They bring all the bodies
home through Dover.
You remember Dover - the Air Force base where George Bush and his buddies decided that America couldn't be reminded that her sons and daughters had given the last full measure of devotion in the line of duty, maybe because it turned out that that duty wasn't actually to America like they were told it would be, but instead was to ExxonMobil and BP and Halliburton and Blackwater and DynCorp, and America would not be happy to be reminded that her sons and daughters had died not to make America safe but to improve the quarterly report of some fatcat whose corporation probably couldn't be bothered to pay something as unpatriotic and trivial as income taxes, when America's sons and daughters had paid the ultimate price in order to fatten his portfolio.
So they bring all the bodies in through Dover, away from all the prying eyes of America, and when they bring in the bodies they also bring in all the gear that the bodies were wearing when they were killed, all the helmets and the body armor and the boots and the utes, and before they can lovingly, reverently prepare the bodies as best they can for the families to take on their final journey home, they sort through all that gear and all of those bodies, and they try to figure out what exactly went wrong - not "what went wrong" in a cosmic, geopolitical sense, but what went wrong - what ineluctable forces of man and nature came together at one moment in one place to end the life of this husband, this father, this sister, this daughter - and only then can they get on with that sad, solemn, intensely proud work of preparing the bodies. And what they do with all of that gear is to collect all of it and make big piles of it off to one side of the morgue there, at the Dover Port Mortuary morgue.
So now among those piles of gear there at Dover, there's a big pile of shot-up body armor collecting there in the morgue, a big pile of shattered body armor sitting there waiting to be analyzed - the best body armor in the world! (according to the Pentagon assholes) - never, ever been penetrated! (they'll tell you, lying through their teeth). The body armor that you and I have spent billions of dollars on, the body armor that we know for sure the Pentagon didn't test most of the time, the body armor that we know for sure didn't hold up nearly as well as another kind of body armor did when the testing was done out in front of God and everybody. The body armor that most likely didn't even pass muster back when it was originally sold to the Pentagon, the body armor that has had some powerful friends protecting it while it's been sold to America's sons and daughters, who trusted - no, who bet their lives - that it was, truly, the best body armor in the world -
the body armor they were wearing in Iraq and Afghanistan, before they came home through Dover.
That shattered body armor? The Pentagon, in a hurried, feeble attempt to avoid even more embarrassment - or worse - just announced a recall of 16,000 sets of it. The revelation comes just before the release of what promises to be a devastating report from the Pentagon inspector general on the state of body armor testing and procurement.
The report will almost assuredly not be kind to the military's standard-issue Interceptor body armor system, a system that uses fragile ceramic plates backed by layers of nylon cloth to stop bullets.
The impending inspector general's report will no doubt be one more black mark in the Pentagon's recent history involving body armor, a history that would be generously described as "checkered." First there was the revelation that many U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan and Iraq with Vietnam-era armor - or no armor at all. Then, because of a Freedom of Information request by Soldiers for the Truth, it came out that gaps in the newer armor led to the deaths of as many as 80% of the Marines who were killed by small-arms fire. Finally, the Marine Corps Times's digging led to the appalling news (PDF file) that the Army had knowingly approved the issuing of 23,000 sets of defective body armor - armor that had failed ballistics testing - to U.S. combat troops.
But that all was just prelude. It wasn't until early 2006, when the Pentagon forbade U.S. troops (whose asses, after all, were the ones on the line and who, after witnessing all of the above-mentioned outrages, might understandably have been just a wee bit skeptical of the Pentagon's ability or even willingness to provide them with the best equipment) from wearing any other type of body armor, that the fertilizer really hit the ventilator.
The following year-and-a-half was filled with accusations of unfair testing, with subterfuge and with hyperbole, as various factions argued that their position was right and that their body armor was the best. Finally, in the spring of 2007, an NBC Dateline report literally blew holes in the Pentagon's till-then-unwavering story line that not only was an alternative to the Pentagon's standard-issue Interceptor body armor deficient when it came to military specifications, but that Interceptor itself had never - never! - been penetrated by an armor-piercing round during testing.
