Asked by: John Spellar (Labour - Warley)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment his Department has made of the (a) effectiveness, (b) health and safety and (c) comfort of the current standard of military body armour.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
VIRTUS is the current military body armour used by personnel across Defence.
Military body armour is designed to improve the wearer’s survivability by protecting them from a variety of blast and fragmentation threats; but it also must be balanced against the wider system requirements – specifically mobility and lethality. Combat effectiveness is measured by the overall interaction between protection, mobility, and firepower.
The current military body armour (VIRTUS) has been developed with DSTL and assessed against industry standards. It was developed to address previously identified capability gaps. It was subjected to field and lab trials testing which concluded that the VIRTUS system increased agility and overall performance..
Military body armour (VIRTUS) complies with current UK Health and Safety at Work legal requirements and meets all other legal and Ministry of Defence obligations.
The current in service body armour (VIRTUS) was consistently rated more favourably in respect of comfort than the other systems in the majority of questions during initial trials, and subjective evaluations relating to usability and functionality were predominately positive. Defence is constantly seeking to refine the capability, and has recently developed a wider variety of body armour accessories for those with smaller statures.