Body Armour

[Marcello]

Suhiir said:
The big problem with body armor is weight and cost.
Sure, there's stuff out there that can stop anything short of a nuke, but even the US Army can't afford to buy it for general issue.
That and the classic weight problem.
it seems that very few people that haven't been a mud grunt themselves really appreciate that adding an extra 20-40 pounds of high-tech body armor to their load just ain't gonna work.

As far as I know Interceptor has been a standard issue in Iraq for quite some time. There were shortage issues in the early years of the war, just like it happened for armored cars but eventually production caught up. Now interceptor,like the up armored HMMWVs, may not be the absolute best but it is good enough and has been available in quantity for some time.
The cost issue: given all the money which is spent training, recruiting etc. an american soldier issuing everyone deployed a set of body armor that stops AK rounds and the like is no big deal. It was not possible/practical/economic some years ago but now it is (IIRC it took some advances in composite materials technology during the early 90's).
The weight issue: like all things it comes down to trade offs; additional weight limits your mobility, the armor traps the heat etc. No doubt there may be times and circumstances where it is not worth. But at least in Iraq it seems to be deemed worthwhile most of the time and vehicles are used extensively anyway, it is not like troops have to climb mountains or march 20 Km in the jungle.