In the end, it took us close to two years to actually put a suit of armor into any soldier's hands. Onto any soldiers hands. John Akins was priceless – the Pentagon designers we worked with were great, lots of knowledge and experience with modern battlefields and what a soldier would need out of his gear, but they were pretty lost working with a purely rigid material. It’s hard to shift gears when you cant snap pieces in together. By the way – if you ever find a piece and are curious if it’s one of Akins, every piece of every mold made from his designs has a little stylized feather etched in somewhere. Even if the mold got pirated, that feather started on his pieces.

So blacksmithery for the win. Whitesmithery? Plasma Moldery? Dunno. That’s not a term I ever focus-grouped.

In the end, they ended up with a much more loricated design than I was anticipating. The helmet, chest, shins, and forearms were pretty much the only bits with large solid pieces. Abs, neck, joints, thighs, back, and so on all used articulated joints, with a few ridges and large overlaps to provide protection. Early on, John and his assistants from the army struggled most just figuring out how to connect the stuff together. Back in those days, when assembly wasn’t automated, it could take ten to fifteen manhours to assemble one suit.

I wouldn't have thought of it, but a lot of assembly work assumes that things stretch, just a little. You can flex a piece to fit it in, and then its own tension holds it in place. Or maybe that same tension keeps a bracket from pulling free – think of those zip ties that riot cops like to use. That ratchet only works because it pushes in and out as it moves over the band. In the end, Akins and his crew worked out a combination of techniques. In some places, they slid parts into place like tabs and then inserted a plug behind the tab that had to be pulled before the pieces could come apart. In other places, they used a durable fiber cloth backing of some sort, attached to rings on the inside. I couldn't tell you what the fabric was, exactly, except that I kept getting yelled at for calling it Kevlar. It wasn't Kevlar.

The two bits that caused the most grief were the faceplate and the boots. We were still a decade from coming up with a transparent companion to our new steel, and the other materials we had just didn't measure up. We didn't particularly want to leave the face wide open, but there are only so many options. The uniform goobers vetoed eye-slits early on – a soldier lost too much situational awareness that way. So the awesome Corinthian helmets you see in our museums never actually got used. I didn't see the problem, it wasn't as though a sniper was ever going to hurt someone from behind. In the end, we figured out how to make a very fine mesh dome – like the screen from a window, but with smaller holes.

It wasn't perfect, but nothing ever was. If you took a bullet or something hard to the face, the mesh would break it up, and the man inside would get a face full of high-speed grit. It would sting like hell, and often left distinctive scarring, but it wasn't ever fatal. And with a pair of eye-safety glasses on inside the mask, it wouldn't impact combat ability, either. My big complaint was that it hid the faces of soldiers entirely. They could see out just fine, but it turned them into faceless mooks like the bad guys from an action movie.

The other problem was the boots. Ankles were doable, but we totally failed to create something that could provide traction and easy movement in bad terrain while not also messing up the feet of the wearer. In the end, we made the boots bigger than they needed to be and found a contractor who could build custom liners for them. The boots also used cleats for traction – we did treads in a big piece of rubber wrapped around a Plasma Steel core, and left cleats poking through the tread to provide traction if and when the treads broke away. Never mind durability issues, there just isn’t a good way to attach treads to something that doesn’t flex with the sole. Never mind that Plasma Steel doesn’t hold paint or glue well at all.

To start, we provided fifty units to the military and sent John and a couple of other consultants to help with training and evaluate the end result. The Pentagon decided to give it to the marines, to start with. I got to hear jokes about how marines can break or misuse anything, as well as more serious comments about how the marines were going to be best suited for the straight-on tactics that improved armor and degraded camo demanded.

As part of the program (which was very kindly named Project Fairy Crab; I'm told codenames are random, but that had to have been intentional), the marines assigned to work with the armor were all asked to provide reports. We specifically asked for everything – impressions, thoughts, opinions about the entire course. We didn't want just narrow reviews on the armor itself. We were building a whole new program – possibly the most comprehensive change to warfare since black powder showed up.

Corporal Lopez probably wrote the best report, at least from my perspective. We edited it a bit, for spelling, clarity, and to take out classified details. We also got permission to release it and use it for marketing purposes. So I'm going to share most of it:

I can tell you one thing, we were all pissed. Every one of us had passed the A&S phase two, but now were were getting told we would not be Raiders. We were going to be part of MARSOC, sure, but not Raiders. They hadn't even named us yet. This was all the coming from the imagination of some egghead and the brass, and we were gonna be guinea pigs.

I’m sure this was a punishment detail. At least that’s why I got assigned. I had gotten chewed out after finishing phase one of A&S for brawling. A bunch of us had snuck out to celebrate, and I got in a friendly fight on the way out. No charges, but it was hard to hide the black eye and split lip the next day. Drill sergeant reamed me and I spent the day sweeping the lawn in the rain, but it’s not like I got NJP either. I'm sure the captain heard about it, and I'm just as sure that was why I got volunteered to play the dangly testee.

We got issued the armor. It took a day to get everyone fitted. Like, a full day. We started at six in the morning and most of us weren’t fitted out until midnight. We all got these spandex body suits to wear, complete with thick padding in various places. Stuff was actually pretty comfortable, and breathed amazingly. I'm not sure what the padding was made of. The armor took longer to fit. Of the fourteen of us assigned to this new outfit, thirteen of us were properly suited that day. We had three really big guys, and they only had spares big enough to fit two at once. Corpsman Franklin had to wait a few days to get his suit.

