You very rarely see depictions of soldiers wearing bullet resistant face masks. I understand that these only protect from small caliber weapons but wouldn’t you take all the protection you could get?
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A lot of people are right when they say it adds a lot of weight and restricts your ability to actually fight by obstructing your vision, making it harder to breath, being hotter, and a whole host of comfort issues with a very limited benefit.
I’ll point out something a lot of people haven’t brought up, protection is usually for critical areas of the body. Most body armor as chest plates and maybe some side plates, they don’t cover 100% of your chest, only the really really vital parts. Plenty of places you can get shot in your torso that are unarmored. That’s because the likelihood of being killed by shots to those places are significantly lower and they would only add weight and bulk. Sure you can get shot in the leg or arm and it could hit an artery but that’s the risk.
The truth is, your face is a pretty safe space to be shot. Unless you are getting hit straight on, a shot to the side of your face or even at 3/4 is very survivable. Essentially as long as the bullet doesn’t go through and hit your brain, brain stem, spinal chord or one of your arteries you’ll probably survive. Now it won’t be great, you’ll absolutely be knocked out or be in shock, you might lose much of your jaw or an eye, there will be facial reconstruction, but you’ll survive. I’d take a shot to my face rather than my brain and as it happens we protect our brains with helmets because while it’s possible to survive a shot to the head, the possibilities are much lower and recovery might leave you in a bad place.
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