Buying Next Year’s Chem-​​Bio Gear

Following up yesterday’s post on the new bud­get, let’s see what chem-​​bio defense equip­ment the Defense Department is plan­ning to buy. The top line items include (unsur­pris­ingly) CB detec­tion gear, indi­vid­ual pro­tec­tion equip­ment, and vac­cines. About 36 per­cent of pro­cure­ment dol­lars are going to buy spe­cial­ized CB defense vehi­cles for the Army and CB detec­tors for the ser­vices. Nearly 24 per­cent is going to indi­vid­ual pro­tec­tive equip­ment — mostly masks and suits. The rest is seven per­cent for col­lec­tive pro­tec­tion sys­tems, five per­cent for decon sys­tems, less than three per­cent for infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and nine per­cent for bio­log­i­cal vac­cines. Last, 16 per­cent for instal­la­tion pro­tec­tion equip­ment, largely pay­ing for haz­mat gear and exercises.

The CB Defense Program (CBDP) is buy­ing 28 M31E2 Biological Integrated Detection System (BIDS) for the Army next year, each cost­ing about $3.4 mil­lion. These fea­ture the Joint Biological Point Detection System (JBPDS) as the heart of the sys­tem. Most of these BIDS pla­toons were jus­ti­fied as home­land secu­rity capa­bil­i­ties, and we’re going to be buy­ing them for sev­eral more years. The Navy’s get­ting eleven JBPDS for their ships, for about $330,000 each. DOD will be buy­ing 25,000 bio­log­i­cal assay tick­ets at $50 a pop as the first phase of its Joint CBR Agent Water Monitor.  All the rest of biode­tec­tion funds is in R&D (tomorrow).

On the chem­i­cal side, the Army will get 13 Strykers mod­i­fied with point and stand­off chem­i­cal detec­tors (the Joint Service Lightweight Standoff Chemical Agent Detector) and other equip­ment (the vehi­cle des­ig­nated as the NBC Recon Vehicle). Each one cost $7–8 mil­lion each, over twice what the older M93A1 NBCRS “Fox” cost (which it is replac­ing). We’re buy­ing nearly 7000 Joint Chemical Agent Detectors, and more each year through the POM at about $4000 each. The CBDP spent years and more than $100 mil­lion devel­op­ing BAE’s ChemSentry to be the JCAD before they gave up and went to Smith Detection’s Lightweight Chemical Detector as the can­di­date. Finally, the Joint “Light” NBC Recon System (it’s actu­ally very heavy) is finally rolling out after a four-​​year delay. Seven Heavy HMMWVs and six LAVs will have the new equip­ment. Yes, it’s duplica­tive of the Stryker NBCRV but the Strykers can get built faster.

In indi­vid­ual pro­tec­tive equip­ment, lots of masks — 7122 Joint Service Aircrew Masks (JSAM) cost­ing about $3000 each, and 18,248 dis­pos­able Joint Service Chemical Environment Survivability Mask (JSCESM)costing $130 each. The JSAM are for all fixed wing pilots, while the Air Force decided that the pro­gram needed to buy them a sec­ond mask (instead of using O&M funds as it should). The main pro­gram buy is 176,007 Joint Service General Purpose Masks (JSGPM), which will replace both the M40 and the older MCU2/​P masks at a cost of $170 each. Overall, there isn’t a large improve­ment in capa­bil­ity, but it is slightly bet­ter than the two pre­de­ces­sor masks and it will offer one stan­dard mask for all ground combatants. 

Now the CBDP isn’t sup­posed to buy con­sum­able items, but the ser­vices bul­lied OSD into ignor­ing the pub­lic law and buy­ing them lots of JSLIST pro­tec­tive suits, boots and gloves ($39 mil­lion worth) and Joint Protective Aircrew Ensembles (JPACE). The ground suits cost about $250 a pop, while the avi­a­tor ver­sion cost twice that. That’s because avi­a­tors have to look good in pro­tec­tive suits, and they need pock­ets for their pens and sun­glasses. In the vac­cine area, the CBDP is procur­ing 1.43 mil­lion anthrax vac­cine doses at about $26 each and 1.25 mil­lion small­pox vac­cine doses at about $4 each. In a few years, DoD will be buy­ing plague vac­cine as well. It’s start­ing to get really expen­sive to buy these doses for the total force every year, and some are sug­gest­ing DOD pro­cure vac­cine doses for mil­i­tary depen­dents as well.

