why did these soldiers and their families feel a need to buy their own body armor to begin with?
Well first and foremost, there's a $1000 reimbursement toward buying your own gear in place.
From the article: Last year the DoD, under severe pressure from Congress, authorized a one-time $1,000 reimbursement to soldiers who had purchased civilian equipment to supplement either inadequate or unavailable equipment they needed for combat operations. At the time there was no restriction on what the soldiers could buy as long as it was specifically intended to offer personal protection or further their mission capabilities while in theater.
In previous operations there certainly hasn't been a mandate that you cannot carry a nonstandard knife in addition to your standard kit, but the impression I get is that soldiers may be awfully unhappy about how someone's better economic status allows them to buy personal gear that isn't issued ot the entire company.
After all, it's not a mercenary operation. It may be a volunteer army, but everything is standardized to make parts and people interchangeable and homogenous for social reasons as well.
But... if the Army gives you crap or nothing at all then there's a long tradition of supplementing in the field. We don't send food care packages to soldiers because they cannot get chow - we do it because the chow is pretty yuck after a few weeks never mind several months. Upgrading vehicles and updating your arsenal are standard operating practices.
But we've seen how that's gone. One group that used salvage to implement better vehicle armor got accused of theft and a variety of other things - while a crew that refused to do their job and complained to the press about how their fuel convoy lacked armor was given commendations and sent back stateside without being dismissed.
This whole thing makes a sick sort of sense if you factor in how bureacracies work. Unfortunately, bureaucracies don't win wars.
no subject
Well first and foremost, there's a $1000 reimbursement toward buying your own gear in place.
From the article:
Last year the DoD, under severe pressure from Congress, authorized a one-time $1,000 reimbursement to soldiers who had purchased civilian equipment to supplement either inadequate or unavailable equipment they needed for combat operations. At the time there was no restriction on what the soldiers could buy as long as it was specifically intended to offer personal protection or further their mission capabilities while in theater.
In previous operations there certainly hasn't been a mandate that you cannot carry a nonstandard knife in addition to your standard kit, but the impression I get is that soldiers may be awfully unhappy about how someone's better economic status allows them to buy personal gear that isn't issued ot the entire company.
After all, it's not a mercenary operation. It may be a volunteer army, but everything is standardized to make parts and people interchangeable and homogenous for social reasons as well.
But... if the Army gives you crap or nothing at all then there's a long tradition of supplementing in the field. We don't send food care packages to soldiers because they cannot get chow - we do it because the chow is pretty yuck after a few weeks never mind several months. Upgrading vehicles and updating your arsenal are standard operating practices.
But we've seen how that's gone. One group that used salvage to implement better vehicle armor got accused of theft and a variety of other things - while a crew that refused to do their job and complained to the press about how their fuel convoy lacked armor was given commendations and sent back stateside without being dismissed.
This whole thing makes a sick sort of sense if you factor in how bureacracies work. Unfortunately, bureaucracies don't win wars.