Frag Out! Magazine

three most important elements: MOBILITY, LETHALITY, and SURVIVABILITY. Distortion of the dependencies between those factors will make the equipment too heavy, but protecting large areas of the body or too light and without sufficient protection. Striking the happy medium is of key significance when it comes to design, especially for units profiled to operate in mountainous regions. innovations – materials Currently, innovations in the field of personal equipment are powered with solutions used in the outdoor market – the grow- ing popularity of mountain sports and the number of modern technologies that enable creation of very light and resistant gear result in the fact that the today's military world draws inspira- tion from the market of extreme tourism. The times when the tourists were those who use military solutions are long gone – for disbelievers, I suggest visiting Outdoor Retailer or ISPO fares. That is now the way in which equipment is introduced in the army – the opportunities are opened by purchases made by operators of special forces. It is the outdoor industry that introduces light and wonderful breathable laminates with vapor permeable membranes of high performance parameters (waterproofness and wind resistance), such as Gore-TEX Active Shell or Polartec NeoShell, intelligent adaptive membranes that change their properties depending on weather conditions, as well as perfectly breathable soft shell (very often flexible) materials. The outdoor market gave the world natural down with hydrophobic finishing, thanks to which goose down maintains its properties after being soaked (that was its greatest disadvantage that resulted in development of synthetic insulation like Primaloft or Climashield – those provide warmth even when wet). Among materials used in sewing of personal equipment or back- packs, the used materials are not only nylon, like materials of INVISTA Cordura, which constitute a standard of the industry, but also hybrid laminates based on nylons and durable polyethylene fibers (e.g. Dynema or Silnylon) – they are very light, while their durability is higher than that of nylon. Kodura, Kodra, or other cheap polyesters are low-class materials that should not be used in production of military equipment. The feature that is being developed for clothing and gear pro- duced for the military is flame resistance provided thanks to finishing and through the content of the material, which helps in improving the time of exposure to gust and fire caused by an ex- plosion. The second element is the use of materials that absorb infrared radiation and do not result in "glowing" in night vision ANALYSIS

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