IB, thanks for the refresher course. Not to be a stickler, but every military uniform I've ever seen was made of cotton, cotton-polyester blends, or wool, not Kevlar.
Military helmets are made of Kevlar. The standard-issue vests these days are new (in fact I think they were used for the first time in Afghanistan last year) and they are not made of Kevlar. They are made of thick ceramic plates which are wrapped in Kevlar, and they will stop an AK-47 round -- assuming that you get hit in the rib cage, chest or middle of your spine.
Kevlar on it's own won't stop AK-47 rounds from hurting and sometimes penetrating. Even police-issue vests, which are fifteen layers of Kevlar wrapped around a 6mm thick titanium plate, won't stop AP rounds fired out of an AK-47 (but they will stop standard rounds.)
My point in bringing all this up, is that the military spokesperson defending the action in this incident specifically stated that about 25 people in the crowd were firing AK-47's at the soldiers. Given the AK's cycle speed of several hundred rounds per minute, that's an awful lot of rounds flying to have every single shot miss. And, even if Kevlar could stave off nukes, if even one round actually hit a soldier that would be the headline, not the baker's dozen dead Iraqis. So to simply put off eek's observation regarding the lack of wounded soldiers based on the fact that the soldiers had on some Kevlar seems a little specious.
Phaedrus
Military helmets are made of Kevlar. The standard-issue vests these days are new (in fact I think they were used for the first time in Afghanistan last year) and they are not made of Kevlar. They are made of thick ceramic plates which are wrapped in Kevlar, and they will stop an AK-47 round -- assuming that you get hit in the rib cage, chest or middle of your spine.
Kevlar on it's own won't stop AK-47 rounds from hurting and sometimes penetrating. Even police-issue vests, which are fifteen layers of Kevlar wrapped around a 6mm thick titanium plate, won't stop AP rounds fired out of an AK-47 (but they will stop standard rounds.)
My point in bringing all this up, is that the military spokesperson defending the action in this incident specifically stated that about 25 people in the crowd were firing AK-47's at the soldiers. Given the AK's cycle speed of several hundred rounds per minute, that's an awful lot of rounds flying to have every single shot miss. And, even if Kevlar could stave off nukes, if even one round actually hit a soldier that would be the headline, not the baker's dozen dead Iraqis. So to simply put off eek's observation regarding the lack of wounded soldiers based on the fact that the soldiers had on some Kevlar seems a little specious.
Phaedrus
