United States Armed Forces ) are currently the most powerful and strongest troops in the world, with an active staff of approximately 1.36 million people and a budget of $ 686 billion in 2018. One of their most important components is the ground army, i.e. the United States Army, in which 476,000 soldiers in the line served in 2017. These troops are to a very large extent saturated with various types of armored vehicles. At the same time, they are divided into several types of Brigade Combat Team. One of them is the Infantry Brigade Combat Team, which is based primarily on relatively light vehicles from the HMMWV family. The second type is the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which includes a wide range of vehicles from the Stryker family, including wheeled infantry transporter (M1126), reconnaissance vehicle (M1127) and direct fire support vehicle (M1128). There is also the Armored Brigade Combat Team, i.e. an armored brigade, which, in addition to M1 Abrams tanks, also has Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) or M113 tracked transporters.
IOTV, that is Improved Outer Tactical Vest is an American advanced bulletproof vest that went into production in 2007 and is still in production. The IOTV entered service to replace the older OTV bulletproof vest, which in turn was a development of the IBA vests from the 1990s. Currently, IOTV is manufactured by several economic entities from the defense sector, including BAE Systems, KDH Defense Systems and Point Black Body Armor. The basic weight of the IOTV is only 1.6 kilograms, but the vest with all the components and accessories that maximize its effect already weighs 14 kilograms! An important structural element of the IOTV vests is the ability to quickly pull out its insert using a special "lanyard", which facilitates the rescue of a soldier who fell into the water, but also facilitates the action of medical personnel in the event of wounding a soldier. It is assumed that the IOTV provides very good ballistic protection against small arms projectiles and provides cover against knife attacks. The main user of IOTV is the United States, but it is worth adding that about 1,000 such vests were delivered to Ukraine in 2014-2016.