PAYBACK, FINALLY, FOR ARMOR BUYS

It’s become a dis­gust­ingly famil­iar scene: American troops, cor­nered into to pay­ing for their own pro­tec­tion. When sup­ply chains bunch up, sol­diers and marines or their fam­i­lies have been forced to dig into their own pock­ets, for things like body armor.
Now thank God they’ll finally start to get reim­bursed for what they’ve spent, Strategy Page notes. But only for equip­ment bought between 9/​11 and July 31st of this year. And “despite objec­tions from the Pentagon,” accord­ing to the New York Times, whose lead­ers worry that it might “under­mine the account­abil­ity and effec­tive­ness of equip­ment used in com­bat.“
“The basic prob­lem is that new tech­nol­ogy is com­ing into use much faster than the tra­di­tional mil­i­tary pro­cure­ment sys­tem can deal with,” Strategy Page contends.

Theres more use­ful, often life-​​saving, gear the troops can use for sale. And the troops dont wait for the mil­i­tary to get around to stock­ing the new stuff, and they are not shy about telling each other, or the media, how great the unof­fi­cial gear is…
Several years ago, the army thought it had this under con­trol with the Rapid Fielding Initiative, which gave com­bat units mil­lions of dol­lars to spend as the com­man­ders saw fit. But it was never fast enough. [Especially when its fund­ing keeps get­ting pushed back into “sup­ple­men­tal bud­gets.] So the lat­est attempt to cope with this sit­u­a­tion is the annual $1,100 reimbursement.

November 12th, 2004 | Armor | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.