Its top company officials are arrested, it made shoddy vests that had to be recalled and there’s the constant fog of controversy hovering around them, but when the business sector is so small for body armor, it’s tough to take your solicitation elsewhere.
That’s why the Pentagon announced July 3rd that once again Point Blank Body Armor has been awarded an $86 million contract for Army “improved outer tactical vests.” This comes about a year after the Army awarded the first series of contracts to Point Blank and Specialty Defense Systems at the initial launch of its IOTV.
Let’s hope there’s no more recalls or crass profiteering from that infamous (to some) company.
– Christian
Send officials from shoddy companies to a war zone with their own product. Doesn’t matter to me if it is a arms/ammo dealer, a vehicle / aircraft manufacturer, protective vest, (insert favorite weapons system here) and have them stand behind their product…
I seem to recall that the vests were recalled because assurance testing hadn’t been completed. That doesn’t imply a faulty product. The design had already been validated, so the danger was that without assurance testing, process problems were at greater risk of not being detected.
16 years ago I worked for a defense contractor. We had a vendor make an unforgivable sin:
They attempted to get a waver on the input to output isolation of a power supply (supposed to be 1000 VAC or 1414 VDC).
They also attempted to sway my opinion with a ‘I bought you lunch.‘
The first one angered me. The second one had me repay the salesman who purchased lunch on the spot. Needless to say they were put on the watch list by our company for compliance.
Sleazy companies do exist. There is no reason to not go through the testing required by the contract. The Ts & Cs usually get spelled out in great detail with the DCASMA and the Government program manager willing to address just about anything related to the contract.
Screwing around with equipment our military relies on to protect the personnel IMHO is grounds for going away for a very, very long time.
I’m not convinced that banning this company would have done much harm, and doing so would have taught other companies a useful lesson and may have done some good in this individual case.
I’m always telling clients to be wary of low bids, because they often have hidden costs.
If this company had been banned, the intellectual property rights to their product would likely have been sold to a larger and more legitimate company, quite possibly at a loss. The licensee company would have done it right, and as a result, probably charged more for the product. But the contract would be less likely to leave the military or the people using the vests burned.
Furthermore, if no larger, legtimate company was willing to buy the intellectual property rights, even at a loss to the orginal company, that should be a tipoff that maybe the product has hidden defects that industry insiders have found, but the military contracting authorities have not found.
Corruption is basically a product of bad systems and bad managers. Removing just a few of the worst apples won’t solve that problem, because once you have had bad apples, they will have created a culture of corruption among lower level employees, and their departure will not have put in place good systems. So, the company is probably still corrupt.
Also corruption is sometimes evidence of a bad product, because people who have good products don’t have to cheat to make a profit (although they can sometimes make more money that way), while this is the only way that people with bad products can make a product.
It is easier to license IP in an arms-length deal to a company with a better anti-corruption record than it is to clean up a company with a dirty history, and it is easier to let the market do product evaluation than leaving that in the hands of overburdened bureacrats, when possible.
Perhaps someone can answer: is there legal risk here? I mean, if someone is hurt or killed while wearing a substandard vest, could they sue the manufacturer? or does the fact that the government distributes these insulate the company?
I just wanted everybody to know that I have seen the future in warfare,& it is Chinese SWAT members riding in on their targets.….on Segways.You just could not imagine the terror I’d feel if I was looking towards Chinese SWAT members facing me down while on Segways.Armed & dangerous.….and on Segways!!!!
Anyway,When haven’t our forces put up with faulty equipment? Whether it’s defective body armor,assault rifles that jam no matter how immaculate one tries to keep them(not to mention rounds that do not IMMEDIATELY put down their target,I don’t care how much khat,crack,crank,angel dust,ice,meth,etc. the “target“is on when they get shot by our troops).Vehicles with questionable armor protection(or vehicles with adequate protection but unable to maneuver where they are needed because they are too big).
The guy who first proved body armor could stop, at the time a .38 or .45, point blank proved it, by firing his weapon his pistol point blank into his own product as he wore it.
