CHS Female Guardsmen pack

[eldargal]

Sure:
[url]http://www.bodyarmornews.com/body-armor-news/women-body-armor.htm[/url]
[url]http://www.dailyglow.com/female-military-uniforms-get-feminine-makeover-0424.html[/url]
[url]http://www.military.com/news/article/army-news/army-works-to-tweak-female-body-armor.html[/url]
[url]http://www.peaceopstraining.org/theses/carbone.pdf[/url]
I can't find the one about male body armour on female soldiers not dispersing the impacts from shots properly though, not sure where that has got to, had it bookmarked.
There is also this, written by a female soldier:
[url]http://www.soldiergeek.com/milblog/2011/4/24/better-body-armor-for-female-soldiers.html[/url]

I too have friends who are female soldiers, I've also kitted up myself when my brothers were in the Army. I also do historical reenactment in full plate to a far higher standard than 99% of SCA groups. When you are a different shape it is very difficult to get armour that is made to fit which doesn't look feminine. To be fair some of the male gothic harnesses acted like a corset so it is less noticeable but it is still there.

(Most) Women are a different shape and have different proportions to men, and it shows.


Because the body armour they are wearing was designed for men

Do a simple image search for "female body armor." Look around at any sort of forum dedicated to that sort of thing. Female physiology isn't visible from the surface layers of pretty much any type of significant body armor. (If you're talking just a simple kevlar vest, then yes, that's a different matter, but Flak is much more akin to the full-body armors worn by the military and riot police. Unless you're a Catachan, in which case it's a sleeveless vest and a bandanna.)

[eldargal]

Ok not the article I was looking for, being police rather than military, but it mentions the main issue:
[url]http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Women-in-Law-Enforcement/Articles/2007/10/The-Shape-of-Womens-Body-Armor.aspx[/url]

Darting is the most common way to shape ballistic material around the bust. A dart is an overlapping of fabric at an angle. Creating darts at certain positions near the bust cinches the material at the correct points to contour to a woman's body. If the darts don't hit at the right point, the armor will follow the wrong contours and won't fit the officer. Not only can the wrong fit be unsightly, not having appropriate ballistic coverage is dangerous.

"If you put a male vest on a woman with an ample chest, the sides of her breasts are pushed out to the side and she has no side coverage on her chest," explains PT Armor's Glaze.

In other words, she can get shot and killed despite the armour. The article I can't find had examples of action situations where female Marines had been injured (and possibly killed, I don't recall) in Iraq by ill fitting body armour causing them to be shot.

This is what happened to me when I wore the military kevlar, it gaped so much at the side I could almost tuck my arms into the chest cavity like I was wearing a baggy t-shirt. That was the best fitting we could find too.

[Lancel]

I've also kitted up myself when my brothers were in the Army. I also do historical reenactment in full plate to a far higher standard than 99% of SCA groups. When you are a different shape it is very difficult to get armour that is made to fit which doesn't look feminine.

This is true. Plate armor was better if it were custom fitted in order to maximize mobility. Properly fitted armor was heavy, but the weight would be evenly distributed across the body, which is what made it possible to move around in a rather normal fashion. I don't know what your experiences are with it, but now I'm kinda interested. How much does your set weigh? Is it proper actually-heavy steel?

[eldargal]

Yep, 2mm steel through to 6mm in front. My main gothic harness weighs around twenty five kilograms I believe. I'm not sure in pounds because the armourer only works in metric.

The weight distribution of the modern armour is a big issue, as you see in the articles. It often sits on the hips, chafing and making it hard to move. The replacement armour won't overly feminised and form fitting in the sense of exaggerating the bust, but it will tuck in more at the hips and indicate a more feminine shape overall

[Lancel]

Yep, 2mm steel through to 6mm in front. My main gothic harness weighs around twenty five kilograms I believe. I'm not sure in pounds because the armourer only works in metric.

