It's the world's most advanced body armor, and it's going to be fielded by Russia starting
in 2025.
Meet Sotnik, the lightest, most cutting edge armor that any soldier could want.
While modern body armor can offer limited protection from high caliber rounds, Sotnik
will do the impossible and stop a .50 caliber round dead in its tracks.
But just stopping a round is half the battle, because deformation or the shock from a high
speed impact can still kill without a bullet ever penetrating a piece of armor.
This is why Sotnik incorporates brand new and ultra lightweight, ultra-high molecular
weight polyethylene fibers to completely absorb the shock of impact.
Future upgrades include an active titanium exoskeleton that won't restrict a soldier's
movements, while giving him the strength of an angry Russian bear.
The best part of all is that this brand new high-tech armor won't cost Russia a penny-
because it’s almost definitely a completely fictional invention of Russian propaganda.
Sadly, even if it wasn't, Russia is awfully bold to assume it'll still be a nation in
2025, let alone have the money to actually acquire this futuristic body armor.
If by some insane, parallel-timeline chance Russia actually produces the Sotnik and it
does everything advertised, Russia still won't afford it as most of the procurement budget
will be lost to corruption and conscripts will just steal what does get acquired and
sell it at local flea markets for vodka.
Technically, this leaves Russian recruits with the Ratnik-2 body armor in current service,
accompanied by the 6b45 helmet.
On paper, Ratnik- Russia for Warrior- is an impressive system.
It features electromagnetic camouflage that can be applied to hide a soldier from infrared
sensors, and the armor itself covers 90% of a soldier's body while being resistant to
rifle-caliber rounds.
The helmet features a thermal and night vision monocular, as well as a flashlight and communication
system built-in with special headphones.
That's a pretty fancy feature to have, especially since we haven't seen a single instance of
Russians using night vision or thermal monoculars this entire war.
In reality, Russian troops in Ukraine are making do with a hodge-podge of various body
armors.
A 2018 estimated by the Russian MOD said that all soldiers in the Russian army would be
equipped with Ratnik body armor by 2020.
Judging by the current state of affairs in Ukraine, this turned out to be a hugely overoptimistic
prediction.
Russian troops have reported widespread equipment shortages that include body armor and even
helmets.
The advertised protection that covers 90% of a soldier's body also failed to materialize,
and those troops who did have body armor were lucky to get front and back plates along with
a groin guard.
But it wasn't until Russia's massive mobilization of conscripts occurred that the world got
to see what a terrible state Russian procurement was truly in.
Conscripts were soon reporting that they weren't being issued anything but a rifle, with promises
of body armor never materializing.
Troops had to beg their families and strangers to buy them body armor, which they ordered
online- that went about as well as you'd expect.
If you've ever bought something from Wish.com or a similar site, you can guess what came
next, as Russian families spent their hard earned money on everything from scams to fake
replicas.
Some managed to get the real deal, and these became prized possessions- so prized in fact
that older Russian soldiers perpetuated Russia's deep culture of hazing and simply stole it
from younger conscripts.
Those who received body armor from the military often complained about the terrible quality
or state it was in.
Early on in the war, Ukraine's intelligence services intercepted dozens of calls from
Russian soldiers begging their family to buy them real armor, complaining about the quality
or disrepair of that which was supplied to them.
In one call, a soldier's mother asks him what exactly he needs, then asks why he has to
buy that with his own money.
The soldier simply responds that he needs body armor, because what he's been given is
quote- terrible.
We even have video of captured Russian armor from the front lines, and in one such instance
Ukrainian paratroopers laugh as they test out mighty bulletproof Russian armor plates.
In the first test the armor plate is put up against a simple sidearm- likely a standard
9mm Makarov.
While the shot is at close range, American Interceptor armor is designed to completely
defeat sidearms like this, and the Improved Outer Tactical Vest and Enhanced Small Arms
Protective Inserts will eat 9mm rounds for lunch.
On the Russian plate, there's significant deformation due to the 9mm impact, which itself
would be significantly painful and possibly dangerous to the soldier.
Such prominent deformation can cause blunt force trauma to adjacent tissues, leading
to heavy bruising and even dangerous amounts of internal bleeding.
Next the paratroopers test out the plate against a 5.45 rifle, and unsurprisingly the round
punches clean through with little problem.
American vests are resistant to these types of rounds and with the addition of armor plates,
are designed to withstand up to three hits before failing.
Their Russian counterpart wouldn't have survived even one hit.
Sadly, even when stacked together, the plates still can't stop a single rifle round.
But then there's the actual vest itself, which appears to be a simple cloth covering that
holds the plates in place.
Proper body armor incorporates kevlar and other high strength fabrics to add resistance
to weapons fire and protect from things like shrapnel.
This Russian vest though appears to only have been designed to perhaps protect from shrapnel,
and only over the area directly covered by the plates.
In truth, this doesn't look like official Russian body armor though, and instead seems
like an instance of a soldier desperate for protection turning to what can be easily sourced.
We're not sure if Wish.com actually sells body armor, but if they did you'd find this
one listed for sure.
Whoever this Russian soldier was though, was in fact one of the lucky ones.
He could have ended up with a paper-thin metal plate, as seen here.