As a result of that damning report and other circumstances, members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees in May and June 2007 requested the Government Accountability Office (through the Pentagon's inspector general) conduct an investigation into the testing and procurement of body armor, including overseeing side-by-side testing of the various body armor systems.
The idea of testing body armor systems in the open, side-by-side, to determine which one was most effective did not set well with the Pentagon, which told Congress, "Go f**k yourself - we don't do it that way." So the GAO proceeded without performing comprehensive side-by-side testing, verified by disinterested third parties. But that doesn't mean they did nothing. The GAO continued its work.
In early findings released 10 months ago, the Pentagon's inspector general found that, contrary to the loud, emphatic, smug and endlessly repeated stories told by Pentagon officials about how Interceptor had been thoroughly tested before being given to U.S. combat troops, in fact, quite the opposite was true: billions of dollars of body armor had been issued to U.S. troops without any testing whatsoever.
This fairly dry, pedestrian GAO study in and of itself blew out of the water a major underpinning of the Pentagon's defiant and stubborn resistance to transparency with regard to body armor. With a simple examination of the records, the GAO had shredded the Pentagon's credibility on the matter. All that remained was to determine the actual efficacy of the various body armor systems, including the standard Interceptor armor, as well as other alternatives, including a system known as Dragon Skin. That determination was to have been the major focus of the second and final part of the GAO's report on its investigation.
But Pentagon obfuscation and stonewalling prevented that from happening the way Congress had intended when it made its request. First, as mentioned above, the military told Congress to shove it, that side-by-side testing of Interceptor vs. alternative body armor systems was not going to happen. Then the Pentagon shamelessly and astonishingly exempted current manufacturers of Interceptor from the critical first round of testing. Finally, the military cooked up an excuse to "delay" the testing.
So when the final portion of the GAO report comes out in the next few days, it's likely to be missing the very data it was originally intended to generate; i.e., objective, impartial data on the performance of Interceptor, Dragon Skin and all other body armor systems, in live-fire tests under controlled conditions, observed in every single instance by disinterested third parties.
AN UNTAPPED WEALTH OF HARD-WON INFORMATION
But while the GAO has been given the runaround in its efforts to properly oversee ballistics testing of various body armor systems, it turns out that there is, sadly, a huge database of information available about the performance of Interceptor body armor in the field, if the GAO is willing to use it: the autopsies conducted on every U.S. military service member killed in combat:
[Armed Forces Medical Examiner] Capt. [Craig] Mallak told a military panel in 2003 that he was conducting autopsies on every member of the armed services killed in Iraq in part to assess the body armor.
"We've collected every bullet, every piece of shrapnel that we can get our hands on," he said at the time.
(It was these very autopsies that led to the Pentagon study in 2006 that demonstrated that a lack of side armor in the standard-issue Interceptor setup was the cause of some 80% of Marine fatalities from hostile fire.)
What happens is this: the bodies of those American troops killed in action are transported to the mortuary at Dover; the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service conducts autopsies on the bodies, including gathering data on the equipment (armor, helmets, etc.); and then the Medical Mortality Surveillance Division analyzes the data (PDF file). Here's how one of the slides (on page 10 of the PDF file) reads:
In another presentation, "Mortality Surveillance: Operations Iraqi/Enduring Freedom" (PowerPoint file), the MMSD's mission is listed as, among other things, to "[c]ollect medical causes and circumstances of death for all cases" and to "[m]aintain a database for . . . research into specific types/causes of death" - and that research includes evaluation of helmets and body armor:
Here's a better view of the photo in the slide above:
Clearly, the medical examiners have analyzed the damaged body armor shown in the above photo (in this case, a set of the older, Vietnam-era armor that many U.S. troops were stuck with at the beginning of the Afghanistan and Iraq operations) and are highlighting the trajectories for the rounds that evidently penetrated the vest.
