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Home » Armor » Facial Armor Rears Its Ugly Head

Facial Armor Rears Its Ugly Head

FAST G16.jpgNo mat­ter how many times sol­diers and marines say they’re not inter­ested, there’s always some­one try­ing to wrap them up in heav­ier, hot­ter, more uncom­fort­able armor.
Reader AS points to the lat­est cul­prit: MTek Weapon Systems, which is push­ing Stormtrooper-​​esque “facial armor” for our troops.
The mask weighs 1.3 pounds, is com­pat­i­ble with bal­lis­tic eye­wear, and will stop a bul­let from a .44 mag­num. So far, there seems to be one marine cor­po­ral using the thing in Iraq. We’ll see if more emerge.

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February 6th, 2006 | Armor | 1833118 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/02/06/facial-armor-rears-its-ugly-head/Facial+Armor+Rears+Its+Ugly+Head2006-02-06+14%3A43%3A09murdoc You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Musey says:
    February 9, 2006 at 12:57 pm

    I think that he looks like a teenage mutant ninja tur­tle. I guess this could be the prod­uct of mil­lions of chil­dren wish­ing to grow up to be one, but who knows, does the great god of the uni­verse really lis­ten to those kinds of prayers?

    Reply
  2. Owen says:
    February 9, 2006 at 3:47 pm

    I think they look sweet, I can imag­ine they’d need the mask to be bul­let proof. If some­one came into my house wear­ing one of those I’d try and take em out.
    Its a pity they don’t come in more colours.
    Owen — Dublin — Ireland

    Reply
  3. ThE-LyNX says:
    February 11, 2006 at 7:53 pm

    A Major Pain In The Neck

    Reply
  4. Nick says:
    February 13, 2006 at 1:54 am

    Is it just me, or does it seem like a one piece hel­met might work bet­ter? Instead of try­ing to build on an old design, why not start from scratch and build some­thing with bet­ter periph­eral clear­ance and bet­ter ven­ti­la­tion? Maybe design a full hel­met sim­i­lar to a motor­cy­cle hel­met that has a remov­able face area?
    That mask just looks clumsy.

    Reply
  5. Matt Schrank says:
    February 15, 2006 at 5:27 am

    I like the look. I espe­cially like the fact that we look like stormtroop­ers. We are the imper­a­tors after all, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. The strong rule, and the weak take it.

    Reply
  6. Magic guy says:
    February 16, 2006 at 10:17 am

    I was an infantry­man for a long time. Master mil­i­tary para­chutist, honor grad from Ranger Scool, even did a tour in a Ranger bat­tal­ion, not to men­tion some seri­ous spe­cial ops time. Ground pounders walk a lot and carry all their gear, so they expend a lot of effort try­ing to lighten their loads. All this armor looks like it would do more harm than good — even with the bul­lets fly­ing. I can see how it would be use­ful for peo­ple who ride in vehi­cles all day, but try a 25-​​mile road march with that arti­fi­cial exoskele­ton plus your weapons, packs, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions gear — and I think a bunch of it would wind up in the ditches. This par­tic­u­lar mask looks like a great way to heat up the already-​​sizzling desert air — as well as impede your com­mu­ni­ca­tions with your fel­low soldiers.

    Reply
  7. not important says:
    June 6, 2006 at 4:02 am

    i dont pre­tend to be an expert on the sub­ject or even have any direct expe­ri­ence with body armor but it seems to me that we are relearn­ing the same lessons the armor mak­ers learned in the mid­dle ages. the face guard seems the wrong way to go. is it pos­si­ble to have cat III coller the comes up from the vest to cover the cheek, leav­ing only the eyes and the side of the face need to sight a weapon? has any­one seen any­thing like this?