The weight distribution of the modern armour is a big issue, as you see in the articles. It often sits on the hips, chafing and making it hard to move. The replacement armour won't overly feminised and form fitting in the sense of exaggerating the bust, but it will tuck in more at the hips and indicate a more feminine shape overall

Yeah, I was reading on that. This is interesting stuff. Are they planning on making the new ones adjustable to some degree? It would seem like a good idea to me, but I'm not sure

25 kg is about 55 pounds, that's what I'd expect from a proper set. Does the chain mail count separately? I'm curious how that fits, since it's so flexible, but I imagine proper fitting for it has a similar benefit.

[Deadlift]

Hang on, if the Imperial guards got women in it, shouldn't they be armed with Ironing boards, breast pumps and handbags

I would write more but living in fear of the mrs looking over my shoulder and seeing what I am typing.

[Kawauso]

Well good thing, since it was a pretty lame attempt at humour, anyway. :P

Not like female Guardsmen are anything new - all-female and mixed-gender regiments come up pretty regularly in the fiction.

[Deadlift]

To be honest though looking at GWs efforts on the DE female sculpts, if they were going to expand their female IG model range, then to be honest they would be hard to beat. The (eventual) Sisters of battle plastics when they come are going to be awesome and we all know it.

I do like some CHS conversion bitz, but not these.

See even I can be serious sometimes, despite the cliques we have in the forums and their distinct lack of humour

[Kawauso]

I wasn't asking for complete seriousness. I don't view it as a lack of humour being unamused by someone going for the lowest-hanging fruit that consists of tired old stereotypes.

But maybe that's just me. :P

Back on topic, however, I agree that these sculpts are...pretty ugly. From what we can see.
I find a -lot- of CH stuff is really hit-or-miss, though.

They make some lovely shoulders pads, which I've ordered in the past (also some far less-than-lovely ones), and some really great conversion kits that I'd love to grab (like the Chimera fast response vehicle upgrade). They also make some stuff that I consider to be really aesthetically unpleasant and/or poorly designed. Like their Space Wolf rhino doors/panels, which look really...blah...or their Stormraven expansion kit or Tyranid drop-spore, which are just ludicrously enormous (seriously, a spore meant to carry a Carnifex curled-up would likely be around the same size as the 'fex as it stands on its base. and it would still be able to carry tons of gribblies. and a Stormraven can carry 12 marines. military transports -are- clown cars, people! some people seem to like 'em and that's their prerogative, but personally the ol' transport scale thing is just one of my pet peeves). But I'll digress, as I'm getting a little side-tracked, here...

These Guardsmen upgrades are a bit of both, I think. From what we can see, they look really visually unpleasant, and idea of legs/torso upgrades that mesh with the existing Guardsmen arms just doesn't seem like the best solution.

I'll agree that I'd love to see some female Guardsmen from GW/FW at some point, however. Would really love to add some ladies to the ranks of my regiment...I like to think the Immersturm 144th isn't male-only. :P For now I guess I'll have to make due with saying that the ladies in my units are hidden under the helmets/male flak armour that everyone's wearing, though.

[Immortal]

To back up Eldargal on this one... Current military body armor used by the US Army in combat, the IOTV and the ICV before that, were not designed to fit over women very effectively.
These types of armor are designed to fit flat on the chest, and additionally a Soldier puts a great deal of additional weight on the armor (radios, additional ammunition, medic packs, ect.). When a woman is 'well endowed,' this becomes a bane as the weight gets distributed to the chest rather then the shoulders and waist where is it suppose to... all this translates into women suffering back problems.
The ballistic plate, a ceramic plate with only a slight curve to it, is actually painful for women to wear over an extended period of time and the armor doesn't sit properly on the soldier and causes it to be less effective (also as Eldargal mentioned).
All that being said, the CHS minis are actually fairly accurate in that respect. Not all female soldiers have large busts, beefy legs, or large muscular frames... and they may even look like 'boys' because a of a lack of makeup and (thankfully) facial hair, or a chiseled jaw line.