I say let the executives prove their products in the same manner. I will volunteer to shoot my AK-47 with a standard round then a tracer, must be supplied by the military, then, in addition, all other rounds that the body armor is supposed to protect our soldiers with into the vendors executives’ body with them wearing their product that they claim will protect our troops. If it works buy it if not then they should have tested it further. I am sure their company will supply burial plots.
As an aside, Matt is referring to Rich Davis. He started Second Chance Body Armor, which was the first producer of soft body armor.
To demonstrate his vest, he would shoot himself with a [i].44 Magnum[/i], then shoot standard bowling pins off a table to prove he was using standard ammunition. This is also where the sport of “pin shooting” originated.
I have also seen Second Chance video where a man was shot at 3 feet with a 7.62 NATO round out of an FAL while wearing a vest while standing on one foot. All he had to do when hit was put his raised foot down to maintain balance.
Just a little history
Have the executives of this company donated to the Republican party?
Only in this corrupt administration would such a thing even be POSSIBLE. Who, in the world outside government, would ever grant a new multi-million dollar contract to a vendor that produced defective equipment? Oh, that’s right: the equipment is meant to save the lives of our service man and women and this administration has shown nothing but derision for those that are laying their lives on the line. Providing them with substandard, theoretically life-saving body armor is itself a crime. It’s a sad day when one considers government to the the “Enemy of the citizenry,” but that’s where “Average” Americans now exist.
God bless America– what’s left of it.
“Perhaps someone can answer: is there legal risk here? I mean, if someone is hurt or killed while wearing a substandard vest, could they sue the manufacturer? or does the fact that the government distributes these insulate the company?“
The short answer is that this is a really hard question. The biggest questions include:
(1) Is there an express warranty, an implied in fact warranty e.g. to comply with contract specifications, or an implied warranty? (2) Did the contract waive liability? (3) Was the buyer/user warned of the risks? (4) Was the design defective for a foreseeable use of the product? (5) Was the manufacturer negligent? (6) Was the unit in question a dud? (7) Is there any absolute or partial immunity connected with governmental use? (8) Is compliance with contract specifications a complete or partial defense that sets a duty of car? (9) Was there a superceding or intervening cause of the harm like hostile forces (or is that responsible for some percentage of the total damages)? (10) Does any right to sue belong to the federal government rather than the injured user, to the extent that the federal government provides compensation to the user? (11) What state or federal laws apply (e.g. law designated in a contract with the government, the UCMJ, the law of the soldier’s domicile, the law of the situ Pentagon contracting office in Virginia, the law of the state of manufacture or the manufacturerer’s headquarters, federal statutes, the local law of the place of the injury, different laws for different elements of the claim, etc.), (12) Is the risk insurable and was it in fact covered by insurance? (13) Were the harms suffered really from the product defect or did that in whole or in part have another cause (e.g. pre-existing injuries, medical malpractice, etc.).
This said, my gut instinct is that a court would be very reluctant to impose liability in the absence of a negligent, reckless or intentional failure to manufacture according to specification to a material degree at an excessive rate, and that any right to sue would belong to the federal government, rather than to soldier-users. If there defects were as a result of reckless or intentional for contract specifications, liability for punitive damages and criminal liability might also arise.
In the civilian context, liability is likely to be more expansive, probably requiring simply a showing of a design defect (although proving that would be hard).
The government could also give the manufacturer a free pass by asserting that a particular case or class of cases would require disclosure of state secrets for a claim or defense. Indeed, the state secrets defense was established in a product liability case in which the Air Force lied in litigation to secure the verdict it wanted in favor of the manufacturer.
Dragonskin
You knuckleheads might want to do some research before you make idiotic statements against Point Blank.
Gen. Larry Ellis is CEO of the Company.
None of you is probably worthy of licking his boots. Etc.
Wouldn’t the army be smarter to adopt the modular tactical vest and also refrain from trusting Point Blank and rather consider using which ever company it is that supplies the MTV to the marines which has proved very popular and resilient?