Since the earliest times of organized warfare, body armor has been a part of soldiers' personal gear. The earliest accounts of armor date to the third millennium BC, although there is evidence of offensive weapons as early as the seventh millennium BC (Hackett, 1989), suggesting that the history of armor is probably just as old. Even though this process of development was almost entirely empirical, the extensive knowledge amassed over thousands of years gave rise to a wide range of extremely effective armor systems. High-strength synthetic materials and other contemporary innovations have built on this to create systems that shield wearers from knives, shell fragments, and projectiles.
Hard and soft body armor are the two types of body armor used today. Hard body armor is constructed from ceramic or metal plates. High-performance fabric layers make up the majority of soft body armor. Law enforcement officials, who are more likely to encounter low-level ballistic threats, typically utilize soft body armor alone or in combination with hard body armor in order to provide adequate ballistic protection.
It was argued that a bullet entering a human body creates a hole in the tissue and does significant harm. Even if penetration is averted, internal damage to human muscles or organs is still possible. 4 Despite this, body armor continues to be extremely important in saving lives. Body armor decreased the rate of fatal penetration chest injuries from 39% in the Vietnam War to 14% in Somalia, according to statistics gathered from a retrospective examination of all combat fatalities suffered by US military forces in Mogadishu, Somalia.