But even this Russian soldier was luckier than most, because shortly after Russia's
massive mobilization and drafting of tens of thousands of conscripts, something fishy
about the Russian Ratnik personal protection system started to come to light.
In a move that will surprise absolutely nobody, rather than spending money to buy the real
stuff, a whole lot of Russian logistics personnel simply opted to buy Airsoft Ratnik replicas,
which look exactly like the real thing.
The savings earned by buying replicas went straight into their pockets, and mobilized
Russian soldiers were left with equipment like this:
Our favorite part is the unseen soldier in the background who later comments that maybe
the Ukrainians fought with airsoft guns.
Odds are he found out the answer to that the hard way by now.
The truth is that Russia is fully prepared and equipped to absolutely dominate your local
paintball court.
Real war though, not so much, and Russia's lack of proper body armor has been devastating
for its war effort.
Russian casualties are estimated to have reached over 50,000 dead, and over 200,000 wounded.
This is the best independent estimate available to the west, procured by looking at data such
as inheritance records and official mortality rates- Russia is hiding the real figure and
Ukraine's estimate are likely...
optimistic.
With such limited data to work with though, a figure far higher than 50,000 dead is very
likely- and a significant amount of these dead and wounded could easily have been saved
with proper armor.
So what happened?
In 2017 Russia made a big show of announcing that it had purchased 200,000 sets of its
advanced Ratnik-2 armor, comparable to Western equivalents.
The armor features an Aramid soft armor carrier which is very similar to kevlar, and Granit
ceramic plate inserts to provide limited protection from rifle fire.
By 2020, Russia announced it had procured over 300,000 sets, more than enough to fully
equip all of its combat arms forces.
Yet Russian soldiers were soon spotted wearing older 6B23 body armor, which lacks the ability
to protect from the trauma of a round impacting the armor itself.
This means that as we discussed earlier, the armor may very well stop an enemy round, but
could still lead to significant internal damage.
In the case of the 6B23 armor, there was significant risk of broken bones and internal trauma,
prompting Ratnik to develop a replacement.
So where in the world did 300,000 sets of modern body armor disappear to?
Because this is a video about Russia, the answer is unlikely to surprise you.
In 2021 a Russian Captain and Ensign were both arrested for selling 56 pieces of Ratnik
body armor- the real stuff, we suppose.
The dynamic duo had used their rank and access to equipment to slowly sell off the armor,
with the Captain receiving six years and the Ensign seven years, to be served in a penal
colony.
The FSB was responsible for the investigation, but with corruption so rampant in Russia this
one bust was like plugging one tiny hole in a massive dam already in the process of collapsing.
The theft is in no way rare, as it's pretty much standard practice for new equipment to
be siphoned off by senior officers and instead older, Soviet-era kit be issued to the soldiers.
The corruption is so brazen, that the kit is often sold openly on websites like Avito,
which is like Russia's infinitely more terrible version of Ebay.
Before the invasion started, body armor could fetch as much as $250.
Today, we found quote-Ranger Body Armor US- for sale for as little as $50 (use picture
of the body armor attached to trellor card).
Sadly, the real stuff- or at least something that looks real until you receive it- now
costs as much as $650, which is like ten million years of average Russian wages.
That may be a bit of an overstatement, but by the time you see this video it also might
not be.
Point is, it's unaffordable to most soldiers being dragged off to fight in Ukraine, especially
since Russia is using conscription as a tool of ethnic cleansing, and specifically targeting
minority communities for conscription.
Even when Russians get the real deal, often more cost-cutting measures have been put in
place- like replacing the plates.
Modern body armor uses ceramic plates, which sounds counterintuitive because just try stopping
a bullet with your mom's fine china.
You'll notice that the plate inevitably shattered into many pieces.
But ceramic is really good at resisting compression forces, and after a few years of R&D it was
discovered that a better tactic for defeating an incoming round wasn't to stop it in its
tracks with a steel plate, but rather to directly act on the projectile itself even as it was
penetrating the body armor.
Ceramic plates will fracture and deform the projectile as it punches through, slowing
it down significantly and distributing the impact over a much wider area.
This limits its ability to penetrate or deliver deadly blunt-force trauma directly to the
body.
Even when metallic plates are used, they are of a special, very high tensile strength construction-
not pieces of sheet metal stolen from someones roof.
In order to cut costs and pocket the difference, many Russian leaders opted for metallic plates
instead of more expensive ceramic ones, and not even good metal- but hobo metal instead.
In truth, Russian body armor is just as capable as western armor- the chemistry isn't much
of a secret and easy to replicate.
But due to Russia taking the gold in the corruption olympics, Russian soldiers on the modern battlefield
are lucky if what they're wearing can stop an airsoft round.
If you're a Russian soldier, there's hope on the horizon- as Chinese body armor is now
increasingly making its way into Russian ranks.
An investigation revealed that Chinese manufacturers are selling off body armor parts to be assembled
in Russia, thus giving the Chinese government the ability to say that it's not technically
providing warfighting material to Russia.
How good is Chinese armor?
Well, we know that some plates were smuggled out of China and made their way into the hands
of US testers, who remarked that while they successful stopped 7.62mm rounds, they showed
significant deformation.
So the future prospects of Russian soldiers still don’t look bright.
Now go check out What's Wrong With Russia's Military, or click this other video instead!