Body Armor and Plate Carriers

[Music] [Music] hey y'all bill cork with the defensive training group in big daddy unlimited here today we're going to talk about body armor body armor is one of those things that can be very confusing and almost mystical and it doesn't need to be it's actually fairly straightforward once you understand the terms and the definitions and things like that so to start out your two basic types of body armor are going to be soft armor panels and hard armor panels and so i've got a soft one here and as the name suggests it is soft it's more flexible much lighter in weight and then i've got hard panels which are what these are and obviously these are heavier they're solid they're more rigid and that's just the basic difference there so it's self-explanatory hard versus soft now when we talk about the uh level of protection provided by these various things we get into what's called an nij standard the national institute of justice standard and that changes from you from time to time as they upgrade the standards and whatnot with different types of ammunition first thing to understand is if a piece of armor has an nij rating it is rated at that and it's not necessarily that and everything below it as a practical matter it probably is but technically speaking because the nij standards in order to certify a piece of armor to a certain standard they're very expensive so they'll only do standard testing for that one level so they're not necessarily warranting that it's going to be good for if it's good for rifle it may not be good for handgun they're not saying that chances are it will be and generally we accept that rifle plates will protect you from rifle stuff all the way down and so on and so forth but just understand that that when there's a like a level four rating it's tested for level four for those specific criteria okay so uh in your soft armor you're going to start out with you've got level 2a level 2 and then level 3a and those are your general three levels of soft body armor for a patrol officer a uniform police officer level 2 or level 2a or what you're typically going to see for like a swat officer someone that's that's doing entries and whatnot you may see a level 3a in a soft panel when you go into level 3 and above now you're getting into typically hard plates and that's your rifle level protection the soft stuff is for the most part handgun protection the hard plates will start getting into the area of rifle protection and so you have level three and level four and those are the two uh technical levels there you also will sometimes see a level three plus with a special threat rating and some manufacturers will make something the plates that i've got in my uh my training carrier here are a composite ceramic composite mix and they're level three plus special threat rated so that's something that some of the manufacturers come up with but your level three is that's what this one is right here this is a level three composite plate and this one is a level three steel plate so when we talk about the different materials in our hard plates there are different materials that go into the the soft pla soft panels as well generally um kevlar is what we we normally refer to and that is one is still one of the most common there are some more higher tech materials that are out there from different manufacturers but particularly you'll be making selections in the hard plates between the different materials so like i said you've got steel is one of your possibilities the composite and then ceramic or a ceramic composite mix and those are kind of the three that you're normally going to see when you're looking at your hard plates there are there are three criteria you're going to have your thickness your weight and your cost and generally you can pick two so if you want thin and light it's going to cost you more money if you want thin and cheap then you're going to be looking at something like the steel which is going to weigh a lot more so of those three criteria you can normally get two with your with your choice the last thing to think about with your plates you'll notice that sometimes they'll be specified as a standalone or as an in conjunction a standalone plate as the name suggests is capable of standing by itself in your plate carrier and it gives you that whatever the rating is that level of protection an inconjunction plate is meant to be worn in conjunction with a soft backer usually a level 3a backer that combined with the two two together will give you whatever the specified level is generally speaking even with standalone plates i try to run soft body armor behind them because they will give you more shock absorption when the round does hit you and we'll talk about that in a second so like i said we have our soft body armor which is the concealable stuff generally that you'll see a police officer wearing we have our hard armor which is going to be a little bit heavier more rigid and this is where we get into our rifle threats and it's important that you go through and do your research because there are a lot of different companies out there some reputable some not and make sure that you're getting what you're going to need we're going to talk about specific applications in a little bit but make sure you're getting what you need for your purpose if we're looking at using this as an actual in a real world situation get the best armor that you can afford do not scrimp on your armor get the best armor that you