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This article is about the uniform used by the Militaires Sans Frontières and Diamond Dogs. You may be looking for B.D.U., the Gurlukovich Mercenary Shell 1 Core division uniform that Raiden used as a disguise during the Big Shell Incident.

Battle Dress is a military suit worn by special forces operatives, designed for engaging in heavy combat.

History[]

Peace Sentinel issued some of its soldiers with reinforced combat suits for armored vehicle escorts. In 1974, the Militaires Sans Frontières procured a Battle Dress during the Peace Walker Incident, following their commander, Big Boss's first battle with the Peace Walker unmanned weapon.

Conceptually the opposite of the Sneaking Suit, the Battle Dress was designed specifically for combat, and allowed for increased ammunition and weapons storage, and offered excellent protection. However, these benefits came at the cost of the user's speed due to the increased weight. A variation provided a sturdy bullet-proof helmet complete with a riot-gear style yellow visor, increasing protection, that was procured by the MSF during missions outside of Costa Rica from capturing an enemy facility. Big Boss himself utilized an armored version of his bandana in place of the bulletproof helmet. When infiltrating the United States Missile Base near Lake Nicaragua, Big Boss was later forced to adopt the use of the Battle Dress at Kazuhira Miller's suggestion to get past the swarm of soldiers at the base that were between him and the base's command tower, which had been far more than even Amanda and her Sandinistas believed to be the case.[1]

In 1984, special forces troops in Africa utilized a variation of the Battle Dress and the Diamond Dogs R&D Team was able to create a variation of the Battle Dress for use. The Diamond Dogs' Battle Dress during this time was a variant of the standard Sneaking Suit that was both inserted and fitted with various ceramic plates to act as heavy combat gear, greatly increasing protection for the wearer. The hard-line PF Kill Count frequently wore body armor in most cases, some of which were of a similar model to those worn by African PF special forces troops such as Zero Risk Security. Kill Count and ZRS's battle dress had a faint similarity to MSF's Battle Dress.

Another variant ended up developed for various buddies, specifically D-Horse and DD. The former featured a clear face mask on the face, bulletproof ceramic shroud across the body, and armor for the hooves and lower legs, which also was further upgraded to include a black bodysuit and a reinforced face mask and eventually a tan ceramic shroud for the neck.

Behind the scenes[]

The Battle Dress appears in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and is obtained after by completing the Main Op "Peace Walker Battle." The Battle Dress (with helmet) can be obtained by completing an Outer Op of an S+ to S++ difficulty. It has a higher chance of success when completing a mission involving the capture of an enemy base. Another method to is to achieve an S-rank in Extra Ops 22-27, and 38-44.

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A female MSF soldier wearing the Battle Dress (with helmet).

The Peace Walker Official Art Works book contains sketches that indicate Big Boss may have worn an actual helmet himself, when equipping the bullet-proof helmeted variant of the Battle Dress. In the final game, he wears a reinforced headband across his forehead, reminiscent of a bandana. When normal MSF soldiers wear the helemeted version, the males wear the visor down while the females wear it up.

The Battle Dress (with helmet) appears in Metal Gear Arcade.[2]

The Battle Dress was also made into an action figure by the Square Enix toy making subsidiary Play Arts Kai as part of the Peace Walker line. It can be customized to either resemble Big Boss or another MSF soldier. It is also the only one of the Big Boss uniform line (Jungle Fatigues, Sneaking Suit, and Battle Dress) to not include a passcode for recruiting a new soldier.

MGSV Battledress

Venom Snake wearing a Battle Dress in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

The Battle Dress makes a return in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: similar to before, it is a tough armored suit which offers no camouflage but additional protection in the form of damage resistance. The base model gives the player 900 resistance and the next grade gives 1350.[3] Venom Snake is not able to use a helmet, but other Diamond Dogs troops selected as the player character can wear impact-protecting SP-Headgear with any level of Battle Dress and bulletproof HP-Headgear with the top-level version (the same is true of the Sneaking Suit). Soldiers in the Security Team set to use lethal weapons will wear the Battle Dress at high alert levels if it has been developed, and with level 5 equipment selected and the level 5 Battle Dress developed will also wear HP-Headgear.

In Metal Gear Survive, the Battle Dress is a Gear-type item whose rarity is "legendary". Broken variants can also be found. Aside from use by the players, the Armored-type Wanderers wear Battle Dresses. Because of this, if the player uses the backstabber ability on them, they simply knock them to the side and cause the helmet to fall off, leaving their heads exposed and stunned long enough to deal a killing blow on them. For obvious reasons, this also makes them the only enemy where extracting them via wormhole extraction technology is impossible.

In real life, "Battle Dress" usually denotes any type of combat uniform, not necessarily an armored one.

See also[]

Notes and references[]

  1. ^ Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Kojima Productions (2010)
    About this [Head to the Control Tower] mission > Miller > To the Command Tower!
    Kazuhira Miller: Damn, that base is even more heavily guarded than Amanda's men [Sandinistas] said it would be... // Naked Snake (Big Boss): No kidding. It's gonna be tough to crack without some serious hardware. // Miller: You may end up having to fight fire with fire, so be ready to use force if necessary. Take as many weapons and items as you can carry. The more protection you have, the better. // Snake: Roger. I'll keep that in mind when I pick my suit. // Miller: I'll meet up with you ASAP, Snake. Hang tight for just a little while longer. // Snake: You got it.
  2. ^ http://www.konami.jp/mg_arcade/
  3. ^ Divide weapon impact force by resistance and multiply the result by base damage to find applied damage. An impact force greater or equal to resistance will do full damage.
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