This project has received funding from the European Union’s Preparatory Action on Defence Research under Grant Agreement No 800876.
Protective clothing aims at protecting soldiers from ballistic threats. The demands of protective clothing are strict and mostly contradictory, since they require the combination of optimal protection and optimal comfort. Dense, non-permeable textiles increase the protection, but are uncomfortable. This makes the design and development of effective protective clothing a complex problem. Optimization between physiological burden and protection is needed to create the ideal suit for a specific mission. The system requirements, following from this optimization, will lead to mission specific requirements for subsystems and materials of the clothing. Current commercial ballistic systems present several disadvantages, mainly their weight, but also others such as inflexibility and design shortcomings to differences in anatomy, protection approaches based only against kinetic energy threats or limitations in the use of CBRN agents.