More Body Armor Is On the Way for U.S. Troops

Finally after three years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan the Army is going to start shipping armor to our soldiers. I find it reprehensible that it took a leaked Pentagon report stating more armor could have saved lives for it to happen. Were they hoping we would forget?

Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post writes:

The Army announced yesterday that it will soon start producing 230,000 sets of side armor plates and field them over the year to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, after a recently disclosed Pentagon study indicated that such plates could have helped prevent scores of troop deaths since 2003.

The Marine Corps has delivered 9,000 sets of the plates to Iraq, a number that will rise to about 30,000 by April, officials said yesterday. Each set of plates, together with a carrier and soft armor, costs about $450 and weighs about seven pounds, the officials said.

Army and Marine generals in charge of developing and buying equipment defended the pace at which they were getting the new side armor to troops, after a closed-door briefing yesterday on the matter on Capitol Hill. The generals briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee after lawmakers voiced concern over a classified Pentagon forensic study disclosed last week that for the first time linked gaps in upper torso protection to troop fatalities.

The scrutiny of body armor is the latest instance in which Congress has pressured the Pentagon to accelerate the distribution of protective equipment to U.S. troops -- from "uparmored" Humvees and trucks to bulletproof vests. More than 2,200 American troops have died in Iraq since March 2003, 1,741 of them in combat, according to Pentagon figures as of yesterday.

The forensic study of 401 Marines who died in combat in Iraq from March 2003 to June 2005 showed that 21 died primarily from injuries to the side of their torsos. The study, completed in August 2005 by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, concluded that those Marines might have benefited from improved protection, such as that offered by the side plates. The findings, if applied to all U.S. combat casualties, suggest that scores of deaths might have been prevented if the new side plates had been worn.

The Marine Corps finalized contracts for the production of the side plates in mid-September and production began six weeks later, with distribution starting in November, said Col. Shawn Reinwald, director for combat equipment at the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va. The Marine Corps commandant decided on the need for side plates in June, he said.

What kind of report is so specific that it states without doubt that body armor saves lives? What a technological world we live in!

The rest of the article can be found here:
More Body Armor Is On the Way for U.S. Troops