Rep. Louise Slaughter: For Shame: U.S. Army Failed To Properly Test Our Troops' Body Armor

[babylonsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-louise-slaughter/for-shame-us-army-failed_b_95124.html

Rep. Louise Slaughter
For Shame: U.S. Army Failed To Properly Test Our Troops' Body Armor

Posted April 4, 2008 | 03:23 PM (EST)


On January 6, 2006, the New York Times reported on a secret Pentagon study that found that as many as 80 percent of the Marines who had been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor.

This story came after reports that soldiers felt it necessary to purchase their own armor from private companies due to the Pentagon's shoddy war planning.

However, in March 2006, the Department of Defense banned service personnel from using non-DoD procured armor, leaving our service men and women with only one option: to use body armor purchased from manufacturers contracted by the Pentagon.

Given that some of our troops obviously didn't trust the body armor they were being given, in April of 2006 I sent a letter to the Department of Defense's Inspector General (DOD IG) requesting a review of the Pentagon's procurement processes for body armor.

I received the report this week...almost two years after my original request.

Its contents were pretty astonishing.

snip//


What Are We Going To Do About It?

I have called on the Army to fire any and all individuals responsible for failing to adequately protect our troops and allowing them to go into harms way without properly tested body armor.

I will meet with representatives from the Army to discuss the findings in this report, the fundamental causes for these serious failures, and the Army's plans to correct the problems.

That's what I'm going to do right now. But let me tell you what I'm not going to do.

I am not going to let this get swept under the rug.

The safety and security of our troops is on the line and we have an obligation to ensure that those individuals sacrificing so much for our country have equipment that is scrupulously tested and certain to actually work.

It's the very least we can do.

[northzax]

1. people can always be saved with better armor

it's worth asking, however, do marines with private body armor have higher survival rates for equivalent fire? The body armor needed to stop anything greater than small arms fire is heavy, very heavy. How many marines will wear a forty pound vest on a daily basis?

[babylonsister]

2. If it's sweating or death, what would you do?

And Slaughter's whole argument is the testing that was NOT done by the military despite assurances to the contrary. The government lied; that's sufficient enough info for everyone to be angry.

[northzax]

3. personally, I prefer mobility to armor

but then I am chickenshit and want to be able to run as quickly as possible.

[Igel]

4. This was the subject of a counter-scandal maybe a month ago.

If dinner weren't ready I'd google it and post a link.

The upshot: The new armor is heavy and many of the troops don't wear it. Why? Because it's not a question of sweating or death. It's a question of being able to run quickly while being shot at, knowing that you're less protected, or being able to run slowly while being shot at, knowing that you're more protected.

In the minds of many soldiers, it's a question of probabilities (as it should be). If you run slowly, you're more likely to be hit. The more you're hit, the more likely it is that they'll get some part not protected by armor. If you run slowly, you're less likely to be hit. The less you're hit, the less likely it is that they'll get some part protected by armor. One crucial difference is that if you have heavier, more comprehensive armor, the amount of surface to be hit is less. Does that reduce the odds to make it a draw? Is it better with the heavier armor? Does it matter that one part *not* covered is the face?

Dunno. For that, we'll need another study. But I don't know that there's an obvious answer, in spite of the fact that I've read two. (1) How dare we not supply better, heavier armor! (2) How dare we supply heavier, more dangerous armor!