Infantry Combat Equipment (non-firearm): Vests, Body Armor, NVGs, etc.
- Thread starter by78
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Dude, have you not gotten the note, we changed to the zhan kong agency now.
Hi all, I recently acquired and tested a PLA issued Armor plate and what I think is a commercial Q03 helmet. Does anyone know more about PLA body armor? I can't find any info about this plate. I tested the plate and helmet and both did quite well. The plate stopped a tungsten 308 round. Failed against 308 slap however. I also tested a PAP issued W15 helmet earlier and it did fantastic as well.
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Looking forward to your video on this. but if you scroll back a few pages, people don't know if this is a legit OEM and standard PLA issued plate, or something else entirely. What I can say though (with a MASSIVE grain of salt), is that someone I spoke to who is presumed to work at a NORINCO factory as an engineer says that it managed to ricochet a .50bgm off its strike face. He added that despite not getting penetrated by the round, the force of impact was too great for whatever or whomever behind it to live.
Oh dear, it seems yall found my work already!
I should've checked the thread. Looks like I've been discovered already since the last time I viewed. Let me rail off a bunch of random information.
The carrier itself and helmet are for sure commercial. I think the camo pattern was banned from export recently.
The plate is PLA issue. However I can only prove this by process of elimination here. Commercial Chinese plates are not monolithic Silicon Carbide like this. They're also not usually marked in Mandarin. However the information label on the back was removed! One of the plates is much thinner than the other two. The performance is also absolutely astounding! Stopping tungsten isn't a common thing.
I'm also a little confused as to why there is a distinction between issued military plates and commercial market plates as the PLA uses both as far as I've noticed.
I've also seen Norinco "strike face" marked plates being falsely marketed as RMA plates in Europe, a first case of counterfeit (though still perfectly functional) body armor!
I think the Q19 helmet is polyethylene. Still trying to get my hands on one.
I actually have located a QBZ-95 with AP 5.8 ammo outside of China, though my commitment to the US Army prevents me from giving it a try. I can't travel OCONUS right now.
It would have to be a specialized plate, .50 cal proof plates are absolutely doable! Ceradyne made a 50 plate back in the day.
If anyone has any questions/information/corrections let me know! I don't want to put out the wrong info when the videos are finished. It happens sometimes.
These comments made my day. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but the reality of the PLA is that the soldiers are only slightly better than the Russians when it comes to corruption. The only thing that stops gear from falling off trucks en masse is the language barrier and mutual xenophobia.
Just say you don't know anything about the Chinese. At least then you would be more believable than that laughable statement you made.
It is a bit baseless, but to be fair, equipment showing up in places it shouldn't be is on par for the course for any procurement process. No military is monolithic in that regard. There's always that one dude or a few dude/gal that have ulterior motives whatever that may be.
While it's a pleasure to have someone of your background and military expertise to post on this forum and I look forward to learning from your insights, experience, American perspective, I have to quibble on the corruption charges you claim of the PLA rank and file and the PLA military in general. While what you said is maybe true, I hope you can't be flipping serious that corruption doesn't occur in your own service (US Army) and accross US military services because they exist and much have been publicized and I can only imagine as a non-American the extent of your militaries corruption that's hidden from public views.
Corruption isn't a Chinese or Russian thing, it's a human nature thing just what your Federalist paper 51 written by James Madison said: "If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
Again, I hope to read more from you and looking forward to your posts.
You look at the PLA as a whole and somehow you get the idea it's only slightly above Russia? The PLA and the Chinese government in general sure as heck wouldn't be where it is today if that were the case. Americans in general love exaggerating all things negatively when it comes to the PLA. That's corruption statement is asinine. I won't deny he is knowledgeable about the equipment though.