Not Under Armour

Turns out that you probably don't want to wear Under Armour under your actual armor. The Marine Corps. recently banned it from use outside the wire in Iraq. Why? It's made from polyester. If you expose it to an open flame it will burn and melt. Onto your skin. Into the pores. Ouchie.

So if you might get hit with high explosives or incendiaries, it is a bad idea to wear on of these shirts. They should be ok for sporting events or if you only face mere bullets like most cops. Still there are other options which claim to be safer, like Potomac Field Gear's performance skivvies.

Potomac has a fire performance video on their site, but I remain unconvinced about their actual performance. The actual video shows cotton going up in smoke, cotton/polyester melting and burning, and then poly/nylon not really burning any more than their shirt does. The poly/nylon looks like it's burning alright, but actually on closer inspection it is the pants on the manequin that are actually burning off. They're melting holes in the poly/nylon on top, but the poly/nylon itself isn't really combusting.

So anyway, forewarned is forearmored.