Plate Carrier

Origins

For most of the twentieth century, soldiers' body armor was meant to stop shell fragments, not bullets. The Flak Jacket of the Second World War and Korea used steel, aluminum or nylon to catch splinters, and it could do little against a rifle round. The first practical answer to rifle fire came in Vietnam. From the mid-1960s, American helicopter crews were issued hard ceramic plates worn in a cloth vest over the chest, sometimes with a back plate as well. Crews called them "chicken plates." They were heavy, but they could stop rifle-caliber bullets fired at low-flying aircraft, and they proved the idea of a hard plate carried in a soft vest.

In the early 1980s the United States Army adopted the PASGT system, a Kevlar vest worn with the matching PASGT Helmet. The PASGT vest still protected mainly against fragments. In the early 1990s the 75th Ranger Regiment fielded the Ranger Body Armor, a soft vest with a pocket for a ceramic plate. Rangers wore it in Mogadishu in 1993, where some men had removed their back plates to save weight before the raid, a choice that shows the tension that has followed the plate carrier ever since.

Design & Construction

A plate carrier has two jobs: to hold armor plates in the right place over the heart, lungs and major blood vessels, and to carry the soldier's gear. The plates do the stopping. Military plates are usually ceramic, such as boron carbide or silicon carbide, backed by layers of polyethylene or aramid fiber that catch the broken pieces of bullet and ceramic. The Interceptor Body Armor, fielded from about 1999, paired a Kevlar Outer Tactical Vest with Small Arms Protective Inserts, or SAPI plates. Enhanced plates, the ESAPI, followed in the mid-2000s to defeat more dangerous armor-piercing rounds.

The outside of most carriers is covered in MOLLE webbing, short for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment. Its attachment system, PALS, uses rows of one-inch nylon webbing stitched to the vest, so pouches for magazines, radios, medical kits and grenades can be woven on wherever the user wants them. A slim plate carrier covers little more than the plates themselves, with a cummerbund around the sides. Fuller vests like the Interceptor add soft armor around the torso, neck, shoulders and groin.

Service

In Iraq and Afghanistan the Interceptor and its successors saved many lives, but they were heavy. The Army's Improved Outer Tactical Vest, introduced in 2007, weighed around 30 pounds with its plates and side plates. Special operations units, carrying rifles like the HK416 on long foot patrols and raids, had already turned to slim commercial plate carriers that kept the plates but shed most of the soft armor around them.

General-purpose forces followed. In 2008 the Marine Corps fielded the Scalable Plate Carrier to units in Afghanistan as a lighter choice than its Modular Tactical Vest, for patrols in rough, high country. In 2010 the Army issued the Soldier Plate Carrier System to soldiers deploying to Afghanistan, letting commanders choose between it and the heavier vest depending on the mission. The Army's later Soldier Protection System introduced the Modular Scalable Vest, which can be worn as a slim carrier or built up with more soft armor, and which is lighter than the vest it replaced.

Legacy

The plate carrier settled a long argument by allowing a choice. More coverage means more weight, heat and fatigue, while less coverage means a soldier can move, climb and fight longer but with more of the body exposed. Modern armies now scale armor to the task rather than issue one heavy vest for every job.

Plate carriers are also sold in large numbers to police, hunters, collectors and private citizens. In most of the United States civilians may legally buy them, though federal law bars people convicted of violent felonies from owning body armor and some states restrict sales. Buyers should remember that a carrier sold empty is only a vest. It is not itself armor, and it protects against nothing until rated plates, tested to standards such as those of the National Institute of Justice, are put inside it.