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(no subject)
Isn't this nifty?
Soldiers are being threatened with disciplinary action AND the loss of their death benefits if they don't leave their superior, privately purchased body armour behind when deploying overseas.
Last I heard, a fair number of soldiers weren't even being ISSUED body armour. Now Big Brass is threatening them if they try to use gear they (or their families) have purchased themselves.
Discuss.
Soldiers are being threatened with disciplinary action AND the loss of their death benefits if they don't leave their superior, privately purchased body armour behind when deploying overseas.
Last I heard, a fair number of soldiers weren't even being ISSUED body armour. Now Big Brass is threatening them if they try to use gear they (or their families) have purchased themselves.
Discuss.
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there's also the fact that i would expect that if the gear is better, it'd cause some grief between men if the wealthier ones had better protection. seems a real minefield.
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Still, looking at that one review of the armor, they seem to be working up towards a flexible 14.5mm protection level for retrofit to vehicles. Hell of a lot better than the kevlar sheets added to HMMWVs in the 80s.
As I said to you on AIM, at first glance it looks like risk aversion in the pentagon based on a paper issue with the certification of the armor in question. It could also be the configuration, apparently the Dragon Skin system allows configuration of Level III and Level IV layers as the user chooses. It could also be that the bean counters in the procurement system are pissed at pinnacle for side stepping them and going straight to the troops. Frankly, I'll hang this on the folks that have gummed up the procurement system to "prevent" government waste when all it does is increase costs and add delays.
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But I think the real issue at hand is: why did these soldiers and their families feel a need to buy their own body armor to begin with? Because that's clearly the root of the problem. Is body armor being supplied? Was it a mis-representation, in the media, that is wasn't? Somehow, I doubt it, because I think the soldiers would know if they were issued body armor or not and act accordingly. And if they're not being issued armor, then as a taxpayer, I am outraged.
But then again, I am outraged about a lot of things -- and there's really not much the average person who's ended up pretty fucked up in this economy/these times can do. Unfortunately. :(
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one of the quotes in the article says "He didn't want to use that other stuff, he told me that if anything happened to him I am supposed to raise hell."
so i'd say that it's pretty clear that at least some are choosing it out of preference rather than neccessity.
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We all know that *non-standard* gear is and always has been a point of contention. But to deny someone gear they bought which is used when other gear is (a) not available or (b) of lower quality is just stupid.
Just further proof that the Army is yet again doing the wrong things in a mad attempt to centralize and standardize rather than focus on what is necessary to win. *woot* Hello bureaucracy.
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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.
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The key here will be what they set the bar for the specification to. Historically the gov't has set the specification at something only met by gov't issue gear. Suppliers have wised up tot hat and will literally dumb down products to hit the gov't spec deadnuts within a month now. It used to take re-engineering a product and production cycles up to a few years in the past.
But you have to have some specification bar. Or some nut will show up with twenty wooden crosses strapped to his chest and back and forearms and thighs and call that "holy body armor." Not exactly the most effective against small arms fire and IEDs...
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Normal unit troops unfortunately get hammered on when it's found that they are using civillian equipment...troops in special units tend to get a bit more leeway.
If it was me, I'd take the risk as military issue is generally substandard.
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But it sounds more like a liability issue that the Defence Department is worried about. Sounds like they'd rather pay our benefits to a soldier killed in their "endorsed" armour then other.
*sigh*
If I had been restricted to the standard issue kit, I'd most likely be dead, along with a bunch of my mates. We used what we were comfortable with using, even if it didn't come from Supply. Looking down from the ivory towers, it's all well and good to say that soldiers and their gear should be interchangable and uniform, but looking up from the mud at someone who is dead-set on killing you, it's reassuring to know that you geared up that day with everything that YOU know you need to survive, not just what you've been told to use.
Re: *sigh*
Re: *sigh*
Killing the other poor bastard is how you win wars, but staying alive at the same time is a definite plus.
IMNSHO.
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The Dragon Skin armor is very new and very high speed, it's also even more expensive $6000 for a set. It uses little round ceramic and metal plates that are individual components that move better. Its kind of like modern scale mail. the Dragon Skin armor will stop multiple level IV and Level III hits which most other forms of hard body armor start to have problems with because they tend to start to break up. Its a combination of new thinking and some new armor designs as I understand it.
There are similar parallels in the military from packs, to socks to gun equipment. Not necessarily a huge problem but It'd be nice if every soldier in harms way had the most expensive armor you can buy, but then we'd have to part with some other government programs or cut back on some training cycles or something, beyond a certain point in the budget allocation, it' robs peter to pay paul unless you cut other entirely unrelated programs or raise taxes even more.
The soldiers ARE being issued armor, in these cases, these guys bought the Cadillac of body armor.
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All you have to do to seem truthful is to get people to agree that those who disagree with you are fringe-dwelling nutters. That way, whatever truth there might be is no longer the actual issue.
(Sun Tsu, contentious ground; also GWB, WMD)
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War isn't about counting beans... it's about preserving a home that, even if you don't get to go back to it, you know in your last moment that it will still be there for the ones you went off for in the first place.
Or maybe that's just me.