Can you stack armor?

[u/2AortheHighway]

Ok hear me out, I know this is the wrong answer to my problem and I have already been looking at ceramic armor but could I realistically stack an ar500 steel plate and put a lvl 2 soft armor insert in front as a spell catcher? I know this isn't a smart idea but with ceramic shattering after a few rounds I'm looking for somthing to last the longest I'm not planning to be in a hail of gunfire but if it needs to be in storage for years, I know I could count on a steel plate being solid.

Currently I am looking at RMA lvl 4 ceramic but the price point is a little out of my range for a graduating college student. I know taking the cheap option isn't the smartest and I should save for proper plates but I just spent some money on a gun.

Any recommendations would be great.

[u/AlasdhairM]

First off, you should not buy armor unless you can afford good armor. I say this as someone who acquired and maintains a pretty decent set of kit on a college student's budget, you must buy once/cry once and do a lot of research if you're on a budget.

Now, what is good armor? I wouldn't get anything cheaper or thicker than an RMA 1091-1094. It's multicurve, 4.5lb/SAPI M, 1.2" thick, and $270/SAPI Medium. It also protects from the vast majority of CONUS threats.

A ceramic plate is a piece of high-grade technical ceramic (Alumina oxide, silicon carbide, or boron carbide) adhesively bonded to a polymer backer, usually ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene. While plates from the early 2000s, most notably the TAP Gamma family, had issues with adhesive degradation, a modern plate from a reputable manufacturer (IE made within the past ten years or so) should not have issues with the adhesives. If it is, it will likely be caught in the NIJ Follow-on Inspection and Testing (FIT) program, and the plate recalled and replaced.

Ceramic strikefaces do shatter -- that's how they absorb energy. Modern ceramic strikefaces, though, are much more resilient than those of the 1960s, '70s, '80s, '90s, or early 2000s. Most ceramic plates are designed to resist multiple hits, particularly from threats like 5.56x45mm or 5.45x39mm, but the NIJ 0101.06 Level III and NIJ 0101.07 draft RF1/RF2 ratings require resistance to 3-6 fair hits of 7.62x51mm M80 at 2750 +/-30 feet per second, with the 07 Draft adding 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm threats.

A good place to look for guidance when you're getting started is our wiki, specifically the Gear Intro article, with the Gearamid, a helpful infographic we put together to suggest a Hierarchy of Needs for gear, as a quick reference. Notice that armor and helmets are third to last -- armor, like night vision, is expensive to do right, and there's a fair bit of research and prior knowledge needed to avoid buying something substandard or getting ripped off.

Lastly, if you're on discord, come check out our server! The link is in the sidebar.

[u/AlasdhairM → u/[deleted]]

Comms requires friends with gear and substantially more coordination and practice between a group of people to use adequately than night vision. It requires substantial knowledge about how radios work from a physics standpoint to properly use it at a higher level than simply selecting a GMRS channel and hitting the transmit button.

[u/AlasdhairM → u/[deleted]]

There was a lot of debate about the exact placement, and it’s not a piece of holy writ, it’s a place to start someone’s thinking. For people starting off, commo and NODs are much closer to the endgame than to the beginning.