As the Marines themselves note, “body armor can be traced back to before the Roman Empire, when war was waged with sword and spear and the battlefield rang with the clash of steel on steel.” In time, its protection became so formidable that an armored, mounted warrior feared few enemies. A string of reverses from Crecy on into the age of gunpowder led to a growing offensive ascendancy, however, and led to hundreds of years of warriors who headed into battle without any armor.
In recent decades, modern technology began to offer new materials with remarkable properties, as Kevlar and flak jackets appeared that could stop some shrapnel and low-end bullets. Special Forces experiments eventually led to designs that added plate inserts of metal, or of increasingly advanced ceramics. Which brings us to the present day, where soldiers from advanced militaries are once again heading into battle with 30-50 pounds of body armor.
Its protection is rather less total than that provided by the knight’s medieval plate, but a lot of soldiers are still alive because of the protection it does provide, even against high powered rifles. Even so, the modern soldiers shares one complaint with the medieval knight: their heavy armor, which can limit mobility, and heats up quickly.
