Amid bursting bombs, services seek better body armor.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: IN THE BULL'S-EYE

As roadside bombs take an increasingly costly toll among U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military services are struggling to provide more effective body armor for deployed forces.

In Iraq, insurgents now are attacking coalition forces with improvised explosive devices--IEDs--an estimated 30 times a week, representing "about a hundred percent increase from last year," Brig. Gen. Ives J. Fontaine, head of the 1st Corps Support Command, told reporters.

At press time, the combined number of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan had climbed to 2,078 dead and 14,575 wounded since hostilities began in 2001.

Amid this carnage, protecting U.S. troops from such attacks is "a top priority," Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, assured the Senate Armed Services Committee.

All military and civil-service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, have been issued the Interceptor Body Armor system, he said. By 2006, the Army plans to field 840,000 of them, including 788,000 for operational forces, 30,000 for training bases and 22,000 for contingencies.

The Interceptor system, first introduced in 1998 by Point Blank Body Armor Inc., of Pompano Beach, Fla., includes an outer tactical vest (OTVs) and ceramic plates, called small-arms protective inserts (SAPIs), designed to shield against small-arms fire and bomb fragments.

With a combined weight of 16.7 pounds, the Interceptor is nine pounds lighter than the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops (PASGT), which it replaced. It also offers more protection. The Interceptor's vest--made with Kevlar, Cordura and Twaron--is designed to stop fragments and 9 mm pistol rounds.

The inserts are composite ballistic ceramic plates, made of boron carbide or silicon carbide, with a coated ballistic fiber backing. When they are added, the Interceptor can block 7.62 mm bullets, the kind fired by AK-47 automatic rifles.

The largest supplier of SAPI plates is ArmorWorks LLC, of Tempe, Ariz., according to the firm's president, William J. Perciballi. Since the invasion of Afghanistan, he told National Defense that ArmorWorks has shipped 350,000 SAPI sets to the Army, Marines and Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia. Last fall, Perciballi added, the company received another four-year contract, for $460 million, to deliver an additional 500,000 sets.

The increased protection provided by the Interceptor system is helping combat troopers to survive hits that might have killed them in previous wars.

In June, for example, Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic with the 256th Brigade Combat Team, was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper while on patrol in west Baghdad. He was knocked to the ground, but not seriously injured because of his body armor. He sprang to his feet, returned fire and helped his team track down and capture the sniper, who was wounded during the skirmish. Tschiderer ended up treating the sniper who shot him.

The Interceptor system, however, has its limitations. For one thing, it covers only the torso, with removable attachments for the groin and throat. For this reason, more than 80 percent of all battlefield wounds--according to some estimates--are to the extremities, the arms and...