What happened in the CAR has sparked debate about how best and when to use body armour, writes Helmoed Römer Heitman
The haunting of Bangui. That’s what you might call the ongoing controversy over how our troops were, or were not, protected when they went to war in the Central African Republic (CAR) in March.
Colonel Renier “Doibi” Coetzee, a senior South African Special Forces officer, has triggered a debate after speaking at the Land Forces Africa conference, attended by SANDF and other African officers, attachés and defence industry experts in Pretoria.
Two hundred South African troops fought more than 3 000 rebels for nearly two days. The question now being debated in the army, as in other armies, is how to develop better body armour.
We want to reduce fatal injuries to an absolute minimum.
Now, important discussion has to be had in the military about how to wear the flak jackets and the quality of our soldiers’ uniforms.
A great deal of the noise is being made by people who were not there to hear what Coetzee said at the press conference, and who have not tried to fight wearing body armour.
The points he made, as I understood them, were that several soldiers survived multiple hits on their body armour, punishment some armour would not handle. However, some of the troops said we need better flak jackets that are more practical to wear, and that we need to look at the type of body armour we issue and the drills for when and how to wear it. Those same points are made by British, Canadian, German and American officers in open defence journals and at conferences and in conversation with analysts.
It is therefore difficult to understand why the Department of Defence should have chosen to distance itself from the remarks attributed to Coetzee, remarks one would expect from a serious military professional.
Clearly, whoever drafted that statement did not have the full picture.
The question of when to wear body armour and, particularly, when to insert the ceramic plates into the basic ballistic jacket is subject to lively discussion among officers and soldiers of many armies involved in recent combat operations in various theatres.
The problem is that body armour is heavy, hot and uncomfortable, with the result that it both reduces the soldier’s endurance and his or her agility on the battlefield.
While wearing body armour may protect against rifle fire that hits the ceramic plates, which only cover the heart and lung area, it will not protect against heavy machinegun fire or against hits elsewhere on the body that can also prove fatal.
The very flak jacket that will stop a rifle bullet that hits the soldier in the chest or back can also so hamper his agility, that he becomes vulnerable to being shot in the head or in the body below the small ceramic plates, because an enemy has more time to aim with care. There have been several such cases in Afghanistan, for instance.
The weight and discomfort of wearing full armour can so exhaust soldiers, particularly in hot weather or rough terrain, as to render them incapable of catching more fleet-footed – with no body armour to weigh them down – guerrillas after a contact; or to escape when the need arises, as it sometimes will for the bravest and best-trained soldier.
There have been several such situations in Afghanistan that are the basis for considerable discussion in the British and US armies.
One of the key questions is that of an officer having the moral courage to instruct his soldiers to take off their body armour to be more agile, mobile and effective – and what then happens if he loses a soldier killed.
But the alternative is often to plod along, take cover when drawing fire, return it as best as possible and then resume plodding along, which rather defeats the purpose of patrolling.
Looking at the situation in Bangui in March, we need to consider the practicalities.
* The soldiers were engaged in fighting, albeit off and on, for almost 35 hours. That will have exhausted them, with the high daytime temperatures not helping.
* The paratroopers, who suffered all of the fatal casualties, were fighting in rough and hilly terrain, and twice had to counter-attack to recapture a feature west of the road they were blocking. Later, they had to fight and evade a vastly stronger force in the built-up part of Bangui itself. Both situations demand agility and endurance.
* In those circumstances, it would be quite understandable if some decided to remove the heavy ceramic plates. Particularly junior leaders, machine gunners, grenadiers or radio operators; the former because they need the agility to do their job, the latter because of the weight they have to carry.
The Special Forces group faced quite different situations, both that morning when they were ambushed on the road to Damara and then that afternoon when they fought a rearguard action against vastly stronger forces on the road from Bossembele.
On the one hand, they had more vehicles and fought mainly from and around their vehicles, which will have been not quite as exhausting; while on the other, they were fighting against enemies who came to within 10m of them – on both sides of the road – on several occasions, and were not in a position to take proper cover, leaving them exposed to fire much of the time and often at very close range.
Despite all those factors, as far as I am aware, only a very small number of our soldiers were killed by a bullet hit to the area that would be covered by the ceramic plates, which suggests that most were wearing their full armour and that it was effective.
Or, if some of the soldiers indeed took out the ceramic plates, that this so improved their agility that they were not hit in the first place.
It may also be that the Special Forces use different body armour and that it was their soldiers – forced to fight in the open – who took the multiple hits and lived to tell the tale.
But is their body armour suitable for use by other soldiers of normal fitness, and would they have worn it if they had not had vehicles and fought mainly from and around them? It might simply be too heavy for general use.
That, I believe, was the point Coetzee was making. The fighting around Bangui has provided the defence force and the army in particular with practical experience of fighting in very difficult circumstances.
There are many lessons to learn from the after-action reports. Some of those lessons will concern what body armour to use and when it should be worn and when not, and here we need to be as open in our discussions as other armies, because secret debriefings do not often lead to innovative solutions.
And it is innovative thinking and open exchange of experience and ideas with other armies that is required if we are to develop body armour that is effective and practical, giving both wider area protection and greater agility.
The analyses of those reports will not provide perfect answers, because every battle situation will be different, but these are things we must study and evaluate; and we need to understand that soldiers, senior commanders, field commanders and ordinary soldiers will often have to take those decisions under pressure and in situations of great danger.
And that there will be times when the practicalities of a situation will force them to act against procedures – back to moral courage, of which General George Patton said: it is “the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men”.
We must learn from experience; and that demands officers who speak out, and that demands that the rest of us listen and take note.
* Helmoed R ö mer Heitman is a defence analyst and author.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Newspapers
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