kwaigonegin
Colonel
Unless there's the addtional armor plate insert I would say no.
Infantry Combat Equipment (non-firearm): Vests, Body Armor, NVGs, etc.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
What military vest aren’t plate carriers these days? Pure Kevlar would not spot military rounds, so there would be little point in wearing vests without plates.
What those guys need most of all are gloves.
Here's a video from HunanTV showing behind the scenes of the Doklam standoff. The soldier that the story follows is from Hunan as well.
Combat vest at @3:50 during a live fire rapid deployment drill to the border with 30 mins to prepare 7 days of supplies.
The order: 30 minutes to prepare to be deployed to the border, long duration, important mission, don't be afraid to face hardships, don't be afraid to die, commit to completing the mission. Due the secret nature of the mission, the exact orders were not told to the soldiers at the time.
Combat vest at @3:50 during a live fire rapid deployment drill to the border with 30 mins to prepare 7 days of supplies.
The order: 30 minutes to prepare to be deployed to the border, long duration, important mission, don't be afraid to face hardships, don't be afraid to die, commit to completing the mission. Due the secret nature of the mission, the exact orders were not told to the soldiers at the time.
- Over 50 km of trenches were built near the stand off area.
- In the trenches @16:00
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They need more than gloves. They need individual radios and ear-protection for every single infantryman and a lot more ammo than the 4-5 magazines that they carry on the man.
At least they have the body armor now. But I guess it would take a few dozen dead PLA soldiers until the brass is willing to spend money on the PLA infantryman.
At least they have the body armor now. But I guess it would take a few dozen dead PLA soldiers until the brass is willing to spend money on the PLA infantryman.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Unfortunately you are right.. there are certain things, perhaps even things that may be considered trivial that are easily overlooked until you are battle hardened and unfortunately blood spilled before things improved. Some things or improvements can only be attained from actual warfare.
Gloves for example may be considered trivial until you try changing the superhot barrel of a machine gun or find yourself in a hand to hand CQB combat with an opponent. A person wearing hardened knuckled and cut resistant tactical gloves will also have an advantage over someone not wearing one for example. If you injure your hand/fingers and there are a million ways to do so, you are essentially useless as a frontline soldier.
Even things like RWS and slat armor on vehicles came about from lessons learned through wartime experience. No way the designers would've even thought about it in their original design specs.
SinoSoldier
Colonel
Some more photos from the 2018 Police Exhibition in China:
Gear from Huntec:
Some other interesting setups:
Gear from Huntec:
Some other interesting setups:
I'm trying to find explanation for how under equipped they are, however I have nothing. It's actually quite unexcuseable considering PLA had much time observing the evolution of gears from other nations, yet taking so long to catch up even for FRONTLINE TROOPS. It reeks of unpreparedness mentally and logistically.
MwRYum
Major
That's what happened when 3 decades without war. A term Chinese adopted in recent time called such as "和平病", loosely translate as "peace syndrome". To cure is to have a war to fight, of course, preferably a short shooting war that hammer home those calls to deal with those shortcomings all the way up the foodchain.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
It’s simply unreasonable to compare the general issue gear of a nation at peace compared to others that are actively engaged in armed conflicts.
These were PLA troops (at a low priority backwater boarder region let’s not forget) who got pulled from barricks with maybe hours of notice to an emerging situation. So of course they are not going to be as well prepared as US troops who have been deployed to a foreign combat zone for combat operations that have lasted over a decade.
You just don’t spent that kind of money for operational consumables in peacetime. Even US forces would not be so well equipped without the hundreds of billions of extra operational funding they got for fighting those wars.
Even the US had massive logistical issues at the started of the invasion of Iraq. Ear protection, eye protection and top end combat gloves etc were not standard issue. Hell, a lot of US and allied troops spent their own money on things like that, and other items you guys seem to think the PLA should be issuing as standard, like optics, batteries and even body armour (definitely happened with the British, not sure about the Americans).
Besides, PLA troops deployed on foreign missions are all issued with eye protection, so maybe they also got hearing protection, but since that is hard to spot from photos, it’s a bit of a question mark.
I am sure had the boarder conflict turned hot, elite PLA reinforcements coming for to actually fight would have been far better equipped.