In the infor­ma­tion sys­tems, there are three prod­ucts — Joint Effects Model (haz­ard pre­dic­tion), Joint Warning and Reporting Network (the com­mu­ni­ca­tion back­bone), and Joint Operational Effects Federation (for data man­age­ment). Most of the pro­cure­ment funds are going to make CDs to send the first prod­ucts out to the field. It’s amaz­ingly small amounts of money ($14 mil­lion across all three prod­ucts) for a “network-​​centric” mil­i­tary. Bottom line, the old-​​time CBDP peo­ple still focus on detec­tors and pro­tec­tive suits as the favored chil­dren over haz­ard pre­dic­tion models.

The CBDP is con­tin­u­ing to buy Karcher decon sys­tems as its Joint Service Transportable Decon System (Small Scale) — 338 sys­tems at $24,ooo each, plus DF200 decon­t­a­m­i­nants. After the Army’s government-​​produced sys­tem M21/​M22 Modular Decon System wasn’t accepted (and not deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom), it turned to indus­try for the solu­tion. Again. In 2009, we might see the first buys of the Joint Service Sensitive Equipment Decon System — 52 sys­tems at $80,000 a pop. These sys­tems are way, way over­due, but crit­i­cal if we’re ever to clean up after a CB war­fare event. 

The medics wanted col­lec­tive pro­tec­tion for their field hos­pi­tals and for­ward aid sta­tions, so they’re get­ting the Chemical Protective Deployable Medical System (CP DEPMEDS) for about $1.5 mil­lion each. The CB Protective System (CBPS), which is installed in med­ical HMMWVs, costs about $1.2 mil­lion each — we’re get­ting 21 sys­tems in 2008. The Navy con­vinced OSD to give it money back in the late 1990s to install col­lec­tive pro­tec­tion sys­tems in its amphibi­ous ships and hos­pi­tal ships. Next year, the USS Makin Island will get its col­lec­tive pro­tec­tion for only $10.5 mil­lion. The Navy keeps get­ting money for this pur­pose (for which it ought to be pay­ing for itself) through FY 2009. No one else seems to value col­lec­tive pro­tec­tion for fixed and semi-​​permenant sites, strangely enough.

I’m going on too long, but let me just note the PM Guardian’s fine efforts for instal­la­tion pro­tec­tion. For the past year (and this year going through next year), the program’s been buy­ing gear for the instal­la­tion response teams. Each base gets eight DFU-​​200 air sam­plers, two chem­i­cal point detec­tors, three chem­i­cal agent mon­i­tors, six radi­a­tion detec­tors, and assorted other gear. In 2006, 50 bases received this gear. In 2007 they plan to drop this at 17 sites, and in 2008, at 15 sites more. So in 2008, we’re going to see 15 sites get a lim­ited amount of CB defense gear, some comm con­nec­tiv­ity, and exer­cises for $86.4 mil­lion. Read the descrip­tion in the P-​​forms, and you’d never know what an insuf­fi­cient capa­bil­ity is actu­ally being pro­vided. This isn’t a pro­tec­tion effort, it’s aug­ment­ing the response capability. 

Hell of a pro­gram. But no one said that pas­sive defense was at the top of any pri­or­ity lists. “Combating WMD” means air and mis­sile defense, spe­cial oper­a­tions, and inter­dic­tion mis­sions. My per­sonal obser­va­tion — field grade offi­cers are mak­ing poor pro­cure­ment deci­sions to which the general/​flag offi­cers pay lit­tle atten­tion, because it ben­e­fits their respec­tive ser­vices to do so (and I include the Army in this). They’re not going to change until there’s an actual attack and peo­ple die from CB weapons, and that’s the real shame of it all.

– Jason Sigger, cross­posted at Armchair Generalist

February 14th, 2007 | Chem-Bio | 34895 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/02/14/buying-next-years-chem-bio-gear/Buying+Next+Year%27s+Chem-Bio+Gear2007-02-14+11%3A47%3A51Robot_Economist You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.