Body armour - Helmets - Protection

[ReiKuhr 0]

I honestly dont think the amount of damage if it goes through matter as its still gonna be either lethal or non-lethal...

Personally, I think its high time we start wearing power armor.

It does matter actually. Even if the bullet goes through the armor, the armor will absorb a lot of the energy of the round, thus reducing the amount of damage it will do to the body.

The same principle was used by the Chinese thousands of years ago with silk. Silk armor was not designed to stop arrows from penetrating the body, but it was strong enough to spread the force out across a wider area, and it also kept the barbed tip from digging into the body to make removal easier. So instead of having an arrow pierce the body all the way through, it would only penetrate about two inches, sometimes just enough to keep vital organs from being hit.

Thus with body armor, if it can make the round expend most of it's energy on the armor, even if it enters the body, there is far less force and damage done to tissue than without.

[Fabregas 10]

Sulu I saw that one as well. The rifle was the German Kar98. I can't actually remember if the Garand managed to get through the modern helmet though.

[MontyVCB 0]

I have no military experience, but I do know that body armour given to troops is to stop multiple rounds of 7.62 , as for helmets - Im not so sure . In game at least, a centre mass hit or 2 is enough to kill. Surely this is not the case IRL. Is it possible for BIS to patch this - or perhaps no one is wearing any ?. The back of US forces have water pouches ...perhaps underneath ?

Is it possible for a modern US soldier, say in Iraq, to 'take' 3 or 4 7.62 rounds to the torso and continue to fight - admittedly with bruising. As for helmets, they seem to have little use in game.

Kevlar vests are not designed to stop bullets, rather than to slow them down. A 7.62 for the most part will go straight through.

[galzohar 31]

Just about anyone serving today at a place where you actually might get shot gets ceramic plates in his armor, and they generally can stop a 7.62 NATO round (which is similar in power to the 7.62X54 used in druganov and some Russian MGs, and quite stronger than the 7.62X39 used in AKs, not to mention the AKs in game mostly use 5.45X39).

Helmets aren't as great, though, as a helm that can reliably stop a rifle round will probably make your neck hurt pretty badly much quicker than you'd like. Current standard helmets aren't exactly baseball caps either, I can't imagine wearing something much heavier on my head and still function as an infantryman... It is possible that a helm stops a rifle round under certain conditions (good enough combination of long range and impact angel), but it's not too likely.

[HtB 10]

In this case it is not, but to keep moving might help. Mounted MGs are very precise to handle.

A hit to the face at 600m is a damn fine shot from the prone postion using a bipod and Iron sights, from a moving vehicle.....a fine shot? Miracle more like.

[max power 21]

It does matter actually. Even if the bullet goes through the armor, the armor will absorb a lot of the energy of the round, thus reducing the amount of damage it will do to the body.

The same principle was used by the Chinese thousands of years ago with silk. Silk armor was not designed to stop arrows from penetrating the body, but it was strong enough to spread the force out across a wider area, and it also kept the barbed tip from digging into the body to make removal easier. So instead of having an arrow pierce the body all the way through, it would only penetrate about two inches, sometimes just enough to keep vital organs from being hit.

Thus with body armor, if it can make the round expend most of it's energy on the armor, even if it enters the body, there is far less force and damage done to tissue than without.

The silk shirts were designed to wrap around the arrow head so that the barbs did not engage. It wasn't the chinese but the Mongols.

hydrostatic shock.

The existence of this as a significant factor in wounding is highly debatable.

Helmets aren't as great, though, as a helm that can reliably stop a rifle round will probably make your neck hurt pretty badly much quicker than you'd like.

Hurt neck or bullet through the brain... hmmm....

Edited July 3, 2009 by Max Power

[Second 0]

Hurt neck or bullet through the brain... hmmm....

Not that simple. Same as with heavy body armors same with heavy Helmet: It will get you hit. It will slow you down, it will strain you (which has direct influence on how you do your task, poorly or well), it will make you uncomfortable and limit your agility. These all are very vital factors in sense that you do not get hit in the first place.

