Infantry Combat Equipment (non-firearm): Vests, Body Armor, NVGs, etc.

LawLeadsToPeace said:

I am comparing the two because both armies plan to field those NVG’s in the near future. Both sides will eventually equip many of their soldiers with this system, so such a comparison is more or less valid.

As for the XM157, yep, a soldier would need an additional attachment for the corner shot mechanism since the corner shot mechanism is a separate attachment. If I recall correctly, the scope is made by Vortex, so they definitely didn’t integrate L3Harris’s cornershot mechanism into the scope.

Click to expand...

ENVG B is already in fielding.
as to the XM157, not quite. The Vortex optic is stated as having the streaming capability already all that is needed is a vision system compatible with it to display. Something like IVAS or ENVG B might do in a pinch. Where I think it would need an additional attachment is in night vision operation. So i think it could “talk” to an ENVG B in “saying” this is where “I” am pointing. But if it’s moonless any images would be fairly dark with little point in the magnification. A clip on night vision device could be mounted which would change that though.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

ENVG B is already in fielding.

Click to expand...

Which further supports my comparison. Since both of the devices are being fielded by their respective soldiers as we speak, we can compare them.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

as to the XM157, not quite. The Vortex optic is stated as having the streaming capability already all that is needed is a vision system compatible with it to display. Something like IVAS or ENVG B might do in a pinch. Where I think it would need an additional attachment is in night vision operation. So i think it could “talk” to an ENVG B in “saying” this is where “I” am pointing. But if it’s moonless any images would be fairly dark with little point in the magnification. A clip on night vision device could be mounted which would change that though.

Click to expand...

According to the Army Times, it does have a thermal add on:
"But even without the goggle, the NGSW Fire Control can use the rapid target acquisition feature to better lock onto targets. An in-line thermal sight can be added in front of the device to give thermal options as well.

The user won’t even have to remove the fire control to mount the thermal, which is the case with some optics now"
So I guess that takes care of the night vision issue.

Let's get back on topic for now. We are heading into the danger zone with our discussions about the ENVG B and XM157.

My main point was that the system we see being adopted by the PLA is more or less simply a compact light intensification system. Which is why I don’t think comparing to ENVG works.
Limiting comparison to conventional night vision only systems makes more sense due to the limitations. Comparison between an NVG only vs a multi spectrum fused sensor system is like comparing a brand new tablet to a flat screen monitor. Both are by old standards high Def and would 20 years ago be boggling to the mind. Yet the Tablets has so much more going on it’s a totally different standard.

Finally, some decent images of PAP's new combat uniforms that actually look color accurate.

A quick update, I did a follow up test with another identical plate. They are worse than I thought! Bad deformation failures against M80A1 and 3006 AP. Something is weird here, exported commercial plates by Norinco have done better. I don't want people to see these and assume that China can't make good plates, so I'll have to pair it up with one of those Norinco plates I think. The failure is because of the polyethylene backer. Neither round penetrates, but the deformation is melon sized.

Oxhide said:

A quick update, I did a follow up test with another identical plate. They are worse than I thought! Bad deformation failures against M80A1 and 3006 AP. Something is weird here, exported commercial plates by Norinco have done better. I don't want people to see these and assume that China can't make good plates, so I'll have to pair it up with one of those Norinco plates I think. The failure is because of the polyethylene backer. Neither round penetrates, but the deformation is melon sized.

Click to expand...

So what are the chances that your "source" instead of committing treason, simply bought one of many china's other oem plates and sent it to you with a huge markup?

pakje said:

So what are the chances that your "source" instead of committing treason, simply bought one of many china's other oem plates and sent it to you with a huge markup?

Click to expand...

The whacky part is that the other plate still stopped a tungsten round... something that those other oem plates cannot do. So, I must now do the painstaking process of checking quality and ungluing layers. It could've been damaged enroute.

