The Office of Naval Research displayed several technologies they are developing to help Lighten the Load of the US Marine. One of these projects is the Modular Personal Protection System.
It is intended as a means to investigate new materials, technologies, and techniques in order to make a leap ahead for personal protection by reducing parasitic weight in armor systems. As you can see, one way is to ditch traditional MOLLE designs.
Additionally, they have developed a new software tool called CPAT that models survivability based on armor placement and materials.
This work is helping armor developers in the difficult decision of trade off between coverage and mobility.
