The vest on the flightsuit is more than just a cool looking addition to the flightsuit costume, it actually has a practical purpose. The seat harnesses inside the Raptor and Viper are both made of heavy nylon straps and big metal buckles. The vest protects the rare and expensive fabric the flightsuits are made from. I don't know if this was a conscious decision or not, but it's very cool to see a costume piece actually serve a purpose.



The vest is attached to the flightsuit and is held together with the same type of snaps seen on the arm and leg cuffs. The vest is removable, seen on screen on only a couple of occassions, but it is possible that some of the snaps are fastened together permanently. Only the backside of the male end of the snaps is visible.

The tan leather has been identified as "split" leather.



In the above photo you can see that the belly straps pass through the belt loops on the hips of the flightsuit which shows that at least some of the snaps on the lower portion of the vest are not permanent so the vest can be removed.



The vest attaches over the shoulder on the rear of the flightsuit with more snaps. Notice the attachment points are inside the upper scale area.



The belly strap wraps around the back passing through the rear belt loop. The rear portion of the belly strap connects together with two fastex clips on either side of the rear belt loop.



The chest panels of the vest connect with a single strap connected to one snap on each side and a fastex clip.



The belly panels attach on both sides with a strap arranged in a V pattern connecting to two snaps on the vest with a fastex clip in the middle. In this photo you can also see what appears to be some sort of black padding behind the leather.

Note: all of the fastex clips on the vest have been painted gold and show noticeable wear, similar to the fastex clips on the BDU uniform, steelwool is excellent for creating this look after painting



The base material for the vest panels is the same dimpled rubber material seen on the surface of the panels. This is a view from the side of the backside of the panels.



Here is a close-up of the dimpled rubber. The name of this rubber and a manufacturer has not been identified yet. Some people have scavenged some similar non-slip rubber found on some bathroom scales. Some of the areas of search have been in non-skid flooring, shelf liner, and toolbox liner. You can see in this picture that they airbrush some gold highlights onto the rubber.

This picture also gives a good view of the piping that surrounds the perimeter of all of the panels. The piping is made from the same fabric that is used for the scales on the back of the flightsuit body.



The leather gets airbrushed with black highlights over the edges and especially over the snaps. In this picture Boomer's vest has broken snaps and you can clearly see where the airbrushing stops on the chest panel near the bottom of the shoulder panel.