Oxhide said:

A quick update, I did a follow up test with another identical plate. They are worse than I thought! Bad deformation failures against M80A1 and 3006 AP. Something is weird here, exported commercial plates by Norinco have done better. I don't want people to see these and assume that China can't make good plates, so I'll have to pair it up with one of those Norinco plates I think. The failure is because of the polyethylene backer. Neither round penetrates, but the deformation is melon sized.

Click to expand...

Thanks for these updates, super informative and interested, love your videos (as a Tarkov player lol)

I have a bit of info to add, perhaps it is relevant.

In April 2021, I tried to order some gear (plate carrier, belt) from Orange Tactical Gear (a small Chinese tactical gear company, some PLA/PAP units use their stuff), I chatted with the sales representative a bit since I asked if it is possible to change the size of the mag pouches to fit a original G36 mag. A bit after I've placed my order, he told me that he could not sell them to me and refunded me as "it is too difficult to get them overseas". Apparently there was a pretty big crackdown on shipping military gears to overseas buyers after a few incidents, the person did not say much but mentioned something about NVGs being sold to US buyers and it caused quite a stir.

I assume you got your plates/gear/helmets from China recently, which is pretty interesting given that there appears to be a bit of crack down on this last year.

On your note about the weird performance of the second identical PLA plate, could it be possible you got "defect products" from the original manufacture? I am by no means familiar with military production processes, but my parents knew folks who operate factories that produce other goods in China (fashion items like cloth and bags for European luxury brands), apparently sometimes some people from these factories secretly sell products that did not make the QA/QC process to interested buyers for a discount. The items are still made to the same quality but suffer from minor defects that are not suitable to go to proper buyers and are rejected and sent back to the factory, but folks who work at factory will try to secretly sell these out to a few people to make some quick gain.

Do you you think it is possible that the plates you got are OEM plates but are defected and did not pass the QA/QC process? Perhaps that can explain the inconsistent performance and how you are able to get these things even after last year's crack down?

EdgeOfEcho said:

Thanks for these updates, super informative and interested, love your videos (as a Tarkov player lol)

I have a bit of info to add, perhaps it is relevant.

In April 2021, I tried to order some gear (plate carrier, belt) from Orange Tactical Gear (a small Chinese tactical gear company, some PLA/PAP units use their stuff), I chatted with the sales representative a bit since I asked if it is possible to change the size of the mag pouches to fit a original G36 mag. A bit after I've placed my order, he told me that he could not sell them to me and refunded me as "it is too difficult to get them overseas". Apparently there was a pretty big crackdown on shipping military gears to overseas buyers after a few incidents, the person did not say much but mentioned something about NVGs being sold to US buyers and it caused quite a stir.

I assume you got your plates/gear/helmets from China recently, which is pretty interesting given that there appears to be a bit of crack down on this last year.

On your note about the weird performance of the second identical PLA plate, could it be possible you got "defect products" from the original manufacture? I am by no means familiar with military production processes, but my parents knew folks who operate factories that produce other goods in China (fashion items like cloth and bags for European luxury brands), apparently sometimes some people from these factories secretly sell products that did not make the QA/QC process to interested buyers for a discount. The items are still made to the same quality but suffer from minor defects that are not suitable to go to proper buyers and are rejected and sent back to the factory, but folks who work at factory will try to secretly sell these out to a few people to make some quick gain.

Do you you think it is possible that the plates you got are OEM plates but are defected and did not pass the QA/QC process? Perhaps that can explain the inconsistent performance and how you are able to get these things even after last year's crack down?

Click to expand...

I went through my chat history with the sales at OTG (maybe he's the owner who knows, it is a small firm). I ordered my gear on Feb 22 of 2021, he told me he'll send to order to the factory, and that the gear should be ready by mid March.

But on March 22nd, he told me that "things have been a bit tight". Although all the stuff is ready to ship, he could not ship it. He also unlisted all his stuff from Taobao. Around this time a few major military forums in China also got shut down. I asked if these could be related, he said "Probably a bit"

Then on April 9th, he said that he should be able to ship the gear to me by the end of the month, but he just refunded me on April 21st saying that "it is too strict, I'm a bit afraid of the consequences if this goes through" and asked if I have family members in China that he could ship to. I said yeah, and asked if having my family members shipping it overseas to me would be a good idea, he said "best not to to ship it outside of the country, that brings trouble" and added "folks from the US that brought night vision equipment recently caused a lot of trouble here" and that was the end of our chat.