It would be tragic if the GAO, after nearly two years of investigation, and having been frustrated in its efforts to oversee the testing of all body armor systems, failed to take advantage of the huge volume of data gathered by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service with respect to the performance of Interceptor body armor in the field.
WHY
So, why all the fuss about body armor? Two reasons: first, of course, is that the simple and very real possibility that the U.S. government and American taxpayers have been defrauded in such a way that the safety of our troops has been threatened - and indeed, some may have paid with their lives - warrants a serious and expeditious investigation into the possibility of such a criminal possibility.
But second and perhaps more importantly, the issue of potential improprieties in the testing and procurement of body armor acts as a sort of window through which can be glimpsed the sordid world of military spending in this country.
Military spending in the United States accounts for at least $600 billion a year (some calculations put the number at more than $1.4 trillion annually). It would not be unreasonable to believe that if any money that is being wasted on unnecessary and/or inferior defense programs as a result of corruption were instead to be directed toward solving another pressing issue facing the nation - say, perhaps, toward job creation or universal health care or education or research and development of alternative energy sources - profound changes could be made in this country and in the world.
But still, the question can be asked, why body armor? Why not look into improprieties involving really big-ticket items like, say, fighter jets? Or submarines? Or air tankers, or armored vehicles?
Because body armor is simple. It's visceral - literally. Either the stuff works or it doesn't. It's not a complex weapons system, like a fighter jet or a submarine or an air tanker or an armored vehicle. You put it on, you wear it around, and either it stops bullets and you live or it doesn't stop bullets and you die.
In the meantime whoever is selling it is making billions of dollars whether it works or not. The decision as to whether to buy it from the person who makes it should devolve to one simple question: does it work - or not? Finding an answer to that question should be a straightforward matter. The fact that nearly two years has elapsed since Congress requested the GAO answer that simple question speaks volumes about the deeply entrenched interests in the Pentagon's testing and procurement structure.
But until a thorough and impartial investigation is made, the story of body armor will be much like the story of the invasion of Iraq: some people get rich, some people die.
While we wait for the GAO's final report, here are some tasty smackerels of various and sundry related information floating around in the body armor soup:
The Brittle Truth
Interceptor's model for body armor (rigid ceramic plates backed by layers of nylon "ballistics cloth") has inherent problems.
Remember the time that soldier stood up and asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld how it was that U.S. soldiers had been reduced to rummaging through scrap heaps for sheet metal to weld to the outside of their Humvees for extra protection? Well, now they're doing it with body armor, too:
Maj. Clifford Yarbrough, who served with the 3rd Special Forces group in Afghanistan, told The Times that his unit, along with other Special Forces and the Delta Forces, were issued titanium plates. These plates, which are ordered by these special units under a separate budget, can withstand multiple hits by the enemy and have saved many lives, said Maj. Yarbrough, who now teaches at a high school in Arkansas.
The major, who has two enlisted sons, said that the ceramic plates issued to Army and Marine Corps personnel do not provide sufficient protection against close enemy fire.
"Interceptor vests are not fielded with the interceptor titanium that give the men more enhanced protection," he said. "We had guys who were engaged, and short of a 50 caliber, it would stop everything. They got a little trauma from the bruising. Normally, those rounds would go right through them."
Those plates add about 13 or 14 pounds to the vest. And apparently the Israeli Defense Force has taken to doing exactly the same thing. No wonder:
[T]he plates are really quite fragile, and prone to breaking in the course of ordinary handling. Microscopic cracks detectable only with X-ray or acoustic inspection degrade the performance of the plates and render them questionable at best. The U.S. has to replace about 2/3 of its plate inventory every year because of breakage, and the Israel Defense Force found 30 percent of its SAPIs to be damaged even when sitting in storage and never issued to the field.
I'm sure our grunts will take great comfort knowing that the Pentagon has recently deployed a new portable x-ray system to analyze their Interceptor body armor's ceramic plates. The x-ray system will be used in the field to analyze the plates for microscopic cracks and weaknesses. Plates found to have weaknesses will be replaced. The plates are prominently marked, "FRAGILE - DO NOT DROP", as are the crates they come in.