can afford for the most likely threat that you think you might come up against and reality has to intrude so that's why most police officers even though the soft body armor doesn't give us rifle threats we can wear it underneath the uniform blouse and it's concealable it's it's discrete it's lighter and so that's just the choice that we make based on the reality of the situation and then when we know we're going to go into something a bit more dangerous that's when the hard plates might come out in the carrier the over carrier and whatnot so last thing to talk about with this and i already mentioned it briefly is the idea of absorbing that energy so we have a couple of considerations if you do get shot on your armor first of all is penetration worried about the round actually penetrating and going into your body which is obviously bad there's also a consideration of that energy transfer as well and dissipating that energy so that you don't get the blunt force trauma even if it doesn't actually penetrate into your body and that's where having the soft armor behind it can be beneficial there's also a consideration of something called spalling and that's when the round especially on the steel plates the round hits and fragments and now you've got fragments coming up maybe into your face or something along those lines and so you can get going back to the steel plate you can get a coating that's added to the plate that will help minimize that effect a little bit so energy transfer and spalling are some other things to think about okay so that gets us through the technology itself talking about the armor what the different levels mean some of the coding considerations and things of that nature now throughout my career i was an end user of body armor and uh was never particularly i'm not one of the armor guys that knows all the different details this is not my my area of where i've gotten into the weeds not like with my guns where that was more of my thing and i can talk about all the details and so on and so forth when i went to get my armor and like i said this is my current carrier right here these are level three plus special threat plates and they're a ceramic composite mix i went out i did my research looked at a couple of companies talked to some friends in the industry and got the best plate that i could afford that gave me the level of protection that i wanted based on the threat that the threat matrix that i was likely to encounter and i did use this a bit towards the end of my career four entries mostly it's been a training carrier and in running shoot house classes teaching shoot house classes and participate in shoot house classes that kind of thing so all right so now that we've covered the armor itself let's move into some considerations for its use and i've already talked briefly about the idea that get what you need it's not about getting the the heaviest or the thickest or the the highest rated protection it depends on what you're going to be using what you're going to be needing so don't get carried away take a hard look an objective look at what you're going to need and make your your decisions accordingly when we're starting to use this stuff the biggest mistake that i see people make is they wear it too low on their chest and so when we go to position this plate it's kind of like thigh rigs when we get them out of the package a lot of times they're too low because that's just how they come from the factory and people keep them there because they don't know what they don't know they don't know that it should be higher same thing when we're talking about our plate a lot of times out of the the box the plate carrier is adjusted so that the plate rides much lower on the torso and this is a mistake what we're trying to do with this plate is get it high up on the thoracic chest so that we provide protection for our lungs our heart spinal column all that good stuff that we don't want to get injured so you want to make sure that the plate does come up nice and high on the chest and different plates will have different cuts up here because sometimes this will bounce off your chin and it will hinder your movement a little bit so that's another feature you can look at they have shooter cuts that are angled off here because my old partner was a former power lifter and he would have a hard time with a full profile plate of getting his arms together because his chest and biceps would literally bind on the plate so those are considerations making sure that you can move with a plate and that gets us into the biggest point that i make and i used to harp on my guys about this a lot back on the task force we were doing high risk fugitive apprehension we were going in against bad guys that didn't want to go back to jail and it was easy to go down the rabbit hole of armor and think well i want as much protection as i can possibly get understand that with armor there's a sliding scale between coverage and protection and mobility on the other side and the big consideration is that armor does not stop gunfights shooting the bad guy stops gun fights armor gives us time and protection so that we can do that we can have that positive ballistic effect on our bad guy but armor by itself doesn't do anything for us other than provide us that protection if we just stand there taking rounds eventually something's going to find its way in and we're going to get hurt so armor and love itself does not stop the gunfight so you want to bear that in mind and not