Tag Archives: female body armor

Female Screaming Eagles get prototype armor

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Beginning with the tip of the sword, female soldiers of the 101st Infantry Division (Air Assault) the famous “Screaming Eagles” of D-Day, are testing prototype body armor designed just for women. The downside is that the stuff still weighs 23-pounds.

It’s important to have body armor that fits, no matter who you are — male or female,” Dillon explained.

In reference to Female Engagement Teams who are often on patrol while deployed with infantry units, Dillon added “it’s very important that their body armor fits them just as well as the male Soldiers standing on their left and right.”

Lynne Hennessey, a clothing designer for the Design, Pattern and Prototype Team at Natick, said 85 percent of female Soldiers do not fit properly into the extra small IOTV currently in widespread use. When designing the female IOTV Generation III prototype, Hennessey’s first concern was improving the fit.

“[Previously] it was more fitting the females like a cage,” she said. “There was nothing curving, nothing bending about it. They would sit down and [the vest] would rise up.”

http://www.army.mil/article/86057/101st_Airborne_Division_female_Soldiers_first_to_test_prototype_body_armor/

Female warriors without shields

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M16A2- check
M9 in drop leg holster- check
Body armor- um, about that……

The CS Monitor is covering the issue of female soldiers, sailors, and marines being unable to get body armor that fits from official channels.

When Natasha Young deployed to Iraq in 2007, she was the gunnery sergeant for a Marine Corps Explosive Ordinance Device company, responsible for delivering much-needed supplies to units throughout violent Anbar Province in western Iraq.

Body armor had been in tight supply during her first deployment to Iraq in 2005. But by 2007, the issue was quality, says Ms. Young, who finished her Marine Corps career in 2011 as a staff sergeant with 12 years of service.

“The stuff that you could buy online, on the commercial market, had a better safety rating, more coverage, a better fit,” she says.

This was doubly true for female troops using military-issued body armor