Chinese Stealth Armor

Chinese stealth armor, also known as Hēi Guǐ (黑鬼) stealth armor (lit. Black Ghost stealth armor), was one of China's greatest military assets deployed during the Sino-American War.

Background
 This dark black, form-fitting bodysuit with an opaque faceplate is a suit of armor designed for one thing: Making the operator nigh-invisible. Harnessing Chinese expertise in stealth technology, the suit contains a man-portable device that generates a modulating field that transmits the reflected light from one side of an object to another. The end result is near-perfect active camouflage. The bodysuit is designed to maximize the effect by simplifying the wearer's silhouette and creating flat surfaces where possible to reduce the complexity of the area being camouflaged. Deployed under the designation Hei Gui, the suit allowed China to counter American brute force with subterfuge and deception, although some units were captured and reverse engineered by the Americans.

The suit was just barely out of the prototype stage around the time of the Sino-American War and, as such, the refinement of the technology varied. Some Chinese infiltrators on American soil, such as those captured during the Hoover Sabotage, used early generation suits, while the Crimson Dragoon troopers deployed in Alaska used cutting edge iterations granting long-lasting invisibility.  The underlying principle of bending light was reverse-engineered by the United States from captured Chinese suits in two ways. Robert Mayflower reverse-engineered captured Chinese stealth armor to create the portable, but unstable Stealth Boy 3001 units. Big MT researchers focused more on the suit itself and its stealth-enhancing properties, taking the Chinese suits apart and then designing a new stealth suit from scratch. This resulted in the creation of two prototypes before the war: the assassin suit and the stealth suit mk II, which surpassed the original in nearly every aspect.

Anchorage campaign armor


The Chinese spent some time redesigning the stealth armor before issuing it to their elite Crimson Dragoons on the Anchorage Front Line. A single copy was captured by the US and sent to several companies for study and reverse-engineering. The Lone Wanderer may find it in the armory which is unlocked after finishing the Operation: Anchorage add-on.

Hoover Sabotage armor


During the Hoover Sabotage, Americans caught their first glimpses of China's elite soldiers wearing the stealth armor. Because Sub-Level 1C was sealed, several of the Chinese soldiers' bodies remained in the compound.

There are two Chinese stealth armors located at Hoover Dam by 2281. NCR forces found and later misplaced the suits in a storeroom with radioactive waste in the Hoover Dam offices. The suits' existence is hinted at on the only accessible terminal on the same level, and are marked as owned, incurring Karma loss when taken. These two suits differ from the Anchorage version in that they do not create a stealth field around the wearer when sneaking and have a lower sneaking bonus.

Behind the scenes
In Chinese, hēi guǐ (黑鬼) literally translates to "black ghost." This is often used as a racial slur against people of African descent in China. However, if the word is pronounced as Hēi guī (黑龟), it means "black turtle" and had no special meanings behind it.