Besides most biggest threat to man in conventional battlefield are fragments from indirect fire. They are the main casualty makers.

[galzohar 31]

Yes. You could wear a T72 to be really protected, but then you wouldn't be able to move without a really strong engine, and you can still get killed by an RPG.

Above a certain point protection is more of an hindrance than a benefit. The fact that there aren't any helmets that stop rifle rounds reliably speaks for itself. Body armor that stops rounds better than the standard millitary body armor exists but it's not used due to it not being worth the weight, and the standard millitary body armor stops at least the first (7.62X51mm) round just fine while weighting a lot less.

[cartier90 0]

perhaps a specially shaped helmet, like the armour in medieval days that deflected arrow strikes could be used to deflect rounds. Or do the very differenct velocities make that unrealistic ?

[Redfield-77 10]

perhaps a specially shaped helmet, like the armour in medieval days that deflected arrow strikes could be used to deflect rounds. Or do the very differenct velocities make that unrealistic ?

No idea if this was shrapnel, ricochet, or a direct hit but clearly this soldiers helmet saved him a world of hurt.

[max power 21]

Not that simple. Same as with heavy body armors same with heavy Helmet: It will get you hit. It will slow you down, it will strain you (which has direct influence on how you do your task, poorly or well), it will make you uncomfortable and limit your agility. These all are very vital factors in sense that you do not get hit in the first place.

Besides most biggest threat to man in conventional battlefield are fragments from indirect fire. They are the main casualty makers.

Oh, I know. I was just making fun of the argument that the reason you wouldn't want a heavy helmet is that if you're shot in the head, it would hurt your neck.

[frederf 0]

The heavier the helmet, the less acceleration a bullet is going to impart on it (F=ma after all, for the same F bigger m means smaller a.) It's the same momentum transfer of course (p=mv.)

[Scrub 0]

The existence of this [hydrostatic shock] as a significant factor in wounding is highly debatable.

Any pressure wave moving at a significant rate is damaging, really. In hydrostatics, as most bodily liquids are close to non-compressible (yes they carry gasses and other compressible substances, but the percentage is significantly low ;) ) you get a fairly solid wavelike propagation radiating from a linear force, displacing along those lines. Most often this force is rapid, and therefore damaging through bruising and tearing. It does not have to be high pressure, at least with air blasts, 3lbs of differential from a bomb air burst will damage internal organs. Think of how your eye alone sees it: slapped at the speed of sound with a differential as the shockwave passes through it, one half at atmosphere, one half at +3psi. Slap your eye to 3lbs with a big flat pencil eraser for the general idea. lol -don't do that, seriously. 6 lbs can be fatal (>800lbs per square foot at the speed of the shockwave).. Overpressure is underrated. Again hydrostatic forces locally displace tissues more than air differentials, but it is a complex issue as other tissues absorb the energy as well as the damage. :)

One way to look at it is to check out those .308 Winmag YouTube vids where they shoot a ham and it explodes. Why? Rapid displacement because of transmission of energy (good percentage is hydrostatic) Try pushing the bullet through by hand, the hole you made will actually close up and be smaller than the bullet.

Edited July 3, 2009 by Scrub

[sneakey pete 10]

Its worth noting that the best protection of all is just not getting shot. Bit hard to avoid that though, so i'd say a Kevlar vest with ceramic inserts would be good enough for me.

Also depends on what your doing. A patrol though an urban center is much more dangerous than, say, spotting targets in the desert behind enemy lines (if i recall correctly, most of the Australian troops dropped behind the lines in iraq in 2003 didn't bother with body Armour)

[max power 21]

Any pressure wave moving at a significant rate is damaging, really. In hydrostatics, as most bodily liquids are close to non-compressible (yes they carry gasses and other compressible substances, but the percentage is significantly low ;) ) you get a fairly solid wavelike propagation radiating from a linear force, displacing along those lines. Most often this force is rapid, and therefore damaging through bruising and tearing. It does not have to be high pressure, at least with air blasts, 3lbs of differential from a bomb air burst will damage internal organs. Think of how your eye alone sees it: slapped at the speed of sound with a differential as the shockwave passes through it, one half at atmosphere, one half at +3psi. Slap your eye to 3lbs with a big flat pencil eraser for the general idea. lol -don't do that, seriously. 6 lbs can be fatal (>800lbs per square foot at the speed of the shockwave).. Overpressure is underrated. Again hydrostatic forces locally displace tissues more than air differentials, but it is a complex issue as other tissues absorb the energy as well as the damage. :)