wrap yourself in so much that you lose the ability to fight effectively and we're going to talk about this a little bit in a second when we talk about plate carriers as well but you'll see that with like swat officers it's not uncommon that they get a full armor package that includes shoulder protectors a groin piece maybe shoulder not just shoulder covers down here but also coverage up here on the top the cummerbund itself is going to have armor and like in this case this is as i said this is the one that i normally use for training right now it's set up in its minimalist format with just elastic sides for the cummerbund that goes around my torso i also have these pieces that i can retrofit and these have level 3a armor placed inside the cummerbund so if for some reason i feel that i need that then i can put these on and now i'll have a little bit more protection around the sides as well because the sides are a vulnerability my old entry armor had armor in the sides and in the shoulders again based on the nature of what i was doing we didn't want to uh to be exposed to a a flanking maneuver or someone from a crowd after we made an arrest might start shooting at us it might catch us on on the oblique or something but you can put so much on that you you significantly limited your ability to move and therefore to fight so that's just something that that i want you to keep in mind again try to be objective and look at what you need and get what you need so now let's talk about carriers briefly so we've got a bunch of different carriers up here this is another one that i have used this is one of my more minimalist types and so you're generally going to find that you've got the two types you have a minimalist type which is going to provide front and rear coverage and that's about it there's nothing in the shoulders here nothing on the sides and the cummerbund and then you might get something like this that is a more scalable system that allows you to have something on the sides or as i said with my old duty armor a full system that gives you shoulder protection side protection maybe a bit more coverage up in the sides depending on the if you have soft body backers you can get soft body backers where the wings because these are sized for the individual all of these plates they come in different sizes and do your research make sure that you're getting one that's going to be appropriate for your body size the soft body panels tend to be a bit more custom for the individual and you can get good overlap on the sides that even with your plate carry underneath will give you some good side protection as i've said repeatedly when you're looking at your your carrier again it's important to decide what do i need this for so if i'm going to be doing something where more coverage might be warranted then go with a more full-featured system if you're going to be using it as a home defense piece of equipment or for a training type circumstance then maybe something that is more minimalist might be more appropriate again be objective in what you're doing really define your mission in previous videos you've heard me talk about that when we're picking our equipment and whatnot it's critical that we define the mission to make sure that the equipment satisfies that mission don't go pick the equipment and then try to make the mission fit it which is unfortunately something that we do frequently one more thing talking about these both of these systems incorporate what's called a placard system which is something that i've been a big fan of and what this basically is is on the front here you have a removable velcro lined placard that can come on and off depending on the mission that you're trying to accomplish so i've got in my my travel box when i used to go up and do the shoot house classes i've got several placards in there this one is set up for carbine so they all have a tourniquet on the front that i can access with either hand and then in this case there are two rifle magazines in a pistol magazine i've also got one that's set up just when i'm running pistol so it only has pistol magazines i've got one set up for when i'm running shotgun and it's got velcro spots for my velcro shotgun cards that i can put additional cards there this particular one has got another one of the the placards that i have is just a big dump pouch so if i'm not really doing anything loading from my chest maybe i'm just working off my belt with my handgun then i can i can just put that on there and it's just a place to keep additional stuff so that gives you a lot of versatility the more conventional system and both of these are actually set up for placards as well we've kind of gone that way with the industry because it does give you a lot of adaptability depending on what you're doing rather than having to uh to take placards off and and or take uh pouches off and re weave them molly and so on and so forth this gives you something that you can do fairly expediently fairly quickly on the fly so the final thing we're going to talk about is applications if you're not law enforcement if you're not military why would i need something like this and there are two that and i already mentioned them that i think are the most appropriate for your ordinary citizen one is going to be for a home defense type situation so consider that if you do ever hear that bump in the night and you feel the need to get your home defense firearm and sally forth to see what's going on you're probably most people