    Reply
  8. B310 says:
    August 1, 2006 at 8:58 pm

    Door kicker? Sure…
    I can see this being yet another way to get heat stroke, and yet another piece of gear that worth­less brass and SNCOs will make the troops wear because of lia­bil­ity issues. They won’t want to be held account­able to some idiot offi­cer who’ll come down on them, and s*** will roll down­hill to the Pvt. Schmuckatellis who have to wear this non­sen­si­cal crap.
    Having cooked in the sand­box twice, and hav­ing tried to ditch all use­less crap that use­less lif­ers made us wear — I think the owner of this com­pany and the devel­op­ers should be forced to put this crap on and made to dou­ble­time in a sauna, while wear­ing all the other gear that doesn’t work together. Goggles and Wiley-​​Xes that don’t fit with the hel­met straps, throat pro­tec­tors that stab you in the tra­chea, col­lars so tight you can feel blood in your neck stop­ping up, SAPI plates that make it so you can’t even lean for­ward, long-​​sleeved shirts always to pro­tect from sun­burn — even at night and if you’re black — can’t change the rules! Add all this crap with tem­per­a­tures that reach 120–130 on a reg­u­lar basis, and oper­a­tions that last for days and days and days — the sweat the grime the sores from being wet and chaf­ing on gear you can’t drop, every breath of air being another chok­ing oven blast — yeah — sure.
    Did I men­tion the SALLE packs that have great hik­ing belts that fit so well, until you strap them on over a flak jacket? Or the LBV/​FLC you wear under­neath that, with can­teens that sit where the SALLE belt mal­ad­justs? Or the tan suede boots — great for lazy office pogues who don’t want to pol­ish their boots, but are instantly ruined and ren­dered “unser­vice­able” by oil and dark mud, because they’re too dirty to be worn — so you have to go spend $95 for new ones?
    This whole thing is just the stu­pid­ity of those in the office telling those in the field what to do.

    Reply
  9. w says:
    October 12, 2006 at 9:42 am

    How the hell are you sup­posed to fire an M4 w/​ this thing?

    Reply
  10. brainplay says:
    November 14, 2006 at 1:23 am

    Take a look in their gallery. The face­guard is uni­form in thick­ness all the way around. When the .44 mag­num hits it puts a big dent in a sec­ondary layer which sticks through in the video. Thats not beefed up armor.
    The face­mask like the shoul­der guards are great if you’re a gun­ner but I wouldn’t try it for dis­mounted troops. Gunners and weapon mounted vehi­cles make for bul­let mag­nets when the shoot­ing starts so any­one in the tur­ret could use as much pro­tec­tion as pos­si­ble. Ground pounders and door kick­ers wouldn’t ben­e­fit by this that much. Periphriel vision would be sev­erly hurt and hear­ing would be cut down more than it already is which is cru­cial for ground ops.

    Reply
  11. Cpl Petross says:
    December 12, 2006 at 5:25 pm

    omg this thing looks cool but come one man some one is going to be pissed walk­ing up to a iraqin and say­ing luke i am your father come on i apre­ci­ate the extra amor but not the extra weight

    Reply
  12. Z says:
    March 7, 2007 at 4:50 pm

    If the mask looks too intim­i­dat­ing — per­haps a bright “smi­ley” face painted on it would soothe them Iraqi ter­ror­ist bastardz.

    Reply
  13. Just a Soldier says:
    April 24, 2007 at 11:31 am

    The inter­est­ing thing is that all these braini­acs mak­ing this stuff, arnt look­ing at the well rounded pic­ture.
    Weight, sure its heavy but if it pro­vided more than just a pain in the neck would it be worth it.
    Heat, Prehaps a sim­ple device inte­grated into the armor to keep the sol­diers head and face “tem­ra­ture con­trol” noth­ing major but like a small water cooler type apara­tus.
    Comunication, Giving comands to a unit or to pos­si­ble pris­on­ers must sound muf­fled with that hunk of plas­tic on, but its big enough to place a small mike and speaker set that you may even be able to plug into a patrol radio.
    Enviroment, Can you say gas mask.
    Look I’m not say­ing that I agree with the armor that they show but if your going to make a face cov­er­ing for pro­tec­tion what good is it when you have to take it off to talk, drink, or use your NBC gear.
    On a side note: the Storm trooper thing might not be to far from a good idea. Sound/​sight enhance­ment; envi­ro­men­tal sta­bil­ity; head pro­tec­tion pro­tec­tion; comu­ni­ca­tions; and more. Not sure bout the look of them but it was still a bet­ter idea than that peice of plastic

    Reply
  14. Alex C says:
    June 14, 2007 at 12:42 pm

    I actu­ally con­tacted the inven­tor of that bal­lis­tic mask. It has a very spe­cific design goal. He wanted to give frag­men­ta­tion pro­tec­tion to vehic­u­lar gun­ners who have mostly there head exposed.
    Whats impor­tant here is options. A per­son should have the option for bet­ter facial pro­tec­tion if the job requires it.
    A mechanic has hun­dreds of tools but can only use one at a time, the best one for the task at hand.

