The Army will continue to improve body armor issued to soldiers, and will begin manufacturing side panel inserts to the Interceptor ballistic armor, officials said.

The side panels, which weigh 3 pounds, will be made of the same material as the small-arms protective inserts. Army Col. Thomas Spoehr is in charge of fielding body armor. He said the Interceptor body armor now issued to servicemembers protects against most of the threats they face in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's the best body armor in the world," Spoehr said.

And the proof is in the number of people who are alive because of the armor. One documented account from June 2003 showed an Iraqi shooting a soldier at pointblank range in the chest with a shotgun. The young soldier picked himself off the ground and arrested the Iraqi. (Amazing. If you ask me the fact he arrested him instead of just killing him shows the difference between our soldiers and the Terrorist. I am not so sure I would have done the same thing to someone that just shot me in the chest with a shotgun. I am willing to bet a nice piece of change that the Terrorist would not have "arrested" our soldier if given the chance.)

The Army is making changes to the protection system, Spoehr said, but has to be careful to balance changes with mission. "You could outfit a soldier from head to toe in armor, and he would be completely useless," he said. "We have to be sensitive to the weight burden we put on soldiers in that arduous environment over there.Every ounce that we put on the back of a soldier could mean the difference between their ability to accomplish the mission or not."

Weight is a huge factor, officials said. The average infantryman carries 85 pounds of gear into battle, according to officials at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga. This includes weapons, ammunition, water, protective gear and so on. The Interceptor armor - the vest and SAPI plates, along with neck and groin protection - weigh about 16 pounds.

I can tell you from wearing a bullet proof vest for more than 20 years daily, along with 10's of pounds of gear(one time weighed it at 24lbs), the more you have sometimes is not better. There were times I wished I had more and times I wished I had less. But I never went out without it, even in the 90+ degree heat (which really sucked!). But it saved my life at least 3 times I can think of. SPC Lopez, a buddy of mine who is going back for his second tour of Iraq next month, says that he would never go out without his armor. He also says he has learned to load up on ammo after having run out of it while in a very bad fire fight and having to resort to using the woundeds weapons and ammo.