Just six months after the Pentagon agreed to reimburse soldiers who bought their own protective gear, the Army has banned the use of any body armor that is not issued by the military.
In a new directive, effective immediately, the Army said it cannot guarantee the quality of commercially bought armor, and any soldier wearing it will have to turn it in and have it replaced with authorized gear.
Army officials told The Associated Press on Thursday the order was prompted by concerns that soldiers or their families were buying inadequate or untested commercial armor from private companies - including the popular Dragon Skin gear made by California-based Pinnacle Armor.
This is just good common sense. The Army, and indeed the entire Military, go through rigorous tests to validate armor's ability to stop rounds and provide protection. They even test the equipment they buy from approved vendors, sending anything that doesn't rate back.
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yeah we all now how this works, we give it up now in return for promises of new gear that wont be kept. maybe someone should get on tv again about personal armor, just like with humvee armor.
You can't purchase anything commercially that will protect you from the 7.62x39 ammunition that the enemy is using anyways. 90% of commercially offered body armor will defeat handgun ammunition. The soldiers require either the T1 armor plate inserts, or the ceramic inserts. Even then, they are only big enough to cover the vital areas like the heart. A soldier taking a hit to the chest outside of that plate is dead. Plain and simple. There are some vests that offer complete front and rear torso plates that are about 5/8" thick, but these are VERY heavy. I think the Marines have them, but rarely do they use them because of their weight. If you are going to be stationary and do intelligence gathering, they may work great, but if you're in an urban setting, doing close quarters combat, forget it. I basically reduces your range of motion by about 30%, and slows you down. Besides, if you take a hit to the head/neck area, what good is body armor? None.
It would be really nice if instead of wasting money on the border and gay marriage that we instead use that money to make some type of light weight armor that would save the lives of our soldiers. I mean, with all of the resources wasted on those two things I'm sure we'd have something better by now. :/
