After stunning success (relatively speaking) with the Percussive Cannon and Mine, R&D has developed what it believes will be the next stage in personnel armor: Percussive Wavefront armor! The armor not only provides reflec armor qualities, it also detects incomming projectiles (slugs, thrown objects, etc) and fires a percussive wave of sound to deflect them, thus preventing injury to the wearer! The system is worn over existing reflect and straps on like a life-jacket, buckling in front. It doesn't weigh much, and should remain out of the way for almost all phyical action.

Part 1: It does WHAT?!?
The PWA system is fairly simple, motion sensors detect anything small and moving at damaging speeds and fires a soundwave in the direction of the object in order to stop it. The amount of force is roughly equal to the detected kinetic energy of the projectile, and should be enough to either stop it cold or slow it to almost no speed. Kickback is minimized by firing a wide dispersion of energy in the reverse direction.

Part 2: Functionality
In lab tests, the jacket is very accurate and scored impressive rates on all sorts of things fired, thrown or launched at it. It is limited in that it can only track one object at a time given the current scan and processing system, future systems might allow for multiple targeting, but this causes real stress on the percussive projectors. Therefore, any machine-gun attack is still likely to succeed (every 5th slug getting tracked and blocked) and the system cannot repel especially large or fast objects given the limitations of carrying around both the scanning and firing equipment.

Part 3: Limitations and Issues
There are a few:

• The system cannot tell the difference between something coming at it and the wearer moving AT something. Like the floor during a fall. Imagine hitting a wall of sound a foot above the ground...
• As mentioned, high-powered shells are too much for the system. It will try... which will either slow the projectile down or cause it to veer.
• Anyone standing near the wearer when it fires is prone to getting hit by the anti-kickback system. This could be messy.
• If the system is damaged, it might begin to mis-judge things as being threats. Or it might just start firing madly.
• The system uses a first-spotted, first-repelled system, meaning if a one object is targeted and a faster object passes it, the system will not re-target until it has blocked the slower object.
• If a clone has his back against a wall/floor/whatever and the system fires, he will likely be thrown forward rather rudely by the anti-kickback system. Whiplash!