CODEX: THE KOVENANT IMPERIAL ARMY.

Imperial Body Armor - 2.

Carapace armour.
Development date: Year 589 Millenium 20.

With the massive popularity and universal adoption and usage of uniformed body armour within the Kovenant Imperial Army, High command, in cooperation with the famous German arms manufacturer Krupp, alongside Technoseers had started to consider new developments in the field of armour protection for their soldiers and especially to further increase the already very protective uniformed body armour that was employed universally by the Kovenant Imperial Army, because of its massive success, Krupp, proposed to create a new type of armour that can be created using lighter plasteel armour plates, which they called "Carapace armour"

Carapace armour was designed to be a redundant protective vest, made from plasteel armour plating and was intended to be used by assault troops, such as Stormtroopers who were expected to come up againts the heaviest forms of event resistance.
And so Krupp was given permission to create and test out new prototype armour.

Carapace armour was designed to be a protective body armour suit that was worn like a ballistic vest. It had soft padding underneath to ensure that the soldiers will be somewhat comfortable wearing such a thing when on the assault.

The protection value of such a piece of armour was significant indeed. The plasteel plates were thick enough to resist not only bullets, but also be able to resist and absorb low to mid energy laser bolts while still allowing the soldiers using them to fight somewhat effectively.

Additionally, the soldiers have been shown to be able to run, jump and fight to an acceptable degree for the producers at Krupp to show their prototype Carapace armour.
In this case high command were invited to see a demonstration of the new body armour, which included soldiers who had been picked to wear the armour and perform the tests, which included running for prolonged periods, as well as jumping over man made trenches, as well as kneeling down, taking cover and generally fighting with live ammunition. With the final test being a demonstration of the suit's protective value when it was shot at multiple times from a single Lasen Gewehr, in which it took 13 Laser bolts to finally crack open and penetrate the Carapace.

Seeing this, High command approved and ordered an initial 20,000 Models be produced on mass to be used in specialised assault formations, such as Stormtrooper groups.

The first models were than given to said Stormtroopers who were ordered to wear the new equipment and use it in combat effectively during their assaults, as it was often their Carapace armour taking the brunt of the enemy's forward firepower before it broke.

Flaws.

However there was massive flaws with Carapace armour that made it limited only to Stormtroopers and Stormtroopers alone.

Carapace armour was extremely heavy and cumbersome and most soldiers didn't really like them as they were mobility restricting and quite awkward to wear to spite being able to run with it on them... Additionally soldiers who were running often got tired extremely quickly due to the heavy weight of the armour and as such, Carapace armour was unpopular and even outright avoided by the regular Imperial Army soldiers, as they would much rather use their already effective uniformed armour instead rather than have an extra redundant piece of armour that slowed them down.

Second was that Carapace cannot be repaired on the field once it was damaged.
While the materials used such as plasteel was created in a lab and produced in large quantities, this effectively meant that once the armour was broken it could not be used again, at which point the soldiers would have to get an entirely new set as the old one was taken and the melted down to be reused again and again.
This meant that this are, effectively, one time use items that can be completely recycled over and over.

Because of this flaws, the only Kovenant soldiers to have consistently and constantly use them were Kovenant Imperial Army Stormtroopers. Because of the fact Stormtroopers are specialised assault troops that were typically carried into battle via heavily armoured Half tracks or Kaiserschlacht assault transports, Stormtroopers could effectively choose to wear the armour as extra protection as they would be at the thickest of the fighting avd as such would want more protection to last longer.

This also meant that many Stormtroopers survived thanks to their Uniformed armour and Carapace... Paradoxically the Carapace armour would have been totally destroyed.

As such, production numbers remained very low, even to the modern 51st Millennium, as many simply preferred uniformed armor, and each Regiment was given an authorized supply of 150,000 Carapace armor sets, which they quickly ate through thanks to constant fighting and assaults. And thus each Regiment was constantly low, if not, permanently without Carapace Armour.

Because of this, Carapace Armour was only used whenever the Stormtroopers are tasked with difficult assault situations and even than, the rate in which Carapace armour is broken is staggering... Yet at the same time, those Stormtroopers return with little casualties.

However production was stopped soon after the year 200 of Millenium 25, when it was replaced with the universally superior Ceramite Carapace personal body armour.