.

[Marcello]

On a purely anedocte basis it seems that you can get shot at with an AK-47 and if the bullet hits the hard plates you can get away with minor bruises and be still combat effective, but this of course is only a fraction of the possible cases. The soldier who gets shot both in the arm and in the chest is still a casualty for example even if he is much better off than it would have been otherwise.

[rfisher]

Looks like weighty armour won't be a problem much longer!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7351399.stm

[Suhiir]

It was bound to happen sooner or later.
I suspect the big stumbling block for them will be whatever they use to power them. I can't imagine any battery would last long enough to be worthwhile.

[Marcello]

rfisher said:
Looks like weighty armour won't be a problem much longer!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7351399.stm

Not so fast. For a start developing these unarmored exoskeletons into powered armor will still take some time, probably several years. Then even once that happens you will not be able to turn everyone into the Mobile Infantry. Money issue aside it seems to me that a soldier fitted with such thing will not have the same set of abilities that a regular infantryman has. He will be much better protected and equipped. But he will be also bulkier and much heavier. This means he may not be able to go in the same places a normal soldier, even with body armor, can go. He will be also more resource intensive to keep in the field, meaning a further increase in the tail to teeth ratio, which may not be desiderable in some scenarios.
I could see some units being equipped with that, but not something everyone can be issued with like a bulletproof vest.

[Marek_Tucan]

For example some sort of Combat Engineer/Assault Breacher platoon per Bn? Or even Bde?

[Marcello]

Marek_Tucan said:
For example some sort of Combat Engineer/Assault Breacher platoon per Bn? Or even Bde?

Sort of. They could be used to supplement tanks and regular infantry in a Fallujah style scenario I guess.
A limited number might be useful as an intimidation "don't mess with us" factor even in lower intensity situations.
But I can't see much more than that especially early on.
Cost, logistical issues and inherent trade offs will limit their use.
In the longer run robots will be preferable anyway.

[rfisher]

On the subject of robots, have you seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww

[Wdll]

None of these will matter when the alien masters arrive.

Speaking of which, any mod that lets you play as any of the countries, against an alien invader?

[hoplitis]

Wdll said:
None of these will matter when the alien masters arrive.
...

"...when"? What do you mean "when"? We're here already! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon27.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon27.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon27.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon27.gif[/img]