Posted on 01/15/2006 9:33:25 AM PST by Bobibutu
Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits By Nathaniel R. Helms
Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.
The soldiers asked for anonymity because they are concerned they will face retaliation for going public with the Army's apparently new directive. At the sources' requests DefenseWatch has also agreed not to reveal the unit at which the incident occured for operational security reasons.
On Saturday morning a soldier affected by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that "all" commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. It arrived unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The soldier said the order was deeply disturbiing to many of the men who had used their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their mobility and ballistic protection.
"We have to be able to move. It (Dragon Skin) is heavy, but it is made so we have mobility and the best ballistic protection out there. This is crazy. And they are threatening us with our benefits if we don't comply." he said.
The soldier reiterated Friday's reports that any soldier who refused to comply with the order and was subsequently killed in action "could" be denied the $400,000 death benefit provided by their SGLI life insurance policy as well as face disciplinary action.
As of this report Saturday morning the Army has not yet responded to a DefenseWatch inquiry.
Recently Dragon Skin became an item of contention between proponents of the Interceptor OTV body armor generally issued to all service members deploying in combat theaters and its growing legion of critics. Critics of the Interceptor OTV system say it is ineffective and inferior to Dragon Skin, as well as several other commercially available body armor systems on the market. Last week DefenseWatch released a secret Marine Corps report that determined that 80% of the 401 Marines killed in Iraq between April 2004 and June 2005 might have been saved if the Interceptor OTV body armor they were wearing was more effective. The Army has declined to comment on the report because doing so could aid the enemy, an Army spokesman has repeatedly said.
A U.S. Army spokesman was not available for comment at the time DW's original report (Friday - 1700 CST) was published. DefenseWatch continues to seek a response from the Army and will post one as soon as it becomes available. Yesterday the DoD released a news story through the Armed Forces News Service that quoted Maj. Gen. Steven Speaks, the Army's director of force development, who countered critical media reports by denying that the U.S. military is behind the curve in providing appropriate force protection gear for troops deployed to Iraq and elsewhere in the global war against terrorism. The New York Tiimes and Washington Post led the bandwagon of mainstream media that capitalized on DefenseWatch's release of the Marine Corps study. Both newspapers released the forensic information the Army and Marines are unwilling to discuss.
"Those headlines entirely miss the point," Speaks said.
The effort to improve body armor "has been a programmatic effort in the case of the Army that has gone on with great intensity for the last five months," he noted.
Speaks' assessment contradicts earlier Army, Marine and DoD statements that indicated as late as last week that the Army was certain there was nothing wrong with Interceptor OTV body armor and that it was and remains the "best body armor in the world."
One of the soldiers who lost his coveted Dragon Skin is a veteran operator. He reported that his commander expressed deep regret upon issuing his orders directing him to leave his Dragon Skin body armor behind. The commander reportedly told his subordinates that he "had no choice because the orders came from very high up" and had to be enforced, the soldier said. Another soldier's story was corroborated by his mother, who helped defray the $6,000 cost of buying the Dragon Skin, she said.
The mother of the soldier, who hails from the Providence, Rhode Island area, said she helped pay for the Dragon Skin as a Christmas present because her son told her it was "so much better" than the Interceptor OTV they expected to be issued when arriving in country for a combat tour.
"He didn't want to use that other stuff," she said. "He told me that if anything happened to him I am supposed to raise hell."
At the time the orders were issued the two soldiers had already loaded their Dragon Skin body armor onto the pallets being used to air freight their gear into the operational theater, the soldiers said. They subsequently removed it pursuant to their orders.
Currently nine U.S. generals stationed in Afghanistan are reportedly wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin body armor, according to company spokesman Paul Chopra. Chopra, a retired Army chief warrant officer and 20+-year pilot in the famed 160th "Nightstalkers" Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), said his company was merely told the generals wanted to "evaluate" the body armor in a combat environment. Chopra said he did not know the names of the general officers wearing the Dragon Skin.
Pinnacle claims more than 3,000 soldiers and civilians stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are wearing Dragon Skin body armor, Chopra said. Several months ago DefenseWatch began receiving anecdotal reports from individual soldiers that they were being forced to remove all non-issue gear while in theater, including Dragon Skin body armor, boots, and various kinds of non-issue ancillary equipment.
Last year the DoD, under severe pressure from Congress, authorized a one-time $1,000 reimbursement to soldiers who had purchased civilian equipment to supplement either inadequate or unavailable equipment they needed for combat operations. At the time there was no restriction on what the soldiers could buy as long as it was specifically intended to offer personal protection or further their mission capabilities while in theater.
Nathaniel R. Helms is the editor of DefenseWatch Magazine. He can be reached at natshouse1@chater.net. Please send all inquiries and comments to dwfeedback@yahoo.com .
Give that dead man 30 days in the cooler!!
There's something about this that doesn't sound right. Unless I see the orders, I'm not going to accept this as fact. It's all hearsay and second or third hand.
I will consider this a non-story until the orders are produced, in writing.
I wouldnt give a damn what the troops are wearing. As long as they were safer.
ping
Maybe the officer's attitude is that those vests don't make them safer. (I don't have any opinion one way or the other.) It does seem kind of boorish on the part of the brass, however.
I do not believe this story.
What officer would ever issue an order that states an insurance policy would not be paid? That is crazy.
This piece is from Hackworth's outfit and I don't know if it is for real, but if it is, it stinks.
I'm not going to accept this as fact." So....you would not want your son wearing non-issue armor if DOD said their gear (by definition older and cheaper, from lowest bidder) was as good, or almost as good, maybe; but no matter, orders is orders?
Yeah. Nobody's identified. Nobody knows who said what, when. If orders were issued, let's see them.
After all, Hillary's saying about the same thing. I don't believe her, either.
If this new effort to limit alternative body armour is real, it would seem as if the main contractor had promise of exclusivity in the business agreement with the Army.
Tell you what Army leadership, if someone is going to fight for me over there, you give him first choice in body armour. If the guy is willing to put his money out to protect himself, then STFU and let him do his job.
Just damn! The guys are putting their lives on the line and the Army wants them to wear what they consider to be inferior armour.
That's just bull-s--t, if true.
If not true, I wish the Army would corner the idiot that started this rumour and kick their arse.
This is so much like the government. Dear God sometimes I wish a rock from heaven would just come and squash them all. They are bugs disguised as human beings. Can't do anything without government approval because everyone knows how fn competent the government is. We so deserve to be destroyed and oppressed for our acceptance of such crap.
Some REMF who has spent his whole career in procurement in the Pentagon and has his future tied up in slelcting the current armor.
So9
"I'm not going to accept this as fact." So....you would not want your son wearing non-issue armor if DOD said their gear (by definition older and cheaper, from lowest bidder) was as good, or almost as good, maybe; but no matter, orders is orders?"
Look. You're not paying attention. I'm saying that I don't believe any such orders not to wear the other armor were ever issued. I don't believe that crap about generals wearing this better armor, either.
This sounds like a crapola story to me. Hackworth's stuff is often bullwhack. Show me the orders that prohibit the wearing of this armor. Show me where it says that the insurance won't pay off.
The story smells.
See: defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=490
If true; and that is a big "if", I would like to see the hide ripped off the idiot who issued the order.
I think this boils down to the same thing in civilian life when an employer threatens to hold a paycheck from a worker untill they comply or payroll deduct damages that an employee accidently makes. They can threaten it but they can not enforce it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.