Wearing flak vests during all outdoor training was common in Germany in the 90's, but full body armour incl plates? There are training plates that don't break, but it still makes no sense to burden recruits with 'em. Recruits need to build muscle and bone strength first.


I personally don't think that hard plate level IV body armour should be non-negotiable at all. It's a passive protection response to the specific threat spectrum of small wars and occupations.
Inter-state wars include a much much higher fragmentation threat and OPFOR does punish immobile opponents much more as well.
Both points towards a need for a full body fragmentation protection suit.

Likewise, the optimal APC for a large conventional war would probably not exceed the protection levels known from Cold war APCs (when APCs weren't optimised against a specific single threat).