Gundam infantry body armor?

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Nebfer
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Gundam infantry body armor?

I was wondering, I do not recall seeing much if any body armor used by UC era Gundam.

So do they use any form of body armor in UC gundam or any of the other time lines? If not why?
Kratos
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

ECOAS clearly uses some sort of body armor - you can see it in action during the Vist Mansion raid in the first episode of Unicorn. Nothing sticks out in my mind beyond that, though perhaps traditional body armor is seen as unnecessary in a war where soldiers aren't really deployed on foot the way they are today.
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Fall_Ryan
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Infantrymen are still common, at least early in the history of MS warfare, look at Igloo 2.

Crappy, obvious answers-
The focus of the show isn't those poor jerks toting rifles around and getting squished by armor.

The whole everyone wearing a plate carrier thing is pretty new. When Gundam came out, the most common armor for an infantryman was a Flak Jacket, and typically guys wore those during static operations, too heavy and bulky for the field. Even as armor got better and lighter, you didn't start to see them equipping pretty much every infantry trooper until the late 90's

More Universe friendly answers-

The world has been at peace for a really, really long time, small arms and infantry equipment development stalled and, regardless of what was known, until the war there never any real need to give Joe Fed Armor or any load bearing gear beyond a pistol belt, some suspenders, and a couple pouches. He was just standing guard outside the local government building, right? Everyone was putting every effort on their Armor and naval capabilities.

Most of the troops we see are second line, or crew types, not infantry. Armor crew and pilots don't wear them either. In Igloo, I don't recall any of those poor sods on the line wearing any kind of armor however.

WE DO see Armor on the aforementioned ECOAS troopers, and the Cyclops team wears Flak Jackets when they attack the EFF base on Side 6. Shiro Amada and company wear some kind of vest in the last few episodes of the show, but I have no clue if it's supposed to be armor or just a padded vest. I suspect the latter.
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Ryujin
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Iirc, CCA showed infantry equipped with body armour in the early scenes where Quess's friends were being arrested.
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Wingnut
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Those were also local cops, not military folk.
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Zeonista
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Body armor was rarely seen before the mid-Eighties, when dependable Kevlar armor in various thicknesses became available enough to issue it to soldiers and policemen. The "Ranger armor" with ceramic support plates were not available for non-special forces in the First Gulf War c. 1990. Many memoirs of the Vietnam War by American soldier were dismissive of the armor vests available at the time. They were called "chicken vests" and thought poorly of because of the added weight and heat for seemingly little protection. Aside from the helicopter door gunners, who were glad of any protection, most American troops did not wear the vests. Few other nations could afford to provide ballistic armor for their soldiers. That's how things stood in 1979, when Tomino was creating the first Gundam series. Besides, soldiers had fought the entirety of World War II without a need for body armor, so it didn't have to be a feature.

These days in the wake of the Second Gulf War it seems only natural for soldiers to have body armor. But in the Universal Century it could be open to debate if infantry battle armor was seen as a necessary military expenditure or not.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

You know something that bugged me about some of the "modern" Gundam anime is where Infantry wore a full-on uniform similar to those wore by others in the series along with tactical gear and helmet. A good example of this is in SEED which has both ZAFT and the Alliance Infantry doing this. The only real change to this is the Normal Suits, plus tactical gear worn by the ZAFT Commandos in the first few episodes of the series. I would think they would wear some sort of fatigues or BDUs underneath the gear.
Nebfer
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Zeonista wrote:Body armor was rarely seen before the mid-Eighties, when dependable Kevlar armor in various thicknesses became available enough to issue it to soldiers and policemen. The "Ranger armor" with ceramic support plates were not available for non-special forces in the First Gulf War c. 1990. Many memoirs of the Vietnam War by American soldier were dismissive of the armor vests available at the time. They were called "chicken vests" and thought poorly of because of the added weight and heat for seemingly little protection. Aside from the helicopter door gunners, who were glad of any protection, most American troops did not wear the vests. Few other nations could afford to provide ballistic armor for their soldiers. That's how things stood in 1979, when Tomino was creating the first Gundam series. Besides, soldiers had fought the entirety of World War II without a need for body armor, so it didn't have to be a feature.

These days in the wake of the Second Gulf War it seems only natural for soldiers to have body armor. But in the Universal Century it could be open to debate if infantry battle armor was seen as a necessary military expenditure or not.

Well the Russians had SN-42 during WW2 which was supposedly popular enough with the Assault troops fighting in closer quarters (I.e. urban). Though it was supposedly less popular with units in more open terrain, it was resilient to 9mm rounds at 100m.
However In the US body armor was slow during WW2, out side of the well known flak vest used by bomber crews, it was little used on the ground, however at the end of the war the M12 was adopted which was a 12 pound vest with aluminum inserts, the M-1952 Flak vest was widely used in Korea (and even wider in Vietnam) it was a 8 pound vest made with 12 layers of Nylon, over 60,000 vests AFAIK where issued during the conflict, they where popular, though complaints about comfortability and being "hot" was noted.

Though the 1971 introduction of Kevlar revolutionized protection, as the vests up until then where largely intended to stop fragments which was a major cause of battlefield casualtys, even until the mid 1990s fragmentation was the major concern, when the introduction of ceramic plates allowed rifle grade protection, though their was some use of ceramic plates in earlier armors. Like the vests used by Chopper crews (particularly the earlier models which had the plates a bit to long, later models shortened the ceramic plates and where more comfortable to ware), Doron (a type of Fiberglass) for instance was often used in inserts during the late 40s to the 70s (the USMC armors of the era often combined Nylon and Doron, the US army just Nylon).

As I write this I wonder if the notion of that by UC 90 body armor was coming back into fashion at lest for selected units, that if perhaps early on body armor fell out of favor, after all IIRC the Federation was largely a one world government is it not, and was for the most part at peace with it self. So if their is no major operations perhaps the infantry/brass questioned the need for the armor, after all out side of showing the flag and perhaps some minor operations it's a 5-15 kg weight and a not so small cost (perhaps as much as the cost of a rifle...).

M1952 which was the armor used in the early parts of Vietnam cost at the time about $40 to produce, which in todays terms is between 300 and 400 USD.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Non-canon, but in the manga story 宇宙のイシュタム(Ixtab of space) drawn and written by the second half director of 08th MS team, Iida Umanosuke, the EFSF had an infantry powered armour in development at the start of OYW, and was used to set up a nuclear bomb inside the dropping colony to reduce the damage, they even made use of a programmed action of the powered armour so after the main protagonist's head was blown off and the enemy though the threat was over, the armour reactivated(without the head) and finished activating the bomb. Shiro Amada witnessed and even helped in the operation and later joined the EFF.
Quite a lot of thought was put into the accuracy in science, but it does not go along well with the UC world.(Powered armour being too decisively powerful rendering
teslashark
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Re: Gundam infantry body armor?

Hmm, I wonder if you can make Gundarium or E-carbon into ballistic plates?
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