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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Aside from the fact that they make it harder to see and aim, which is itself a problem, your face is a small portion of the total surface area of your body, so statistically the chances of you getting shot in the face are low compared to the rest of your body, so not worth the added weight and difficulties in wearing a mask.
>wouldn’t you take all the protection you could get?
You take all the protection you can carry while still staying mobile and that is always going to be much less than you want. Shit’s heavy and bulky and you still have to be able to run, crawl, get in and out of tight spaces etc. You need to prioritize because every gram counts when you have to lug it along a warzone and every piece on you restricts your motion and visibility. If you turtle up like you were in a bomb squad your ability to actually fight is zero.
A facemask is just a poor tradeoff for your typical soldier.
Lots of good answers about the practical issues of ballistic masks, but nothing so far on the psychological element.
Masks are used in movies and in life to dissociate from identity, and to dehumanise the wearer. Soldiers are actually safer when enemies and a potentially hostile civpop can see them as human beings not as faceless goons (this is also why wearing dust masks – especially the stupid ones with skull designs on them – is officially discouraged if not warranted by environmental conditions or opsec).
The negatives outweigh the positives. They’re really heavy, make it harder to aim, vision is often hindered a bit. So mostly protecting from only small calibers is not useful enough for the negatives.
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