Bullet proof vests in the Chinese military

I don't believe the vest is super super expensive anyway, especially with the Chinese manufacturing capabilities. So I don't believe for a second, it is because budget constraint.

For PLA price, it would cost roughly $200 - $300 per piece, top notch. Let's say $500 for the sake of discussion. Do you really think PLA couldn't handle $500M just to buy a million of them ? you can not be serious.

China has roughly US$3.2T reserve. If the interest or return just 1% (extremely conservative), it means $32B per year or $90M per single day .... $500M is just a week of interest.

If it is super super urgent, PLA can easily get 5 millions of them ... easy

And trust me PLA generals are way way way smarter than all of us .. they know w hat they are doing

antiterror13 said:

I don't believe the vest is super super expensive anyway, especially with the Chinese manufacturing capabilities. So I don't believe for a second, it is because budget constraint.

For PLA price, it would cost roughly $200 - $300 per piece, top notch. Let's say $500 for the sake of discussion. Do you really think PLA couldn't handle $500M just to buy a million of them ? you can not be serious.

China has roughly US$3.2T reserve. If the interest or return just 1% (extremely conservative), it means $32B per year or $90M per single day .... $500M is just a week of interest.

If it is super super urgent, PLA can easily get 5 millions of them ... easy

And trust me PLA generals are way way way smarter than all of us .. they know w hat they are doing

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You make half a billion dollars sound like pocket change. Not even the US can afford to be that spendthrift. But whoever said the Chinese could not afford to buy vests?

The point is not whether they can afford then, but rather what their spending priorities are.

The bottom line is, China is not expecting to fight any major wars in the foreseeable future, as such, spending anything like as much as you are suggestion on items that will need to be replaced in 5-6 years time is simply a waste of resources.

The PLA would be far better off spending those hundreds of millions of dollars on more critically important equipment that will last for far longer and have a bigger impact on their effectiveness. Things like better communication and networking equipment; better training and accommodation facilities for the troops; more helicopters, tanks, IFVs, UAVs etc. Hell, until a few years ago, the PLA didn't even issue it's soldiers with decent combat boots. The list can be as long as you want.

If the PLA does somehow find that it has a spare few tens of millions spare to improve individual soldiers' kits, I would put things like ballistic glasses, combat gloves, knee and elbow pads before more sets of body armor.

The size of China's foreign exchange reserve is irrelevant. The Chinese government decides how much funding the various branches of the armed forces get, and they spend that as best as they see fit. Although there have been big growths in the budget lately, we need to remember that much of the extra spending has actually already been ear marked for things like increased pay and benefits and so cannot be used to equipment acquisitions.

The fact of the matter is, the PLA is an army at peace and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, as such, it would be unwise and pointless to pour vast amounts of resources into procuring perishables only necessary or useful for real combat ops.

Don't forget, those vests have very short life time, that is even if you don't use it, the micro fibers deteriorates over time until they became useless.

China is not fighting a war, so it is wasteful spend half billion produce them, the better way to go is produce it small batches to issue to the elite forces, then build up your manufacturing ability, that if they go to war, they can mass produce them very fast in a short frame of time.

plawolf said:

You make half a billion dollars sound like pocket change. Not even the US can afford to be that spendthrift. But whoever said the Chinese could not afford to buy vests?

The point is not whether they can afford then, but rather what their spending priorities are.

The bottom line is, China is not expecting to fight any major wars in the foreseeable future, as such, spending anything like as much as you are suggestion on items that will need to be replaced in 5-6 years time is simply a waste of resources.

The PLA would be far better off spending those hundreds of millions of dollars on more critically important equipment that will last for far longer and have a bigger impact on their effectiveness. Things like better communication and networking equipment; better training and accommodation facilities for the troops; more helicopters, tanks, IFVs, UAVs etc. Hell, until a few years ago, the PLA didn't even issue it's soldiers with decent combat boots. The list can be as long as you want.

If the PLA does somehow find that it has a spare few tens of millions spare to improve individual soldiers' kits, I would put things like ballistic glasses, combat gloves, knee and elbow pads before more sets of body armor.

The size of China's foreign exchange reserve is irrelevant. The Chinese government decides how much funding the various branches of the armed forces get, and they spend that as best as they see fit. Although there have been big growths in the budget lately, we need to remember that much of the extra spending has actually already been ear marked for things like increased pay and benefits and so cannot be used to equipment acquisitions.

The fact of the matter is, the PLA is an army at peace and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future, as such, it would be unwise and pointless to pour vast amounts of resources into procuring perishables only necessary or useful for real combat ops.

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I don't think you read my post in detail .. that's what exactly I said. It is not a budget issue as claimed by others and I did say it is a smart move. $500M of course is a huge money .. I just try to make a point that PLA/China can afford that, it is not about budget issue

antiterror13 said:

I don't think you read my post in detail .. that's what exactly I said. It is not a budget issue as claimed by others and I did say it is a smart move. $500M of course is a huge money .. I just try to make a point that PLA/China can afford that, it is not about budget issue

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Ok, fair enough, I misinterpreted your meaning because you quoted my post so I thought you were raising those points as counters to what I said, my bad.

I did think it a little odd for you to 'suggest' that the PLA buy millions more vests yet assure us the PLA generals know what they are doing. Now it makes far more sense.

