new body armor for our troops

The new sytem replaces the old style flak vest with OTV with SAPI plates.The new armor can stop bullets from rifles and other small arms while the old vests stopped only fragments.An upper leg protection addition may come into play later but they don't want to overburden the marines with wieght.

www.usmc.mil...

Glad to see our guys and gals are getting the protection they have been needing since the start of the two wars. Hopefully the govt. can get the weight down further which would be in more of the troops best intrest. It's a shame that the troops who went before could not have had this system. I still question my govt. on sending troops in without the proper protection: It just goes to prove how inept the DOD can be especially when its not their lives their playing with.

I keep thinking that soon bullets will become pretty useless. With all of this armor we will need to create swords once again! Imagine if we made swords with todays technology!

Especially once we get the bullet proof face mask armor working then warfare will either have to get more explosive or more up close and personal like it was for 5600 years.

It is interesting time to be in todays military. It will be a few more decades until Legacy Force is completely fased out and Objective Force takes over.

Also any doves appalled by my apparent fascination of the workings of war please understand that simple human emotions and GLOBAL GEOPOLITICAL WARFARE go hand in hand.

Originally posted by verfed
I keep thinking that soon bullets will become pretty useless. With all of this armor we will need to create swords once again! Imagine if we made swords with todays technology!

What would be the purpose of going back to swords again? Isn't that why the military have developed from swords to spears, spears to arrows, arrows to bullets etc.?
"Commander, we have this horde of enemies coming at the horizon, let's shoot them before they can reach us! No, let's get our swords and do some man to man combat where we will lose more men..."

The next logical step from bullets is laser or energy weapons, not going back to swords. The battle between Armor and Weapons has been going on for thousands of years, it will simply keep going to the next level.

I think that the next realistic step would be gauss guns for infantry. It will be a long long time before we would be able to get the energy needs for energy weapons to be anywhere feasable for every grunt to carry one. By the time we would be able to make energy weapons the size of modern day assault weapons (riffles/handguns) the requirement to power a guass gun compare to an energy weapon would not make it practicle. the only reason I see the military going for energy weapons would be if they were star trek type lethal/non-lethall which is being view as increasingly favorable by our military and government. But if the government is only interested in it's lethality gauss guns are the next step in MHO.

Laser and microwave weapons are much less efective and more expensive than than bulets. Also I don't think we will see infantry gauss rifles in near future.
But remeber that Flak vests cannot stop everything. Todays ones are designed to stop 7.62 amo. I think the oponents will simply move to higher calibers (like 10mm ) and special armor penetrating bulets . However that could bring another dificulties like decreased magazine size, more weight etc. So I think end of the "spray and prey" Ak-47 type assault rifles is near... The future rifles will be probably more like one-shot-one-kill oldie Garand.

[edit on 16-4-2005 by longbow]

yeah I didn't mean it coming any time soon, I mean long range thinking when we get energy needs control (dont think this would likely be in the next 50-80) will gauss guns be feasable. Like I said in a 100 years or so I easily see most infantry small arms electro-mag. But before that I see composite bullets, posible liquid propellent but most likely caseless ammo. The problems the G11's ammo had was the the housing which was the propelant too was too brittle and newer endevours into caseless ammunition has had alot of sucess with this problem. A very interesting technology which I think might pick up is alternate means of igniting the propellant, instead of the hammer stricking the primer some kind of electric charge or spark or even a small laser igniting the propellant. But I think modern firearms in their current configurations (bullets/explosive propelent) will be around for a very very long time, well into most of the 21st century.

give it a couple of years and the US will have its own set of stormtroopers

This is not new to me, my son wore this armor for 7 months. He said it was heavy , hot and he put it on for every mission.

Roper

Man, in 100 years I can easily see androids with laser weapons running around in the battle field. That will be the day

Originally posted by WestPoint23
Man, in 100 years I can easily see androids with laser weapons running around in the battle field. That will be the day

just put a few 10-17 year old gamers on the controls and tell them they are playing a war game

Yup that will give new meaning to the term "arm chair general"





West Point, Out.

I searched for the standards, some things I just don't know off the top of my head, ok.

Scroll down, almost to bottom.
Standards

In my opinion, something more a long the linked sites armor is what I see.
More essential vital protection, say like the spine idea, it's the only thing I'm sure is missing from military armor. Even just interlocking trauma plates would work.

Ebay

Besides the old flak isn't all bad, I read an news article about a soldier during the first gulf war, who got hit with an RPG that didn;t arm. Hit him square in the chest and pushed him threw a wall or two, I forget. Any ways, he lived, doubt he would have if that vest wasn't on. It was reported that his ribs were all busted up, and he was unconscious when they got to him, but alive.

Did a search but havn't found it yet, I do remember it being posted on ATS so I'll try searching again.

it will be a couple of years before they can make armor on other parts of the body(legs and arms) possible without restricting movement and slowing down a Marine. right now they have added an armor design to protect the deltoids and shoulders after hearing about IEDS that amputates on soldiers arms. its a lessons learn in Iraq. better to deal with them now instead of later.

Originally posted by deltaboy
it will be a couple of years before they can make armor on other parts of the body(legs and arms) possible without restricting movement and slowing down a Marine. right now they have added an armor design to protect the deltoids and shoulders after hearing about IEDS that amputates on soldiers arms. its a lessons learn in Iraq. better to deal with them now instead of later.

pretty soon we have armor that covers our solider from head to toe. like the stromtroopers in starwars.

I think guns are going to be around for a long time... they work, are cheap and don't require access to main power on the battlefield.

Also, don't forget, the speed of smokeless powder is 2000 feet per second compared to C4 at 28,000 feet per second. So, guns have a LONG way to go still, and can be made more and more powerful. Of course right now, there is a limit to ammo development because of recoil because the point is to "kill the other guy".

Of course guns are going be around I would say for another 50 years but then I see some energy weapons being compact enough for battle field use. And if not 50 years, well then one day energy weapons will be the norm.

I see guns as we know them sticking around for the next 100 to a 150 years as the main infantry weapon with maybe changes to caseless or liquid propellants and composite or ceramic type ammunition. But energy weapons like starwars or star trek will not come for a very long time. I dont know see it ever becoming feasible to have laser weapons both when it comes to power and terminal effects that would make it more favorable than Highly advanced firearms or gauss weapons.

I mean what are the advantages that energy (lasers..) have to physical (BULLETS) weapons. One advantage off the top of my head is that the need to carry around ammunition is not require but really think about how much energy is needed for a infantry type energy weapons and equipping a few hundred thousand troops with them.

I mean bullets have Hydro shock (don’t know the exact term for it but anybody who is into weapons should know what I’m talking about) and leaving big bleeding open wounds. I mean lasers would leave clean CLOSED wounds that wouldn’t bleed out or leave entry point for foreign particles (infections…).

Let’s really think about it here what besides the cool sci fi factors and the ammo-less (which comes at the expense of drastic needs for energy) are the advantages that Lasers and so on have to high-tech firearms/gauss weapons I see the advantage for big (vehicle/aircraft) size energy weapons but let’s stick to infantry here for a minute. it's like lightsabers ultra high tech and cool but I would pick double barrel 19th century shotgun to walk into battle with.


Here is a great links on possible futuristic aspect of warfare from a realistic point of view.
www.military-sf.com...

Yeah, Im new so this is way outta timeline sync.
But yeah, the Interceptor vest we have now is good, but Dragonskin is better. You can lay on top of a friggin M82 and itll stop the frag. But the government is making it illegal for troops to privately purchase it for combat use! Even the maker of the Interceptor says Dragonskin is better.