UK — Body armour saves soldier’s life in Afghanistan

A British sol­dier, recent­ly deployed to Afghanistan, has escaped seri­ous injury or worse thanks to his Osprey Body Armour.

The hole left in Ranger Ryan Boyd’s body armour and the Tal­iban bul­let Source: Sergeant Rupert Frere, Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

Ranger (Rgr) Ryan Boyd, from 1st Bat­tal­ion The Roy­al Irish Reg­i­ment, would almost cer­tain­ly have been killed by a Tal­iban bul­let had he not been wear­ing the British Forces’ lat­est issue Osprey body armour. 

One of the side plates fit­ted to the armour absorbed the force of the insurgent’s shot which knocked Rgr Boyd off his feet and left him with bruis­ing on his torso. 

Rgr Boyd was patrolling ear­li­er this month with his unit in the Nad ‘Ali dis­trict of Hel­mand province when they came under attack. The pur­pose of the patrol was his unit who had just arrived in Hel­mand province to map the ter­rain and show a reas­sur­ing pres­ence to the local community. 

The insur­gents mount­ed an ambush on the troops but the Rangers suc­cess­ful­ly held them off for 25 min­utes before the artillery dropped 105mm shells on the ene­my, elim­i­nat­ing the threat. 

Rgr Boyd said: 

“Whilst patrolling, we came under attack from sev­er­al ene­my posi­tions. As I was return­ing fire with my Light Machine Gun, I was thrown off my feet and felt a sharp pain in my side. 

“I told the sergeant next to me that I had been hit. He checked for bleed­ing and told me I was­n’t bleed­ing, so I car­ried on engag­ing the ene­my. Only lat­er when things had calmed down was I able to assess the damage. 

“I feel lucky to have got out of this unin­jured but I think it just shows what a fan­tas­tic piece of kit the Osprey body armour sys­tem is.” 

Lieu­tenant Colonel David East­man, spokesman for Task Force Hel­mand, said: 

“Troops’ equip­ment is improv­ing all the time and will con­tin­ue to improve as new tech­nol­o­gy becomes avail­able. The lat­est improve­ments to Osprey body armour make a real dif­fer­ence to sol­diers’ per­son­al pro­tec­tion and this inci­dent demon­strates what a life­saver it can be.” 

Osprey body armour pro­vides troops with pro­tec­tion bal­anced with the nec­es­sary manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty and com­fort for them to car­ry out their tasks effectively. 

Coven­try com­pa­ny NP Aero­space man­u­fac­tures the body armour plates used by UK troops in Afghanistan. The company’s Chief Exec­u­tive, Roger Med­well, said: 

“The whole work­force who man­u­fac­ture this plate in Coven­try will be thrilled to hear that anoth­er life has been saved by their work.” 

Press release
Min­istry of Defence, UK 

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