    Reply
  15. a gunner says:
    June 19, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    well its designed for a gun­ner most gun­ners get frag to the face and neck. they also have a mount sys­tem to quickly dis­conect the shield if need be.

    Reply
  16. TK-421 says:
    July 18, 2007 at 11:32 pm

    There’s one! Set for stun!

    Reply
  17. Jesica says:
    September 6, 2007 at 6:51 pm

    Maybe I’m a lit­tle bit bias here, but I know the guy. He’s a marine. He has done his tour in Iraq. He’s not some gov­ern­ment offi­cial that doesn’t know what he’s talk­ing about. He’s been there. As a mat­ter of fact, he’s spent the last two years try­ing to get enough money around just to make these masks for sol­diers over­seas. Look around, it’s the only decent facial pro­tec­tion out there. Everything else is far heav­ier. He

    Reply
  18. Chernobyl says:
    January 6, 2008 at 12:35 am

    So sad our Army has to resort to this.
    In the past, the Army went in, whooped ass, blew up every­thing and now they’re just glo­ri­fied police.

    Reply
  19. Hellgate London Palladium says:
    August 2, 2008 at 1:55 am

    Look at every­thing every­one has a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, I treat this game has its own state of mind.
    Other play­ers to me how, I will to them how. They send me Hellgate London Palladium, I will send them too. Also played for a long time was not just play­ing games to one point as a triv­ial mat­ter to angry. What I will take the short view, too many games like the real­ity of right and wrong as the real and prac­ti­cal. You can be too con­cerned about the injury and will be bogged down in these, only see weak, you can keep play­ing their first game men­tal­ity, the game itself is in order to play.

    Reply
  20. sro gold says:
    August 9, 2008 at 2:36 am

    The fol­low­ing is about European equip­ment. Some peo­ple like play­ing Silkroad or Silkroad money novices can all come here to ref­er­ence my article.

    Reply
  21. cheap snw vis says:
    August 9, 2008 at 2:37 am

    Sword of the New World gives play­ers more options, vari­ety, enter­tain­ment and chal­lenges than any other MMORPG can by virtue of its unique cheap snw vis design fea­tures. With multi-​​character con­trol (MCC), play­ers are able to com­mand up to three char­ac­ters simultaneously.

    Reply
  22. 2moons gold says:
    August 19, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    I like chat­ted with the peo­ple, and he has qui­etly the upgrade or earn the 2moons gold, the only other peo­ple said to him he will answered, his such this action let me atten­tion him, and add he become friend, from the on, we often together to upgrade and chat.

    Reply
  23. cabal alz says:
    August 19, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    I think you already for­get the days we together to buy the cabal alz, you told me that I do not under­stand you, Perhaps, I love you the wrong way, so I will lose you. I can not sor­row, sad­ness also can not let you stop leave my footsteps.

    Reply
  24. dofus kamas says:
    August 19, 2008 at 11:39 pm

    We all know that in the game the dofus kamas is very impor­tant, but we all did not had enough money to bought

    Reply
  25. eve isk says:
    August 20, 2008 at 12:12 am

    At the first, in the Europe server played this game, because my English level was not very well only can under­stand some, so I only can rely on the two hours of the Chinese lan­guage tuto­r­ial, I under­stand some, but the English was still poor and did not have money to pay the eve isk, so I was very look for­ward the EVE appear in the China.

    Reply
  26. Jesica says:
    September 16, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    MTek Weapons sys­tems. Marine, not Army. I respect both, but there is a big difference.

    Reply
  27. gerrit says:
    January 20, 2009 at 7:34 am

    The con­cept is good, as for the design, I per­son­ally think that it will demo­r­ilise enemy sol­diers very well.
    If I have to go into war and I have a bunch of .20 — .44 cal rifles aim­ing at my head i’d rather wear one of those.

    Reply
  28. asder says:
    March 10, 2009 at 4:43 am

    buy 2moons dil
    flyff penya
    buy flyff penya
    fly for fun penya

    Reply
  29. Anonymous says:
    July 2, 2009 at 1:23 am
    Reply
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