The suits looked cool enough, but were impractical as hell. Despite weighing less than twenty pounds, and despite the sweat-wicking undersuit, they were hot inside. I guess that's normal for armor, and I couldn't imagine what real steel would have felt like. Still way worse than normal IBA. What really pissed me off is that the range of motion was limited. I couldn't crouch properly in the suit, and crawling was a joke. Even reaching anything top shelf would be difficult. The last straw, in my opinion, was that the stuff was shiny and white. It would stand out anywhere – hiding in the thing would be impossible. The fact that it clacked when you moved was just icing, really.

One of the sergeants started humming the Darth Vader song the first time we all stood to attention, only to have gunny come down on him and make it clear to us that we were not Stormtroopers. We were marines. And so on. He didn't come right out and say so, but I think Disney must have some lawyers in procurement somewhere. A boot mumbled that we weren't troopers, we were targets. He didn't like the white either. Unfortunately the name stuck. For the first few tours, we were officially designated the Marine Special Operations Target Team.

Once we started training for real with the things, it got better. It was hot, but not really much worse than any battle rattle. And with practice the mobility issues weren't such a big deal. Still a few minor headaches. I missed being able to customize my harness – each integrated holster was set, and could not be changed.

My opinion really changed after a fun run near the end of our orientation. The captain did his thing, taking us through woods and up and down hills, and we ended up in a big open field where we started doing PT. While performing jumping jacks and pushups, a full rifle platoon set up behind us. A loud voice informed everyone that their marksmanship had been so poor that the Marine Target Team had volunteered to help them out.

It took some cajoling – we’d become a common sight around the base, and we’d all seen the range tests. But even idiot boots struggled to open fire with live rounds on other marines. But eventually the marines behind us opened fire. I'll tell you what, getting shot is the damndest thing. It wasn't really like getting hit in a vest – the solid armor distributed the hit better, and shots usually would ricochet off you. Mostly it was like getting shoved hard – if you weren't centered well it was easy to lose your balance. Getting hit in the hands or arm were the worst. It felt like getting a bad hit on a baseball. A sharp stinging sensation would make everything feel numb for a minute.

After seeing their efforts not accomplish much, the marines behind us turned it into a game. They discovered that if a dozen or so hit one of us at the same time, they could knock us over. Similarly, getting hit on the foot at the wrong moment while jumping could make for an entertaining pratfall. It could have been humiliating, but working out in a literal hail of bullets was pretty cool.

We repeated that particular evolution daily until we were deployed. Brass wanted us to be totally comfortable in the armor before using it in a live combat situation. It makes sense, but still felt insane. And if I ever find out who had the idea for 'live target practice,' I intend to find him outside a bar one night and get myself in trouble for brawling again. On the other hand, there were only two casualties in the whole mess. A drill sergeant wandered too close while yelling at someone and took a ricochet to the chest. And one of the Target Team pulled a muscle trying to jump up quickly while a joint in his armor was jammed up with crud.

All in all, orientation and training was done quickly. We weren’t green, after all. We boarded a transport and found ourselves flying to the Philippines. Our target was an Islamic Fundamentalist compound on one of the bigger islands. A paradrop from the plane and we found ourselves on the side of a mountain on the jungle.

We oriented quickly and made our way up the mountain. The compound in question was built onto the side of a crater near the summit. Sergeant CSO Lighter was our first casualty. He fell into a tiger trap and wrenched his back. We fished him out, and the corpsman dosed him with morphine and some muscle relaxant. The injury wasn’t bad enough to leave him behind, as soon as the meds kicked in he kept up fine.

The tiger trap could have been old, but when we started finding trip wires and claymores we knew we were in the right area. I've already complained about the suit's stealthiness, but the real reason we couldn't surprise them was because Lighter managed to trip a tripwire and set off one of the mines. That was our second casualty. CSO Parker was just a couple meters from the mine when Lighter set it off. Half of us just had shrapnel rattle off our suits, but Parker got thrown hard. He was OK, but got pretty seriously concussed and the medic kept him back until he could get thoroughly checked out.

The last casualty in our team was also a concussion. When we closed with the compound the guerrillas opened up the moment we passed the treeline. Again, there wasn’t any hiding our approach. Staff Sergeant Jones in the HQ squad took an rpg to the chest and got knocked out. I heard later that he got a collapsed lung, burst eardrums, and developed some gastrointestinal problems in addition to the concussion. Jones was the only operator taken off active duty for more than a couple days. I don't know yet whether he'll be able to return to active duty.

The HQ squad parked in the pass and prevented any escapes. The two tactical teams split up and worked our way through the different buildings. We were free fire, no indications of hostages or civilians in the camp. We could capture people if necessary, but it wasn't a primary objective.

The whole thing just wasn't sporting, somehow. We waded upstream against bullet fire. Per Top's orders, we only bothered shooting hostiles armed with grenades or rockets. The biggest issue was that we were far more durable than our weapons. My AR took a few hits and jammed on me. My sidearm was shot right out of my hands. I 'captured' the survivors with a knife and my fists. For the most part, as soon as we closed the Filipinos surrendered.

All in all, the armor is great. Stupid stealth issues aside, I don't ever want to go into combat without it. Not that its perfect – Staff Sergeant Jones was lucky to survive, and Lighter was briefly tackled down by a pair of more stubborn fighters. But that same sort of operation would have seen dozens of the hostiles dead with a few captured, instead we only killed seven and captured thirty eight targets. Spec Ops probably could have managed as low of casualties on our side, but it would have taken all sorts of planning, the best operators available, and tactics that would have left most of the hostiles dead. We just had a platoon and waded straight in to get the job done.

I think I can be proud to be a Marine Target.