Your body armor is killing you. In fact, everything you carry is probably trying to kill you. This is because those in the military, police, and contracting professions are carrying more equipment than ever, and it is costing us. This is one area that seems that no matter how much technology we throw at the problem, not much progress is made. There is some good news. I’ve spec’d the best equipment and shown you exactly how much it costs, weighs, and where you can get it. Keep reading to find out just how much cutting edge tactical equipment lightens your load.

This is a topic that continues to be a problem, especially in the military. In fact they’ve spent billions of dollars to modernize our equipment and to their credit they have had some success, but it is not nearly enough. What we’ve done is reduce our weight back to WWII levels.

You can see from the chart that loads have been creeping up throughout history with a dramatic increase in recent decades, mainly due to the advent of hard armor plates. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that as heavy as armor plates are, it is a nice feeling to know that your plates can take a rifle round without taking you out of the fight. That being said there are several issues with our current armor and more importantly our use of it.

Currently our troops are issued level 4 stand alone armor when they go into combat zones. These plates are massive and heavy. They are roughly 18 lbs for a pair, depending on the size you need. They are also issued side plates, which weigh about 5 lbs a pair. This is a total of 23 pounds of only armor. Granted this armor can stop 30-06 armor piercing, but last time I checked there isn’t a lot of that floating around the battlefield

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The vast majority of threats can be stopped by a level III or III+ plate which are generally rated to stop all modern combat rifle rounds, not armor piercing. The reason troops are stuck with very heavy armor is simple. No commander wants to be the one to make the decision to wear less armor if one of their troops could die because of it. While laudable, that notion in not supported by research.

Mobility as Survivability

This study examined the survivability of the modern soldier in a break contact drill, varying the load and then timing them. As you might expect the heavier the load, the slower the troops moved under fire, thus exposing them to fire for a longer period of time. The loads varied from 20lbs – 66lbs. Not only does more weight expose you to fire for longer, it also has other costs as well.

Other studies have looked at factors that heavy loads affect including: road march speed, accuracy, metabolic cost, and many others. This study looked at load effects on US Marines completing a combat task.

Researchers recruited the fittest Marines with top marksmanship scores from an infantry battalion. They were asked to complete the maneuver under fire portion of their combat fitness test, which is a test requiring sprinting, casualty carrying, and other combat tasks. It is done annually as part of their fitness testing.

In the study they were loaded with light – heavy loads, and then their marksmanship was measured in a weapons simulator. Marines carrying the heaviest loads had noticeably degraded accuracy. So not only does heavy weight expose people to fire longer, it impacts their ability to accurately shoot back!

Cutting Edge Equipment

We’ve seen that increase in load drastically effects our warfighters, but these kinds of studies only look at current equipment, but what if we specified the lightest acceptable equipment, without worrying about price? Well it’s curious you asked because that’s exactly what I did.

As we can see the equipment is very expensive at a whopping $31,799. It also is not particularly light coming in at 93 lbs, but that is the best that can currently be done given the specified parameters. Remember, this is for a 3 day operation in a temperate climate. Various external factors would affect the load such as type of operation planned. For an assault load it would be much less, roughly coming in at 60 lbs.

The Big Winners

A lot of equipment is basically the same weight it always was, I’m looking at you food and water, but some has made drastic improvements. The biggest differences are the following.

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The plates alone saved roughly 12 lbs from the heavy, level 4 plates specified above. The helmet weighs 2.3 lbs which is roughly half a standard kevlar helmet. Similarly, the Nike SFB boots are less than half the normal weight at 1 lbs for the pair.

The boots and the helmet will have a huge impact on the user because the further you move the weight away from the center of gravity the more tiring it is to carry. So those few pound off of your head and feet will save you a lot of energy.

If you would like to see the full list of every single piece of equipment including NVGs, weapons, suppressor, and pack items. Then sign up for the email list on the right and you will be emailed the exact list with every item specified, but don’t wait to long as I’m not going to send it out forever.

Future Equipment

The future of equipment carriage isn’t likely to change anytime soon. The army is trying to make exoskeletons that will carry heavy loads for us. They have had some decent tests

This will probably happen, but I doubt that this will be anytime soon. The real solution in the short term is likely to be found in psychology. Haha, I knew my degree would come in handy some day.

Commanders, and those that make the decision what to carry need to do a better job of prioritizing load. It is a critical planning factor just likely planning for water and bullets.

When planning a mission you always consider the amount and type of ammo you are carrying because it keeps you alive, and allows you to accomplish the mission. We need to start thinking about weight planning that way.

If it doesn’t directly contribute to winning then we don’t need it. Lastly, we need to realize that yes, some might die because we chose lesser armor, and that is a tragedy, but you will never know how many lived because they weren’t to tired and broken to win the fight.

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