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Body Armor On the Way to GIs

The United States Army announced yesterday that it will soon start producing 230,000 sets of side armor plates and field them over the year to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, after a recently disclosed Pentagon study indicated that such plates could have helped prevent scores of troop deaths since 2003. More than 2,200 American troops have died in Iraq since March 2003, 1,741 of them in combat, according to Pentagon figures as of yesterday.

The forensic study of 401 Marines who died in combat in Iraq from March 2003 to June 2005 showed that 21 died primarily from injuries to the side of their torsos. The study, completed in August 2005 by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, concluded that those Marines might have benefited from improved protection, such as that offered by the side plates.

The Marine Corps has delivered 9,000 sets of the plates to Iraq, a number that will rise to about 30,000 by April, officials said yesterday. Each set of plates, together with a carrier and soft armor, costs about $450 and weighs about seven pounds. The Marine Corps finalized contracts for the production of the side plates in mid-September and production began six weeks later, with distribution starting in November, said Col. Shawn Reinwald.