COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Body armor: The goalposts move again

The New York Times finally acknowledges that the US had gotten body armor to every single deployed soldier sometime months prior to May of 2004.

But now, the New York Times breathlessly runs the scoop that now that every soldier has the state-of-the-art SAPI body armor, that not all of them have the extra-super-duper new improved version of the SAPI plates, as seen pitched by Florence Henderson on TV.

Cpl. Nicholas Roberts, 23, a marine from Colorado, was wounded last December in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, when his armor plates failed to deflect an insurgent's attack. He just started walking again this summer after nine operations. In wearing the armor, he said, "you know your risks, that it's not going to stop everything."

"Unfortunately," he added, when told about the enhanced plates, "they didn't have that when I was in."

Umm, yeah. And the Times interviewed a guy who was wounded nine friggin' months ago!

Worldwide, the Army would need nearly 2 million plates to supply all 996,00 [sic] troops using body armor with the enhanced plates.

Umm, yeah. We have 160,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan so in order to fit them all we'll need 2 million plates. That's media math for you.

The article makes no attempt to differentiate between the deferring levels of need. Not every soldier needs the additional armor, because not every soldier has to leave the gate regularly. Nor is any attempt made to quantify how many soldiers haven't received it yet.

And hey, guess what, genius...it DOES take time to field new equipment. Really, for the Army to begin fielding a new and improved version so soon after the first one is fielded is pretty damn impressive.

I have no idea what marginal extra protection the new plates will provide. The old plates will stop an AK 47 round and most frags. Money doesn't grow on trees, either. If they want two million plates at six hundred apiece, we're looking at spending more than half a billion dollars on what may be a marginal improvement.

Is this really the highest and best use of the money?

Dunno.

But the New York Times article wasn't much help. If our logisticians walk on water, I'd expect the New York Times to run a 64-point type headline, "Army Can't Swim"

Splash, out

Jason

[CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE NET] posted by Jason : 15:43 EST, Saturday, August 13, 2005 50 transmissions this net

Comments:

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-976420.php

I found that link on Blackfive's blog. Great story showing body armor in action, saving the life of a soldier. The video was recorded by the enemy.
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Saturday, August 13, 2005

Body armor: The goalposts move again

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