Body Army Recalled...but wait, that's not the end of the story

It's big news when soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan get affected by something as dramatic as body armor. Nobody wants to see our soldiers without the best available protection. So when the AP reported today that the Army has recalled the body armor out in the field today because the armor failed testing it made headlines in major newspapers and is being reported front and center at Military.com

See here at Military.com for the whole story.

"Army Secretary Pete Geren has ordered the recall of more than 16,000 sets of body armor following an audit that concluded the bullet-blocking plates in the vests failed testing and may not provide Soldiers with adequate protection.
The audit by the office of the Defense Departmet inspector general, not yet made public but obtained by The Associated Press, faults the Army for flawed testing procedures before awarding a contract for the armor.
In a letter dated Jan. 27 to Acting Inspector General Gordon Heddell, Geren said he did not agree that the plates failed the testing or that Soldiers were issued deficient gear. He said his opinion was backed by the Pentagon's top testing director. ?"

One would think that the Army could recall and send out some good armor to the field, right? Unfortunately it's not that simple, or nearly that quick. PEO Soldier in Natick will have a time on their hand re-fielding correct armor. The Army doesn't have a quick recall process like a auto maker in a repair and return service might. Right now they are looking at a a refield of good ceramic plates for vests on an availablity basis as fast as a manufacturer can make them. This won't be a week, maybe even a month, and this won't be until a FAT (first article test) is done on replacement plates. The logistics tail on this one is long. And that's only after the replacement plates are identified and on contract. The article doesn't say this is the case but since the decision has only just been made for the recall you can fathom that they aren't.

The logistics of green

The word "green" as it referes to an enviromental movement may start becoming a cliche in the civilian industrial world. Yet the speed the military moves the idea of environmental awareness is just in it's infancy. That hasn't stopped various efforts at chaning the way the goverment does business, and in the military these changes could add up to something profound given it's years of operations in sustainment without giving on thought to how the environment is affected beyond trying not to run afoul of the Pollution Prevention Act, Clean Water and Clean Air acts. Now, with the various services trying to lessen their impact on what they call their Logistics Footprint and dependency on a diminishing resource such as petroleum products we are now finally seeing replacement alternatives to commodity shipments that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) have stocked for years. Take this small annoucement that I ran across recently from Bio-Clean International.

Bio-Clean International, Inc. (Pink Sheets:BCLE) announced today that its
affiliated entity, American Bio-Clean Corporation (ABC), has fulfilled a
shipment of weapons cleaning solution for the Defense Logistics Agency.
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) supplies the nation’s military
services and several civilian agencies with the critical resources they need
to accomplish their worldwide missions. DLA provides wide-ranging logistical
support for peacetime and wartime operations, as well as emergency
preparedness and humanitarian missions. Information on the Defense Logistics
Agency can be found on its web site at www.dla.mil. Tammy Dunn, COO of
Bio-Clean International, stated, “We are pleased that Bio-Clean
International, Inc., through its subsidiaries and affiliated entities, is
able to continue to respond to the critical needs of the U.S. Armed
Services. The Company continues to meet in a most expeditious manner the
critical supply requirements for our customized parts and weapons cleaning
systems and fluids for military demands in combat zones around the world.”

Now this may not sound like much of an annoucement, but given the amount of such cleaner stocked by DLA and used by the services this adds up to a huge amount of petroleum products on the order of thousands of gallons. This is just a small drop in a huge bucket available to defense services to make an impact on the "green" economy. After all, this is one of our new President's central tenents to his revitalization act. Next steps in greening the services will be a "pack in, bio-degrade forward" strategy where energy is made from locally available resources and all waste is treated with no need to ship out. Eliminating shipment convoy threats and reducing logistics footprint, which for defense is where it all lies.

Opening day, delayed

Please bear with me. I had intended to start posting to this blog at the beginning of the new year. However, I'm a tinkerer at heart and it's seem to be my undoing at the moment. I've changed the look and feel of the site and I just don't know how to get some of the customizations working the way I want/need them to. You can see some of the options at the top such as the Ad banner that came with the template, which is a bit rediculous for me since this blog won't attract much in the way of advertising at the moment yet there it is and I don't know how to get rid of it. I will figure it out though, along with the tabs and the sidebars. After those are set we'll be off and running. I already have some great ideas related to recent news (such as the current IDF and foreign military sales). I'm working this as fast as I can so I'll have some content up shortly.

Update: I gave up on the nice template I had picked out. I'm just not that familiar with CSS templates to update it to how it needs to be. This minimal one should work for the time being.