Armor

Swords & Armor Information Armor is protective plates or clothing meant to shield a human from intentionally inflicted harm. Armor has been in use for all recorded history, beginning with hides, leather, bone, progressing to bronze, steel, ballistic cloth, ceramics, and depleted uranium. Armor has been primarily a way to protect oneself from harm in combat and military engagements.

Armor also often refers in a modern military context to the armored fighting vehicle and the formations based around them.

All through history, the development of weapons and armor have literally been an arms race, leading to different developments in different civilizations.

All different parts of the human body have been fitted with specialized armor pieces, and an extensive nomenclature has grown up around this. The head and face is covered by a helmet (with the face protection sometimes being a visor), hand and fingers by gauntlets, the chest by a breastplate, the lower legs by greaves and so on. Often different Armor pieces will cover overlapping parts of the body, as different materials and developments in armor made for shifting fashions.

Armor parts may be manufactured using a wide variety of materials and forms. During the Middle Ages, cloth, soft leather, boiled leather, chainmail and steel plates were often used. Today, ballistic cloth and ceramic plates are the most common choices, often combined with metal alloy plates.

In European history, common armor types were the lorica segmentata, the chainmail hauberk, the gambeson and later the full steel plate armor used by late medieval knights. In feudal Japan, lacquered lamellar armors were popular.

Today, bullet proof vests made of ballistic cloth and metal plates are common among police forces, security staff and in some branches of the military. For infantry applications, lighter protection is often used to protect soldiers from grenade fragments and indirect effects of bombardment, but usually not small arms fire. The is because the increased protection would be too cumbersome and heavy to use in combat.







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