are just going to have the gun and the ammunition that's on board you're not going to have anything else with you if you've got something like this set up next to the bed or in the corner or whatever you've now got the ability to quickly throw something on no matter what you've got on pajamas or fuzzy slippers or whatever you're wearing at the time and you've now got a piece of equipment that's quickly donnable that's going to have whatever you choose to put on there and we'll talk more about that in a second but for example you may have your spare ammunition for your handgun a cell phone a flashlight your medical kit a bunch of different things can now be on here and you're equipped for whatever your situation may be now you know you probably won't need it but it's better to have it not needed than needed not have it another appropriate application for just an ordinary person might be as a training rig so you're going to be going and doing classes carbine classes shotgun classes even handgun classes in certain circumstances or vehicle classes or the shoot house classes that i've talked about in those cases having something like this it's a convenient way to keep your equipment organized spare magazines your med kit maybe some tools maybe a bottle of water whatever the case may be it's all with you it does give you the armor protection as well and you might decide that that's something that's appropriate again consider what you're going to be doing with it and make sure that it's relevant to that task when you're setting your things up though i will give you a moment of caution or a word of caution rather don't overload your plate carrier and this is something else that i've seen both operationally and also in training circles people will show up with just all kinds of stuff mounted on their plate carrier and tend to to a degree as well also on their battle belt or wherever and we have a tendency to load up with the greatest whiz-bang pouch and well i might need this and i might need this be very critical and very careful when you're adding stuff on here for a couple of reasons one the more you add on here the heavier this is going to be the heavier it is the less mobile you're going to be the more the bulkier it is the less mobility you're going to have and you can have things start to sneak in and i'll give you a really good example years ago i was training with a buddy of mine one of my contemporaries and we were doing handgun and we weren't running an armor we were slick and as i was drawing my pistol i kept bringing the gun out and around and i had nothing nothing no armor on or anything no no pouches or anything and so he stopped me at one point and he goes why are you doing that because that's technically not correct it's not a linear motion it's not efficient why are you bringing your hand around in that arc and i said i don't know i wasn't aware that i was doing that and it concerned me because it was incorrect it was not the most efficient way for me to present my handgun so i went home and i thought about it because i was i was bothered that this bad habit had somehow snuck into my practice and because as you you've heard me say it's not practice makes perfect practice makes permanent it's perfect practice makes perfect well this was an example of where some bad practice had snuck in to my regimen so i started looking at things trying to figure out what had caused this and what had happened was i'd gotten the new pouch and i'd put it on my armor and it was blocking access to my pistol so when i drew my pistol i was having to come around this pouch and i forget now what the pouch even had in and it was something an admin pouch or something i don't know but upon realizing that it was causing this negative practice i yanked it off and it gave me a valuable lesson and from that point going forward i was very specific when i put anything on my armor to make sure that it did not axe or i did not hinder access to my sidearm my med kit the important stuff that i had to get to i couldn't have that buried down somewhere where i wasn't going to be able to get to it again that defeats the purpose we're so well protected with our armor but we can't get to our life-saving tools so be very mindful as you put equipment on here only put on what you need there's a temptation to put different tools and this and that and the other thing don't leave that back in the range bag you can go back and get that if you need it only put on the armor what you're going to need what the mission calls for what the circumstances dictate so we are going to be selling some of these different things out here there'll be a link in one of the pen comments below the play carriers will be coming online not right away in a couple of months probably as always give us a like and subscribe if you have any questions at all put them down below and stay safe

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Keywords: tactical, guns, gun, 2a, gunsdaily, gunporn, pewpew, militia, ar15, glock, firearms, 2ndamendment, merica, pistol, molonlabe, weapons, rifle, 9mm, weaponsdaily, military, sickguns, gunsofinstagram, secondamendment, gunchannels, ammo, gunfanatics, nra, pewpewlife, concealedcarry, america, tacticalgunners, plate carriers, plate carrier, bulletproof vest, bullet proof vest review, bulletproof vest, body armor, armor, bullet proof vest, bulletproof, kevlar, ballistic vest, ar500 body armor

Id: 5gGv85iDgDI

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020