In a delightful article published by Huffington Post entitled “Pentagon’s New Contractor Policy Doesn’t Scare the Defense Industry At All,” Huffington’s editors sadly conclude that recently announced measures to improve the efficiency of the military’s procurement process are likely to produce little more than a yawn from contractors who have long thrived on the ineptitude of the Defense Department.
In a June 28th Memorandum for Acquisition Professionals, Defense Department ...
A recent article by Terri Judd of London-based The Independent entitled “Sharp rise in Army deaths from small arms fire prompts inquiry into Taliban snipers,” suggests that troops may not have the proper helmets or body armor to deal with the changing tactics of the Taliban.
According to the article, “commanders in Afghanistan are examining whether a sharp rise in troops being killed by gunfire is a sign that a better trained or equipped Taliban is targeting soldiers ...
Continue Reading →In the midst of yet another example of deficient body armor, the US Army continues to insist that body armor and body armor plates supplied to US troops are safe. In late January, Secretary of Army Pete Geren stated that ‘there is nothing more important than the safety of our Soldiers, their confidence in their equipment, and America’s confidence in their Army.”
He went on to say that “out of more than 2,300 body armor tests conducted by the Army, the ...
Continue Reading →In what is now becoming a regular occurrence, the US Army is recalling body armor plates that may have failed to meet manufacturing specifications.
According to the June 14th news release, the US “Army recently issued a message for all troops and units to inspect their body armor, specifically the Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts, or ESAPI, in search of a specific model that was not made according to contract requirements.”
The US Army claims that “the ...
Continue Reading →Article first published as Deficient Guns Expose Troops in Afghanistan on Technorati.
On the heels of the General Accountability Office (“GAO”) report of the improper testing of body armor supplied to U.S. troops and the recall of 44,000 defective military helmets manufactured by Federal Prison Industries, comes equally discouraging news of serious deficiencies in the M4 carbine and M2 Heavy Machine Gun (“HMG”) supplied to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
In a report entitled “Increasing Small Arms ...
Continue Reading →Buried inside the devastating Government Accountability Office’s (GAO’s) October 2009 report on the Pentagon’s inability to demonstrate “overall reliability and repeatability” in body armor tests is this intriguing statement:
“Testing was halted for other high-priority tests involving 2,000 plates from Iraq that were identified as potentially cracked by nondestructive testing performed by the Army.” [Footnote 14, page 12, GAO-10-119 Warfighter Support.]
Whoa . . . these are the very same ceramic protective plates that ...
Continue Reading →Thanks to Mother Jones writer Adam Weinstein who brought this item to our attention, SFTT has reviewed a recent DoDIG report (Department of Defense Inspector General) that documents yet more absolutely blithering incompetence inside the multi-billion dollar DoD Procurement bureaucracy. The issue in this case is spare parts for the M2 .50-caliber Heavy Machine Gun (“HMG”), better known as “Ma Duece” by those who rely upon it to reach out and “touch” Jihad ...
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In a refreshing but somewhat rambling presentation, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USMC General Cartwright, suggests diverting money from high-tech military procurement programs to give our troops the proper combat equipment to fight the “low-end wars” that we are in for the “next five to ten years.” In an article published in the Army Times, staff editor John Bennett writes that General Cartwright said ...
In yet another alarming sign that US troops do not have adequate combat gear, the US Stars and Stripes now reports that the US Army standard-isssue M-4 rifle may not be the best weapon of choice for Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain. This disclosure comes on the heels of a new Congressional inquiry on body armor procurement and testing procedures.
Slobodan Lekic of the Associated Press reports that the “U.S. military’s workhorse rifle (the “M-4″) is proving less effective in Afghanistan ...
Continue Reading →The Greenwich Post featured a front-page article in this week’s edition describing Eilhys England Hackworth’s heroic campaign to help insure that our frontline troops have the best body armor, helmets, combat boots, rifles and sidearms available. In an article entitled “Col. Hackworth: Soldiers’ Group Notches Victory,” staff writer Chris Davis describes some of the successes that SFTT has achieved to make sure that our brave heroes have the best combat gear possible. It is a cause worth fightling for and, I ...
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