Professional Soldiers ® - View Single Post - Questions about Flame resistant clothing

mtnfrog · 07-22-2008, 19:42

and the cold are a strange mix. Anytime you have a high nylon content your going to hold water, nomex doesnt breath and do you really need FR next to skin? In a cold wx environment i would suggest no, use your regular warm base layer that moves moisture and keeps you dry. With all of your outer garments if your base layer gets hot enough to melt, your respitory system is gone anyway. I ahve been looking at this stuff for a little while now and your biggest threat in FR is after ied iniation and flameover how long does your outter garment last. Nomex and Mod Acrylics are made to take the flame, absorb the heat and change state, well during that change the fiber becomes brittle. Burn an old flight suit and then abraid it, the fiber fails. Well now think aobut the ied as the iniation of the event adn your in the mix for anohter 8-12 hours, all the while your uniform is falling off of youm that would be my worry!!

No disrespect to the comment on UA, but wearing UA kit inthe field is a little weak. Take teh cold gear for instance, compression. Wear it in the cold some day and when you take it off your skin temp is cold, the compression took away your surface veinous flow. Well if your skin temp is cold there is no pressure diff to push moisture out thru the rest of the clothing system and therefor you trap all of your moisture in the system, you get colder and possibly hype out. Simple physics, it doesn't work for ops of any duration. Check it out sometime.

07-22-2008, 19:42	#15
mtnfrog Asset Join Date: May 2007 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 4	FR Underwear and the cold are a strange mix. Anytime you have a high nylon content your going to hold water, nomex doesnt breath and do you really need FR next to skin? In a cold wx environment i would suggest no, use your regular warm base layer that moves moisture and keeps you dry. With all of your outer garments if your base layer gets hot enough to melt, your respitory system is gone anyway. I ahve been looking at this stuff for a little while now and your biggest threat in FR is after ied iniation and flameover how long does your outter garment last. Nomex and Mod Acrylics are made to take the flame, absorb the heat and change state, well during that change the fiber becomes brittle. Burn an old flight suit and then abraid it, the fiber fails. Well now think aobut the ied as the iniation of the event adn your in the mix for anohter 8-12 hours, all the while your uniform is falling off of youm that would be my worry!! No disrespect to the comment on UA, but wearing UA kit inthe field is a little weak. Take teh cold gear for instance, compression. Wear it in the cold some day and when you take it off your skin temp is cold, the compression took away your surface veinous flow. Well if your skin temp is cold there is no pressure diff to push moisture out thru the rest of the clothing system and therefor you trap all of your moisture in the system, you get colder and possibly hype out. Simple physics, it doesn't work for ops of any duration. Check it out sometime.
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