Plastic body armor weighing 25 percent less than Kevlar will be available to U.S. troops by 2019, Stars and Stripes reports.
Called the Torso and Extremities Protection system, the armor is made for flexibility and range of motion and can be scaled up or down depending on the mission, Lt. Col. Kathy Brown, program manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment at the Army's Program Executive Office Soldier told Stripes. Instead of Kevlar, the gear uses polyethylene in soft body armor.
Now undergoing field testing, the armor system weighs about 23 pounds, shaving about seven pounds off the weight of existing issued body armor.
Brown told Stripes the Army and Marine Corps units who have field-tested the new gear have given positive reviews to date.
