oh man. this is just insane. the government, our government, is still decades away from providing our soldiers with adequate protective body armor (not to mention the vehicles). and, now, it's saying that all privately bought armor is banned if it's not issued by the military.
"In a new directive, effective immediately, the Army said it cannot guarantee the quality of commercially bought armor, and any soldier wearing it will have to turn it in and have it replaced with authorized gear." turn it in. and replaced by gear the government says is proper. how many soldiers do you think are going to go for that?
dragonskin may indeed be subpar (who knows?), but what is subpar compared to nothing at all? suddenly, the military is beginning to provide body armor and claiming that nothing but what it deems appropriate is adequate. this sounds like a halliburtonesque deal. "we will do what we've been pressured to do for three years, but none of you are allowed any other vendor from this point on". personally, if i was in iraq i'd be buying a larger footlocker and making friends with some iraqi who wants us there and asking him to bury certain items of clothing until further needed. at this point, i think all of them could use a gunga dhin or two.
thanks to generik for this one. he tends to be good for the occasional scotch drink and lap dance, but that's about it. unless, of course, he's horny and in fresno.
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This is essentially the same issue with most Humvee's "in theater". Remember the National Guard troops that refused to travel down a particular road? They knew it was dangerous, and that their vehicles were either not armored, or too lightly armored to offer them protection.
The vast majority of ground forces in bad places have taken to purchasing, on their own, better equipment.
yes indeed. infact, soldiers referred to their own humvee retrofitting as "hillbilly armor". they took what scraps they could find in the field and attached them to their vehicles. all while the adaministration was claiming that it was working as fast as it could to fix the problem by contracting out to ONE company that built truck armor.
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