A bit of random info, but I feel like it is relevant to our current topic...

EdgeOfEcho said:

Thanks for these updates, super informative and interested, love your videos (as a Tarkov player lol)

I have a bit of info to add, perhaps it is relevant.

In April 2021, I tried to order some gear (plate carrier, belt) from Orange Tactical Gear (a small Chinese tactical gear company, some PLA/PAP units use their stuff), I chatted with the sales representative a bit since I asked if it is possible to change the size of the mag pouches to fit a original G36 mag. A bit after I've placed my order, he told me that he could not sell them to me and refunded me as "it is too difficult to get them overseas". Apparently there was a pretty big crackdown on shipping military gears to overseas buyers after a few incidents, the person did not say much but mentioned something about NVGs being sold to US buyers and it caused quite a stir.

I assume you got your plates/gear/helmets from China recently, which is pretty interesting given that there appears to be a bit of crack down on this last year.

On your note about the weird performance of the second identical PLA plate, could it be possible you got "defect products" from the original manufacture? I am by no means familiar with military production processes, but my parents knew folks who operate factories that produce other goods in China (fashion items like cloth and bags for European luxury brands), apparently sometimes some people from these factories secretly sell products that did not make the QA/QC process to interested buyers for a discount. The items are still made to the same quality but suffer from minor defects that are not suitable to go to proper buyers and are rejected and sent back to the factory, but folks who work at factory will try to secretly sell these out to a few people to make some quick gain.

Do you you think it is possible that the plates you got are OEM plates but are defected and did not pass the QA/QC process? Perhaps that can explain the inconsistent performance and how you are able to get these things even after last year's crack down?

Click to expand...

Ok, returning from more sleuthing! I got with other armor testing friends and discussed what could be happening.

I did do the proper twist/tap test and I peeled back some of the ceramic to check for any damage before shooting and didn't see any. I also saw consistent damage and spiderweb cracking along the impacts, nothing to suggest defects.

The reality is this: the plates are simply not manufactured to resist .30 cal rounds from a 20 inch barrel at 15 feet. The polyethylene backer is simply too low quality, and the ceramic is too thin compared to Russian and American plates that also use poly backers. I saw this same effect on the American IHPS helmet, where the round is stopped but the deformation is fatal because of weak/insufficient polyethylene.

I was wrong in my earlier post today, my bad! Even Norinco subsidiary Silicon (strike face marked) plates fail to stop a lot of this stuff according to other testers (Buffmanrange).

However, to be a broken record here, this plate is unlike those commercial plates in that it has a monolithic ceramic body. There are no Chinese export plates that have monolithic ceramic, not militech, not those weird tacticalxmen plates, not the strike face plates, nobody! It would be great if yall could prove me wrong on this fact!

Because I can't find any Chinese commercial plate with the monolithic ceramic, this must be a military plate. However this commercial vs military argument is still bizarre, because the PLA and PAP use commercial plates in addition. (The English "strike face" marked plates!) Those commercial plates have been extensively tested in the US.

The visually identical Alu Oxide (again strike face marked) Norinco subsidiary plates that you can see tested in this video () deform quite a bit less then the SiC plates under the same .30 cal rounds, however the deformation is still quite bad for the NIJ level 4 3006 AP threat.

After my inspection and examination of these mystery "military" plates I am confident that they are simply weaker than western and Russian plates. They're still good enough to get the job done and protect in typical wartime engagements, but other plates stop the same rounds with no deformation under the same strenuous test while being lighter.

I still have to retest with M855A1 next week. I'm pretty confident they'll be able to stop military 556 with acceptable limits. But the fact is I shouldn't have to use 556 on them. Its like sinking to a new low, they're just flat out mediocre plates.