Armor All

Useful addition to my earlier review of the phony "armor crisis," by Ralph Kinney Bennett on TCS:

The fact that U.S. body armor is not fully protective from every conceivable angle -- like some force field around a soldier -- is not news to anyone who has served in combat. And snide, sinister-sounding articles about “secret studies” seem almost willfully ignorant of the fact that the U.S. military has long agonized over what additional improvements to the body armor could be made without compromising the mobility and fighting ability of the troops. . .

The real armor problem, as this soldier and many others have been pointing out, is weight and restriction of movement. The fast-moving firefights and ambushes in Iraq, the building-to-building combat, puts a premium on rapid movement and a soldier’s ability to employ his weapons at every possible angle. Long patrols in intense heat when in “happy gear” exacts huge physical penalties. . .

From all my research in military history and from the hundreds of interviews I have done over the years with soldiers and Marines from World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, there is a picture that has frequently passed through my mind -- roads and battlefields littered with discarded equipment. Soldiers quickly -- and sometimes unwisely -- divest themselves of gear when they are in a fight. Combat is exhausting. Weight matters. And the fight usually goes to the more nimble. U.S. Special Forces units frequently fight with little or no body armor.

(via NIF)