Just a couple days ago, Stars and Stripes breathlessly reported about a new quick-release buckle for the Interceptor vest (a needed improvement, to be sure): New body armor vest comes off with a tug of the lanyard, is 3 lbs. lighter, transfers load to the hips (something backpackers have known about for, oh, 50 years), and - hey presto! - can't be allowed to hit the ground!
RHINE ORDNANCE BARRACKS, Germany — With a strong tug to the small lanyard, the body armor vest came off in two pieces, falling almost to the ground, with someone extending a hand to prevent the ceramic plates inside from hitting the floor.
I can see the warning label on the vest now:
NOTE TO U.S. COMBAT TROOPS: When coming under sudden enemy fire, before hitting the deck, be sure a hand has been extended to prevent your Interceptor from striking the ground.
Nice Code of Honor You Got There, Sir
One of the arguments continually made by those who refuse to believe the military would do anything less than honorable when it comes to providing protection for our troop is a blatant and pathetic appeal to authority; i.e., "Fellow military people would never do anything to harm their comrades-in-arms!"
In case you don't think "military men" would prostitute themselves when it comes to the safety of soldiers, consider the following little revelation from the Pentagon "analysts-cum-propaganda-shills" story from last year:
When news articles revealed that US troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues, "I think our analysts - properly armed - can push back in that arena."
And don't forget that in 2005, the Marine Corps Times published an article that exposed the sale and subsequent recall of more than 23,000 defective vests (PDF file) manufactured by DHB Industries - vests that had been issued to Marines even though DHB and the Pentagon knew they were defective. The military recalled the vests only once the Marine Corps Times story ran, even though the Pentagon had known about the problem for nearly a year.
Armor Holdings, the military's largest supplier of the personal body armor system known as Interceptor, recently agreed to pay $30 million as part of a settlement in which Armor Holdings - now owned by British defense behemoth BAE Systems - admitted having knowingly sold defective body armor to various governmental agencies, and agreed to cooperate with federal law enforcement in its ongoing investigation of such activity. Armor Holdings had initially vigorously denied selling such defective armor.
Let me restate that: Armor Holdings (now BAE), the principal supplier of Interceptor body armor to the U.S. military, knowingly sold defective body armor to various governmental agencies, putting the lives of law enforcement officials at risk.
The Military Brain Trust
Here's how clued-in these Pentagon folks are when it comes to the issue: Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, testifying before the Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee two years ago:
The issue with body armor is there never has been and never will be better body armor than the Army is fielding to its soldiers today.
Wow! There "never will be" better body armor! Somebody didn't get the memo to the Pentagon, which solicited proposals for "improved" ceramic plates four months after Gen. Sorenson's lying testimony to Congress, and within a couple of days of Gen. Brown's pathetic dog-and-pony show before the House Armed Services Committee. But - oops! - here's a headline from last August:
Corps Issues Smaller, Lighter Body Armor
The Marine Corps has issued thousands of new body armor vests that are lighter, more comfortable and allow more freedom of movement than the current vest, but offer less ballistic protection than the Corps' standard-issued armor.
The so-called "scalable plate carrier" uses the same enhanced small arms protective plates and Kevlar ballistic inserts as the Corps' Interceptor body armor and modular tactical vest, but in a more streamlined, less bulky package than vests issued to most Marines.
Wait - whaaaat? "Offer less ballistic protection"???
Well, see, there's a very logical explanation for it, according to SysCom commander Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan:
"We're working very closely with Marines who have come out of theater [and] Marine Corps Combat Development Command to develop that next-generation vest," Brogan said. "Ideally, we will do it with the United States Army, so that we wear the same equipment, and then we don't have to face questions from the media and Congress about who has the best equipment."
Yeah - giving less ballistic protection to the troops is a great idea, because facing armor-piercing fire from the enemy is nothing compared to facing questions from the media and Congress.