One way to look at it is to check out those .308 Winmag YouTube vids where they shoot a ham and it explodes. Why? Rapid displacement because of transmission of energy (good percentage is hydrostatic) Try pushing the bullet through by hand, the hole you made will actually close up and be smaller than the bullet.

And yet, they use a machine that sends sonic shockwaves through the body to loosen kidney stones that are greater or equal to the shockwaves produced by some bullets. Somehow there is no remote neurological disruption. Perhaps the hydrostatic shock theorists could explain this.

Hydrostatic shock is not an explanation of how a bullet moves through the body. We know there are temporary and crush cavitation. We are talking about remote wounding. Like, shot in the leg and the abdomen suffers. Hydrostatic shock has significant wounding factors when the bullet moves through something non-elastic, like the head or the liver. Through the elastic tissues of the body, it's not a significant wounding factor.

[Cellus 10]

Its worth noting that the best protection of all is just not getting shot. Bit hard to avoid that though, so i'd say a Kevlar vest with ceramic inserts would be good enough for me.

Also depends on what your doing. A patrol though an urban center is much more dangerous than, say, spotting targets in the desert behind enemy lines (if i recall correctly, most of the Australian troops dropped behind the lines in iraq in 2003 didn't bother with body Armour)

We didn't use it in Vietnam either, as patrolling was more important than brute force. Or Korea, where armour made noise as we crawled into No Man's Land (so they called it - it was ours), or in WWII, where it got in the way of stealthy movements, like night-time bayonet charges against Rommel. And so on. But the US doesn't use tactics. See movement, blow it up, get pissed when civilians don't appreciate indiscriminate killing. My mates that went to Baghdad rarely spared a thought for 'insurgents' - the yanks were far more dangerous. They did the same job there as Blackwater. Without the trail of bodies. So the US need the armour.

[cartier90 0]

The gelatin cutaways showing VERY wide temporary disruption is quite scary, yes only temporary, but just to think that a piece of shrapnel or bullet could create a 8 inch wide hole in you is humbling. Id go round the place like Ned Kelly - if I were there, temperature might be an issue tho ;)

[code-red 0]

A hit to the face at 600m is a damn fine shot from the prone postion using a bipod and Iron sights, from a moving vehicle.....a fine shot? Miracle more like.

There are a lot of modern weapons in this game that can kill you easy from a fair distance.

I never had the feeling that there is miracle AI in this game series,just lack of skill that i needed to improve thourgh the years.

That is what makes this game fun,for me.

[Beagle 684]

It's true hat all A.I. Units in game are aimbots...but wait..that exacly what they are supposed to be. I suspect that all the players here complaining about the Ãœber A.I. should simply try a lower A.I. setting.

somthing like:

skillFriendly=1;

skillEnemy=0.85;

precisionFriendly=0.75;

precisionEnemy=0.55;

This will do the Trick. You will see less first time hits, more supression fire like hail, more woundet less dead, longer firefight over distance.

Edited July 4, 2009 by Beagle

[LJF 0]

If BI does implement this, I just hope it's done correctly. You can't just say "well now it takes 5 shots to kill someone" and expect that to do the trick, if you do that, you get CoD, and that isn't realistic, that's retarded.

They would need to implement some kind of ballistics on the vests, not just a health boost. Also, in all of the mods that I've played (ACE included), when this is modeled, the insurgents end up having the same armour/health, which is rather annoying :(

[Whiskey27 1]

You could make getting a hit to the front or back plate non-fatal, but have it throw you to the ground, and maybe possible wounding? And also, the medic int he video who was sniped, showing the picture of his plate? Those are even just normal SAPI, the ESAPI is rated for armor piercing, so....yah....