And why “troops”? Troopers are members of the cavalry, light horse, or similar. “Troops” are mixed formations. A formation is a regiment, a group, a company or something similar. When did we start getting “5 troops injured” and similar infelicitous expressions?
Excellent question! I do it out of habit. Sometimes I notice and go back and correct it. Around 2003, the Army required the word “soldier” to be capitalized in all official correspondence, memos and documents. It was a hollow attempt to give soldiers the respect and importance they deserve. A few years later, the Army mandated that “family” also needs to be capitalized. Around that same time, “civilian” was added to the list if referring to a civilian employee of the Department of the Army.
So now, in accordance with Army Regulation 25-50 Preparing and Managing Correspondence, Army personnel are required to capitalize Soldier, Civilian and Family in all documents, emails, internal communication, and anything else work-related. I don’t type the words “civilian” and “family” at work enough for it to have carried over. But I type “soldier” so much that it has become habit to capitalize it. I have to be careful when typing my college essays. At the SDMB, I am less diligent.
That says they are getting boron carbide based vests in 2015 which the US army has already been using for years, I don’t think the Russian army currently has boron carbide based vests.
They have the armor already. The Defense Review report says that their Spetsnaz is already wearing it. That 6B43 just isn’t standard across the board yet. It looks like the 6B43 is the nano-armor that is being hyped, though. It sounded like they were coming up with something new and more advanced. What the article was actually trying to say is that the 6B43 Nano Armor (with plates made of boron carbide and titanium) is currently used by select units in the Ukraine and should be standard issue by 2015.
I don’t have any knowledge of any of it outside those articles, though. And I only skimmed them.
A “Trooper” or “Troop” is a cavalryman. A cavalry “Troop” is also a formation of 3 cavalry platoons plus the command elements. The infantry equivalent is a “Company”. And a cavalry “Squadron” is what the infantry would call a “Battalion”.
When did we start getting “5 troops injured”? Probably when reporters got tired of writing/reporting “5 soldiers injured” or “5 G.I.s injured”.