HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS KILLS: The Pentagon versus Body Armor for the Soldier in the Field

What do you get when you mix "make nice" political correctness via a cockamamie federal procurement policy + more than "bare bones" middle management? You get dead American soldiers. 28 months into this Iraqi "war," and our troops still do not have required basic armor to fend off enemy munitions. Why is that?

Sunday morning, 14 August 2005, Col. David Hunt, USA (Retired), Fox News consultant, laid it out. He recently published They Just Don't Get It: How the Washington Political Machine is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It.

The Pentagon insists on using small contractors to make body armor, among filling other vital needs. It's more of that self-sacrificial federal service to others of compensating the little guy because the big guy has gotten the breaks previously. It is like minority hires, when the minorities cannot do the job. These small companies cannot do the job. We are being POLITICALLY CORRECT, and it is killing our men and women!

What is better? Contracting with big manufacturers, whether in America or overseas! The object is to protect our military members NOW. That requires remembering that there is a WAR going on, and "making nice" for the so-called "have nots" should be left for ice cream socials.

Second to this erroneous policy is the over-management that characterizes the Pentagon. Why have one person make decisions when twenty-five or more can provide "group think," i.e., true responsibility-less, dingbattery, if there ever was any. So many are have a finger in the pie that no one honchos the job and "gets-r-done."

After listening to Col Hunt, we turned to our print and electronic news sources. As if by magic, the New York Times corroborated this travesty, so well outlined by Col Hunt. Here are some tidbits:

U.S. Struggling to Get Soldiers Updated Armor - New York Times, August 14,
2005, by MICHAEL MOSS

For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents.

The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon's procurement system.

While much of the focus on casualties in Iraq has been on soldiers killed by explosive devices aimed at vehicles, body armor remains critical to the military's goals in Iraq. Gunfire has killed at least 325 troops, about half the number killed by bombs, according to the Pentagon.

Among the problems contributing to the delays in getting the stronger body armor, the Pentagon is relying on a cottage industry of small armor makers with limited production capacity. In addition, each company must independently come up with its own design for the plates, which then undergo military testing. Just four vendors have begun making the enhanced armor, according to military and industry officials. Two more companies are expected to receive contracts by next month, while 20 or more others have plates that are still being tested.

The ensuing scramble to produce more plates was marred by a series of missteps in which the Pentagon gave one contract to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He was allowed to struggle with production for a year before he gave up. An outdated delivery plan slowed the arrival of plates that were made. In all, the war was 10 months old before every soldier in Iraq had plates in late January 2004.

Col. Bruce D. Jette, who directed a special unit at the Pentagon known as the Rapid
Equipping Force until he retired last fall, said the military's reliance on small companies to make body armor succeeded in spurring innovation. But in failing to acquire the rights to those designs, the military may be passing up an opportunity to increase production, he added.

Meanwhile, a burst of research is under way to develop even stronger body armor, though some earlier efforts appear to have slipped through the cracks. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Stephen D. Nunn said his group formulated a polymer that can be added to the ceramic plates to increase their strength. "Our material and assembly seems to perform better than anything else I've read about," he said.

But the group's contract was limited to fortifying helicopters. When that project ended in 2001, there was no money to extend the work to body armor, Mr. Nunn said.

(All emphases mine)

Do you ever wonder why we do not seem to be winning this war in Iraq, even though the propaganda machines say that we are? It is very, very simple. We are thinking ourselves into oblivion, because we are not thinking correctly. We are allowing nonsense to replace sense, and allowing clusters of inappropriate feelings to replace cold hard reason. Reason wins wars, not feelings. Reason armors our troops and does not give a damn about whether the so-called "little guy" feels good. It also sends most of those middle managers in the military into retirement or to work in the field.