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Body Armour: UK Forces can't get it, US Forces can't get enough of it.

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Posted January 7th, 2006 by ringverse
in

Remember Sgt Steve Roberts? He was the British soldier shot and killed in Iraq after being ordered to give his body armour back, because there wasn't enough for the Infantry.
The MOD are so confident that they got that decision right, that they set about obstructing the investigation and doing their best to pull off a classic British Army cover-up...

Meanwhile, in the US the debate about Body Armour has moved on:

A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

The ceramic plates in vests currently worn by the majority of military personnel in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach...

Military officials said they had originally decided against using the extra plates because they were concerned they added too much weight to the vests or constricted the movement of soldiers. Marine Corps officials said the findings of the Pentagon study caused field commanders to override those concerns in the interest of greater protection.

"As the information became more prevalent and aware to everybody that in fact these were casualty sites that they needed to be worried about, then people were much more willing to accept that weight on their body," said Major Wendell Leimbach, a body armor specialist with Marine Corps Systems Command, the marine procurement unit.

There is some discussion of the merits of the wearing of body armour, and it's limitations here [in the comments].

But to the above NYT piece takes the discussion a stage further.
Officers in the field are reporting Iraq still so dangerous that concerns about mobility and comfort, have been overridden by the apalling injury and death rate.
Major Combat Operations are over? It looks like nobody remembered to tell Major Combat...

The US Marines briefly

On January 9th, 2006 davidk says:

The US Marines briefly issued armoured shorts in the mid 1960's but abandoned them as they restricted movement too much.

I suppose you could issue all soldiers with bomb disposal 'heavy suits' when thye would be nice and safe but not able to do much soldiering.

On reflection I stand by my earlier comment, that I would rather be able to move than be weighed down by huge amounts of armour...