(Such whining is not new: Gen. Speakes, in his pathetic testimony before Congress, said, "And, in fact, several months and years ago, we were victimized by some very aggressive commercial efforts to essentially instill a lack of confidence in loved ones and instill the false belief that there was better body armor available commercially. That was false, it was proven false, and we stand on our record, which is the stuff we are providing to our soldiers is the best.")
And, speaking of "there never will be better body armor" . . .
A Fish Story
So I'm skimming through my daily dose of Google Alerts when I come across this little tidbit:
Mega Fish Scales Inspire Future of Body Armor at MIT
[A] new MIT study says they're strong enough for the holy grail of body armor: a flexible vest on the battlefield . . .
Although MIT has yet to unveil an actual vest or even a swatch of scale-inspired material, the research has the potential to provide the Army with the holy grail of body armor - a lightweight, flexible material that protects against the blunt trauma of a bullet and can survive multiple penetrating impacts.
Huh. Well, I'll be dipped in you-know-what: the Army thinks it would be swell if somebody could come up with body armor that worked like fish scales.
Hey, assholes - over here!
How odd: A type of body armor that utilizes "the fish-scale" design and can stop multiple armor-piercing rounds has been available to the military for several years now - and its use has been expressly prohibited by the military.
Yeah - the Army knows goddam well that someone already has invented it, it's in use and it works. But what’s a few more research dollars between friends?
Col. Norwood, your conflict of interest is showing
Col. John D. Norwood (Ret.), who oversaw the controversial May 2006 testing of Dragon Skin for the Army, and then a few months later went to work for Dragon Skin's biggest competitor, Armor Holdings (now BAE), is, along with his new employer, being sued by a competitor:
On April 7, 2008, Point Blank Body Armor filed suit against BAE Systems Specialty Defense Systems of Pennsylvania, Inc ("BAE") and John Norwood in the Southern District of Florida for tortious interference with advantageous business relationship. The suit alleges that John Norwood used confidential information regarding Point Blank Body Armor that he obtained while working as a program manager for the U. S. Army to the detriment of Point Blank Body Armor and the advantage of his new employer, BAE. In particular, the confidential information was used to interfere with Point Blank Body Armor’s bid for the production of 230,000 IOTV’s pursuant to a request to submit a bid it had received from the U.S. Army.
Apparently the suit is still being litigated. Heh.
Good morning! Those? Those are fleas
Oh! - it appears the good Col. Norwood might be under criminal investigation as well, according to Soldiers for the Truth. SFTT reports that Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, & Technology Dean G. Popps might also be the target of an investigation. In fact, SFTT tells of the existence of a Department of Justice "Interceptor Body Armor Task Force," which may be looking into, among other things, the inexplicable appearance on eBay of one of the Dragon Skin vests that were supposed to have been tested by the Army in the controversial May 2006 session at H.P. White Laboratories. The vest was purchased by Richard Warren of Falmouth, Massachusetts, who said although the vest was represented to have been in new condition, it had been hit by at least 20 rounds - with no penetrations - when he received it. (The Army states that when it tested Dragon Skin in May 2006, it was penetrated 13 times out of 48 shots taken.)
A New Threat
Evidently, the Pentagon is keeping a close eye on an emerging threat: new Chinese ammo that duplicates some of the armor-piercing properties that American ammo has.
A Bright Spot
Because of the hard work of several Democratic members of Congress, some changes in testing and procurement procedures for body armor made it into the 2009 defense budget (PDF file), resulting in a bit more oversight.
So that's good.
Having tracked this issue for two-and-a-half three years now, there's one thing I know: There's a boatload of information to keep track of. If you're a glutton for punishment, you can read my past diaries here; my only request is that if you do go back to read them, please try to follow as many of the links as possible. And, regardless - thanks for reading this far. - o.h.
Next installment: A corruption-ridden foreign arms manufacturer - one of the world's largest - bought its way into the body armor scandal, a scandal perfectly in line with the vileness of its operations all around the globe.