The PLA lacks combat experience and this will be a factor in any engagement the PLA is involved in. It will suffer a quantity of defeats, and without an adaptive capability it will not be able to recover from it.

I've read that the PLA emphasizes firepower, mobility, then armor whereas NATO favors armor, firepower, then mobility. PLA infantry units tend to carry heavier weapons than their NATO counterparts, but at the cost of survivability. This is not necessary a good choice, given the combat experience and likely doctrinal failures of the PLA.

Inst said:

The PLA lacks combat experience and this will be a factor in any engagement the PLA is involved in. It will suffer a quantity of defeats, and without an adaptive capability it will not be able to recover from it.

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yes PLA is inexperienced, especially with all these new equipments

will it suffer a/some quantity of defeats before they learn their lessons? perhaps.. but i see it in smaller scale engagements, while maintaining mission objectives and strategic goal

I've read that the PLA emphasizes firepower, mobility, then armor whereas NATO favors armor, firepower, then mobility. PLA infantry units tend to carry heavier weapons than their NATO counterparts, but at the cost of survivability. This is not necessary a good choice, given the combat experience and likely doctrinal failures of the PLA.

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not entirely true on the NATO part, it is a very mobile force, if not the most

perhaps the more appropriate would be that NATO emphasizes on survivability which correlate to the second part of your statement

Body armor-wise, the point I'm making is that soldiers can only carry a particular amount of weight and still remain maneuverable. Even then, additional weight adds to fatigue and reduces maneuverability.

Doctrinally, the PLA might be more interested in loading heavy weapons onto their soldiers than equipping them with body armor. The choice is between 30 pounds of ceramic plate and 20 pounds on an AGL plus a few grenades for reloading. One provides increased survivability, the other gives you additional suppressive fire or the potential to just wipe an opponent cover or no cover.

That is probably why you don't see a standardization of heavy body armor; this allows you to use heavier weapons and bring more firepower on the infantry level than you would otherwise.

The issue, as I've mentioned above, is that trading survivability for firepower means that if things go wrong, your casualties are going to be worse than otherwise. You'd be entirely dependent on having intelligence superiority; not being surprised, not being ambushed, and not getting killed by artillery or airstrikes.

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With regards to body armor, though, steel plate can be used for training. It's cheap; it provides less survivability than ceramic plate, but steel plate gets people into the habit of moving around with heavy weight; unless you're actually going into a combat situation, you don't need the ceramic plate.

uSince you seem to like the word 'failure' so much, I think you might appreciate the following comment.

I fail to see how anything you have described could be classed as 'failures' at all. Trading protect for mobility and firepower is a choice, not a failure, and it is done all the time on every level. Do fighter jets carry heavy armour plating? Do modern warships or bombers? Special forces of all nationalities rarely wear heavy body armor (or any). The list can go on for a very long time. The point is that would be a choice, not some failure.

In the day of mechanised infantry, precision munitions and UCAVs, it could be debated just how effective body armor is. Contrary to what you just said, no body armor will save you from an air or artillery strike. It will help protect those on the fringes from shrapnel, but it won't offer any protection against the explosive power and concussionay forces that are the biggest killers. With modern precision munitions and sensitivity to collateral damage, chances are if someone is dropping bombs or firing artillery at you, they will be aimed rather than speculative. In which case the odds of you being within the 'dead no matter what you are wearing' radiums is pretty high.

In addition, with modern smal cal rounds and advancements in armor piercing rounds, it may well be that wearing armor could actually be worse for your health for anything other than hits to critical organs or the spine. One of the reasons advanced optics and headshots are so popular amongst American and NATO troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to the point they are spending their own cash to buy optics is because of a tendency for NATO 5.56 rounds to over penetrate their targets and cause relatively minor wounds even for hits to traditionally critical aras like the chest. Wearing body armor might just slow and deform such a round enough to turn a minor wound into a fatal one. It's not as simple a case as armor > no armor.

Of course, all of that is assuming that what you say is true, and I have seen plenty of evidence of suggest that the PLA training with body armor in mind even if they don't issue sets to line troops during the normal course of training.

I have seen plenty of reports in Chinese magazines and documentaries where the soldiers train with massive backpacks containing full gear plus sandbags.

The biggest adjustment going from no armor to armor is the increase in weight. However, if the PLA soldiers are all training with additional weight added to their gear equivilant to the weight of body armor, then that is a non-issue. The extra bulk will take a little getting used to, but most soldiers should easily adapt very quickly. Thus retaining armor sets to keep them in storage to maximise their shelf life is a perfectly sensible thing to do if your soldiers are conditioned and trained such that they can recieve armor sets during times of real conflict/extreme tensions with little or no adverse impact on their performance and effectiveness.

You might get some overheating issues in hot climates, but I don't think that is something training with full armor will address effectively.

Almost all countries have it these days, even the Philippines and Columbia have it. These countries almost don't even have a professional military, more like just a glorified police force, yet even they have it.

This is one of those great mysteries that no one can explain, just like who really killed Kennedy? Why didn't Hitler order the final blow? Or if Cleopatra really had big nose?

China has the technology, the money, and the resources to easily equip all their soldiers with vests. But somehow it's just not done.