Well, yes, but who's pushing the design for side trauma plates, fuller "coverage", etc.? You have to think, is this stuff being "pulled" by the end users (whether they are grunts or whomever) or "pushed" from the pogue/PR side because of pressure from Congressmen and the media coverage?
There was a big push for side trauma plates about a year or so after the switch from maneuver warfare to insurgency warfare, when sniper casualties started to rise. When insurgent snipers started finding out that front & back trauma plates could take a 7.62x54mm Russian round (most common insurgent sniping caliber) they started targeting the biceps area from the side, because a round through your bicep from a proper angle will go right through the soft armor into the boiler room. The thought was side trauma plates in the armpit area would prevent that. What you got was armor with a stiff plate shoving it's way up your armpit that was too uncomfortable to wear and couldn't maneuver in as well, so guys started taking out their side trauma plates and leaving them back in the barn.
Then someone thought that instead of standing around getting shot at, maybe we should change our countersniper tactics instead, and sniping casualtes dropped drastically.
(Note: the above is a drastic oversimplification of this aspect sniping/countersniping for brevity, or I'd be writing a book here.)
This crap is a balancing act. You can't weigh a guy down so heavy he can't fight. The basic rule of thumb is that hauling anything more than a 1/3 of your bodyweight long term will eventually be debilitating, i.e. you'll start suffering load bearing injuries just from carrying your kit.
My favorite set-up was always a soft armor "plate carrier" with trauma plates front and back, but little side protection (level IIIa, handgun strength only basically, will stop low power rounds, some shrapnel/fragments, etc.) and no neck or groin protection. My fave set up weighed less than 30 lbs before gear and I felt like I could still maneuver and fight effectively in it.
I don't think we need to scrap the idea of better armor, but we need to examine why we're asking for it, who were asking it for, and what is "better". This stuff should be driven by the people using it, in this case the grunts on the ground, and not because of a good intentioned but misplaced wish by people here to make sure our "troops have the best".
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I just took a crap and named it muhammed -- METSSC
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