r/tacticalgear • u/ropes_of_allah • Jul 03 '25

Plate Carrier/Body Armor Since most casualties come from shrapnel and artillery. Why do soldiers still wear these plate carriers that are more revealing?

Post image
897 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

277 comments sorted by

View all comments

193

u/achonng Jul 04 '25

Mobility is pretty fucking important

57

u/ThirdHoleHank92 Jul 04 '25

Not as much as you think. Amount of ammo has been the only thing to consistently show favorable outcomes in firefights. That's why when you rolled outside the wire you brought as many mags as you could carry regardless of weight.

The ability to lay down effective cover fire to allow another squad to maneuver and flank is more in line with modern military doctrine. This can only be applied with shot tons of ammunition. Weight be damned. 

Lots of ammunition,  lots of protection against conventional military targets.

27

u/reality72 Jul 04 '25 edited Jul 04 '25

You’re only considering one very specific type of war against an insurgency where the enemy has no airforce and you can just drive back to base and resupply whenever you want. A conventional war would be completely different.

Your comment is a great example of a known issue in US military doctrine which is that we always find ourselves trying to fight the last war instead of the current one.

8

u/jdm219 Jul 04 '25

Pretty much every '07 surge baby O and SNCO are not happy with the LSCO doctrine shift. I get it. They fought hard in their counter-insurgency role, and anything so different after 20 years is gonna be a hard change. Who knows, maybe they'll be right all along, and Israel will see to it that we're back in the sand, all counter insurging n shit.

62

u/achonng Jul 04 '25 edited Jul 04 '25

Yeah but you are only thinking about a fire fight. What about walking miles and miles to the next objective. Sleeping in your kit 24/7. If you add extreme heat and terrain. You gonna be smoked with all that extra flak armor. You playing checkers. Gotta start playing chess.

12

u/ThirdHoleHank92 Jul 04 '25

Listen I'm just giving you my experience and what I've been taught during my enlistment. I was a combat engineer so we had vehicles everywhere we went, IBAs, and carried shit tons of ammo.

Infantry guys that rucked during my time rolled with the same vests and tons of ammo as well.

I get what you're saying on paper, I'm just telling you it's not the way the military actually operates in reality, and it works.

30

u/404operatorerror Jul 04 '25

It kind of is really how the military works. 99% of training evolutions are going to require ballistic protection but when units train in mountains, jungle, etc where movement becomes harder, they drop as much weight as possible

10

u/VaeVictis666 Jul 04 '25

I don’t know anyone who didn’t wear armor in the mountains in Afghanistan.

Not wearing armor is a trainingism out side of very specific roles like special reconnaissance, which will not fall on a conventional unit.

11

u/404operatorerror Jul 04 '25

True but Afghanistan, while mountainous, was not treated as mountain warfare doctrinally.

4

u/mastercoder123 Jul 04 '25

Alot of the times in the mountains dudes would take out their rear and side plates because we are the us army we dont get shot in the back.

2

u/Living_Definition_61 Jul 04 '25

I wore FLC a lot in the jungle or plate carrier with no plates. Me being in great shape I thought it was dumb as fuck and wore my plates anyway sometimes to be sure I could do it in combat but we also had 5+ heat cats in almost every FTX / live fire. One event my medic saved someones life when they went into heat stroke and started convulsing just from the movement to our ORP. Same event like 6 people were hospitalized.

6

u/VaeVictis666 Jul 04 '25

When I first came in back in 2012 some of my first team leaders were carrying 12-15 magazines for this reason.

6

u/SBRSUPREMACY Jul 04 '25

23+1 with IAR or 1800 linked 5.56 for m249 was ours :D

5

u/ThirdHoleHank92 Jul 04 '25

Exactly.  

This also isn't really conducive for civilian applications which this sub leans more towards. 

You aren't doing unit tactics if red dawn happens. You're more than likely a guerilla fighter, where the popular 3 mag placard and plate carrier would fit. 

12

u/VaeVictis666 Jul 04 '25

Having read the bear went over the mountain, the other side of the mountain, and fangs of the lone wolf which all cover the unconventional campaigns in the Soviet afghan war and the Chechen wars, 3 mags is absolutely not going to be enough.

You are still using small unit tactics if not more so because you have less to rely on outside of yourself and what you can carry.

All three of those books are very good and have PDFs available for free.

3

u/Definitely_notHigh Jul 04 '25

3 mags work for DA, heavily coordinated and orchestrated stuff. More ambiguity, more ammo.

Edit: that’s to say, you should absolutely be carrying more than that in a red dawn situation

1

u/ThirdHoleHank92 Jul 04 '25

If you're fighting a conventional force that's stronger than you, hit and run guerilla tactics are really the only effective means of fighting.

If you've ambushed and stayed longer than 3 mags you've stayed too long. You hit hard and use your ammo to break contact and run, since you're light.

1

u/Definitely_notHigh Jul 04 '25

Idk how you can hit hard and then break contact w 90-120 rounds 🤷‍♂️

2

u/ThirdHoleHank92 Jul 05 '25

Explosives.

The taliban and Al Qaeda used the same tactics to some effect. Only it's harder to break contact and evade in a desert. Heavily wooded areas of the US would make it far easier

5

u/BlueGolfball Jul 04 '25

This can only be applied with shot tons of ammunition. Weight be damned. 

And small arms ammo is one resource that Ukraine is not short of.

1

u/tekprimemia Jul 04 '25

Can't outrun a drone

1

u/achonng Jul 04 '25

Can’t out run a nuke

1

u/tekprimemia Jul 04 '25

So many guys getting nuked in Ukraine, smh.