From:	Paul J. Adam Paul@********.demon.co.uk
Subject:	SOTA
Date:	Tue, 13 Jul 1999 01:28:13 +0100

In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.990712150043.8002C-100000@*******>, Marc
Renouf <renouf@********.com> writes
>On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Gurth wrote:
>> That only means I have to adjust my example slightly. Take an armor jacket
>> -- 5/3 armor, so it'll reduce the damage of a contemporary assault rifle
>> to 3M. After some time, this will be a 1/3 armor jacket, but the exact
>> same assault rifle is now only reduced to 7M. This does not feel right to
>> me...
> Okay, now you've lost me. What's so hard about this? Sure, the
>rifle hasn't changed, but perhaps it's ammunition has. It's now firing a
>type of ammo that's better at defeating modern body armor. So your old
>armor jacket is going to stop correspondingly less energy from the rounds
>that hit. The round may do little extra actual tissue damage (i.e. it
>still has the same power level against unarmored targets) but it handles
>armor better.

The problem is, this has historically happens on a cycle measured in
decades. 5.56mm for assault rifles turned up in the 1960s and nobody's
offering anything better yet. 9mm Para and .45ACP both turned up in the
1900s and remain popular and widespread today.

New armour materials? Sure, Kevlar was better than ballistic nylon. But
that didn't make nylon flak vests less effectives; the replacements were
better.

> I dunno. SOTA definitely has some holes, but on the whole, it's
>not a bad system. It does what's intended without getting crazy about it.

It moves too fast and in the wrong direction, IMHO.


--
Paul J. Adam