feature INFANTRY BODY ARMOUR
US 82ND AIRBORNE SOLDIER WEARING THE PASGT SYSTEM the unexpected secondary effect of making even the scrawniest recruit look like a body builder! Another important development with INIBA was the provision of pockets for hard ceramic plates to be carried over the central front and rear chest, capable of defeating high velocity rifle rounds which the rest of the vest was vulnerable to.
HIGH VELOCITY ROUNDS
During this time period many NATO armies were buying US or UK body armour for use with their counter terrorist and assault units. Pictures from the 1960s show Dutch marines in Korean War era body armour, while nations like West Germany were beginning to develop outstanding designs of their own that would not see issue before the end of the Cold War, as well as copying designs like the US M51/52 (which again would see extremely limited trials issue only). In the Eastern Bloc the Warsaw Pact showed very little interest in protecting the soldier (other than the ubiquitous steel helmet) until its war in Afghanistan. While some developments in bomb disposal body armour had been made by the Russians and the East Germans, these are outside the scope of this article. A war in Afghanistan (as unpopular in Russia as Vietnam had been to the US) made the Russian public deeply unhappy about its young men coming back in body-bags or seriously injured. For the first time in decades the Russians seemed to take individual protection seriously, with a series of nylon body armour vests containing protective metal plates. As with US and UK developments early patterns were simply carriers for the armour but later vests included “sling stoppers” and even built-in ammunition pouches. While the Russian “6b1” (anglicised from the Cyrillic) body armour predates the conflict in Afghanistan and was made in very limited amounts, it provided the basis for the 6b2 body armour which would see widespread use, especially with VDV airborne units, from the beginning of the 1980s.
INCREDIBLE LEVELS OF PROTECTION
By the mid-1980s both Britain and the US were looking towards a universal issue of body armour for their smaller, entirely volunteer, professional armies. The UK decided to break with its traditional steel helmets and adopt a ballistic nylon helmet in 1985, whereas the
US had led the field with adopting a Kevlar helmet as early as 1981 (again Cold War helmets will be covered in a future article) with their Personal Armour System Ground Troops system (PASGT). Trialled during the late 70s but first seeing operational use in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the PASGT system would unify both body armour and helmet using well developed plastics to provide incredible levels of protection and weight distribution, in a welldesigned vest (bar its weak spot, its central closure) with a deeper more protective helmet. It would be the late 80s however before this armour system replaced the venerable WWII designed “M1” steel helmet with plastic or laminate liner in most units. PASGT would, however, influence NATO body armour, in particular helmet design, for decades to come. Back in the UK a similar ballistic nylon vest had been adopted in the form of Combat Body armour (CBA) in the late 1980s with a later “improved CBA”, with the provision to carry ceramic plates resistant to rifle fire (as with the INIBA vest), soon after. Like the US, the UK adopted a ballistic nylon helmet (the MK6) but its design was less influential across the globe than that of our US allies. By the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, body armour had once again become part of the combat kit of most European and US infantrymen for the first time since the introduction of the arqubus that had made plate armour obsolete so many centuries ago. As the potential for a global third world war dissipated, more “limited conflicts” against hidden enemies sniping from afar and detonating mines and IEDs from concealment has increased the importance of body armour again. While it is out of the scope of this article, combat experience in Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan (to name just a few) has led to personal body armour reaching unprecedented levels of protection, mobility and functionality. As always we like to conclude Cold War Warriors by taking our “real world” history and presenting a practical application to airsoft. Here we’d like to say that if you’re going to wear body armour… make sure you hydrate! Not only are you carrying extra weight but you’re denying your body the ability to lose heat wearing a heavy nylon vest with little opportunity for the skin to breathe. Canny players remove the ballistic liners and replace them with roll mat foam cut to size. It’s still warm but you’ll find it less of a killer wearing a life saver! www.airsoft-action.co.uk
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