PERSONAL ARMOR
A question remains in the back of our mental agenda right now which will be widely discussed many years from now.
Who is responsible, we seem to want to think we want to determine, for allowing our armed forces to have fallen into such a condition as that which inspires some of them to pass along seemingly legitimate complaints concerning the quality of the “standard” protective gear provided for their use in combat zones.
One strongly considered reason suggests that, perhaps, many years ago something went amiss which allowed a human misjudgment to be accepted as being valid. A some time or another personal well-being during combat conditions became a political “card” to be played for campaign advantage, with little or no concern for individual bodies in such combat situations as are common in today's war-making complexities.
It can be that we would be founding the base of yet another wrong if we center our attention on who might have been “to blame”. Who might have played careless card years is of minor importance now and does little so meet present needs. That one person or those persons who, for political advantage either allowed or purposely caused our protective military shell to decay from within , must know who they are, or were and that is punishment enough for the time being.
Two areas of consideration come, immediately, to mind.
As the outward form of military equipment changes suited to the technical knowledge available, certain things about their use hold steady. Trucks are supply and personnel carriers, by and large, whereas a tank and some other heavily armored vehicles are used in a more aggressive sense to attack the enemy or meet his thrusts. The use of “trucks” where “tanks” were needed seems to be at the bottom of so many of the recent equipment complaints. The cartoon-like misuse of equipment is an invitation to possible disaster. Being school to expect transport vehicles to fulfill the protective efficiency of heavier units might best be called a training and preparations error than a battlefield error. The solution lies more with logistics of supplying sufficient numbers of each type of vehicles required to accomplish the task at hand.
At the opposite extreme, we must also accept the reality of our time which has been in place for several decades at least which plainly indicates that the unit which is demonstrated at the munitions proving ground or other such testing for approval location, is not the identical unit which will then we find coming from the nation assembly lines. There is a great deal of leeway between the cup of creation and the lip of actual use. It is entirely possible that the unit created by “experts”and accepted for specific usage by other “experts” can become a variable dud under our strange sopho-moronic system of “controls ” so often associated with the word “quality. Too often it becomes “cost” control. In military hardware: cutting corners kills.
It has long been true and will continue to be so, that some individual are born complainers ... often at odds with authority of any kind. The current spate of critical comments seems to coming from from a broader base than habitual faultfinders. It deserve serious attention by Congressional Oversight persons.
Now! Not “next year.”
A.L.M. December 13, 2004 [c560wds]
