Word: armorers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...guerrilla resistance movement," he says. "What did you expect - for us to stand in a field and wait for the Israelis to mow us down?" Indeed, in the classic guerrilla playbook, the insurgent army avoids going toe-to-toe with a conventional force armed with vastly superior weapons, armor and air support. If he has a choice, the guerrilla seeks to survive to fight another day and allow his adversary's momentum to work against him in terms of the war's political impact...
...audit goes a step further, concluding that some of the ceramic ballistic inserts - bulletproof plates, in layman's terms - in the armor are actually defective. The IG focused on "first article testing," by which any design flaws are spotted and rectified during the manufacturing process. Such testing is meant to confirm that a product meets Army specifications. The audit says the Army didn't perform or score the tests consistently. As a result, the audit report says, "we believe that three of the eight ballistic-insert designs that passed first article testing actually failed." (See pictures of U.S. troops...
...unclear where the 16,000 sets of armor are currently located or being used. Body armor is now standard issue for all military personnel in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2001, the U.S. military has sourced body armor from nearly a dozen manufacturers. Almost from the start of the war in Iraq in 2003, the military has been criticized for failing to supply armor in sufficient numbers; more recently, the criticism has centered on the quality of the armor...
Even so, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren has recalled the sets as a precaution. The Army statement quotes Geren as saying, "Let's put this into perspective. Out of more than 2,300 body-armor tests conducted by the Army, the Department of Defense IG is questioning three of them." Even those three, he adds, satisfied the department's testers. "And let's not forget, since 2002, we have produced and fielded over 2 million plates of body armor. That body armor has saved the lives of thousands of soldiers...
Geren has asked the Deputy Secretary of Defense to adjudicate the opposing views of the IG and the Army. Representative Slaughter, who has made the pursuit of dodgy body armor a personal crusade - both IG audits were conducted at her request - said she was waiting for more potentially devastating audits to come. "We're not done yet," she says...