CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – DEFENSE
Aug. 5, 2011 – 10:10 a.m.
Audit Finds Improper Testing of Body Armor, Questions Troop Safety
By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff
The Army did not properly test millions of special plates made for U.S. soldiers’ body armor, leaving it unclear whether troops might have received flawed equipment, the Pentagon’s inspector general says in a new report produced in response to a congressional request.
The Aug. 1 report found that the Army conducted subpar tests on special armored plates that are inserted in protective vests used by soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The audit covered seven contracts awarded between 2004 and 2006 to six different companies. Under the deals, the Pentagon paid $2.5 billion to obtain 5 million of the plates.
“We determined that ballistic testing and quality assurance for Interceptor Body Armor inserts did not have proper controls to ensure that the ballistic inserts met contract requirements,” wrote Bruce A. Burton, deputy assistant inspector general for Acquisition and Contract Management, in the cover letter for the report. “Consequently, the Army cannot be sure that the appropriate level of protection has been achieved.”
The audit is the fourth of four requested since 2006 by
Recurring Problem
The quality of body armor and other gear for troops at war has been a recurring concern for members of Congress over the last decade. The new report, though it describes tests that occurred several years ago, is nonetheless the latest snapshot of quality control in the military, and the picture is not positive.
“Five years ago, I read in the New York Times that 80 percent of Marines who died in Iraq of upper body wounds would have survived if they had been given the proper body armor,” Slaughter said in a statement. “I was absolutely stunned and knew we needed to take action. I regret that it took a newspaper article to point this out and the subsequent investigations that I called for. So while I’m glad that the work got done and the reviews are being handled by DoD instead of contractors, I know that if this had only been handled correctly in the first place we might have saved more lives.”
The inspector general’s team examined the quality of the testing but did not do its own review of the materials delivered under the contracts to determine whether faulty plates may have made their way to the front lines. The Army maintains that soldiers in battle are not at risk. But the auditors said that, because of the inadequate testing, there was less than full assurance of that assertion’s accuracy.
The Army, the audit said, “could provide only limited assurance that approved ballistic materials for approximately 5 million inserts on seven contracts met the requirements.” The service “did not consistently enforce the requirements for testing the body armor ballistic inserts.”
In particular, the report said, the Army did not always use the right size inserts in tests, use consistent methods for measuring the velocity of projectiles hitting the plates during testing, or sometimes even perform required tests at all.
The inspector general also found that the Army allowed an official employed by one of the armor contractors to “make the call” in approving one lot of plates whose quality was in dispute.
The contractor employee, whose firm was not named, “should not have approved the lot,” and in doing so, the private-sector employee performed “an inherently governmental function” in violation of federal regulations, the report said.
The Army gave auditors various reasons why tests were not performed at all or up to standards, but the auditors said there was “no documentation to support” these decisions.
Audit Finds Improper Testing of Body Armor, Questions Troop Safety
Army Accepts Recommendations
In a May 26 response to the inspector general that was included in the report, Maj. Gen. R. Mark Brown, a senior Army acquisition official, said the service accepted the report’s recommendations to clarify testing requirements, perform all required tests, and assess the risk that the protective gear in some of the lots at issue might not perform as needed.
The tests studied by the auditors are performed when the product is delivered to the Army. In addition to those tests, Brown said, Army officials put the plates through scanning machines to double-check their quality.
“Every soldier’s ballistic plate is scanned prior to deployment and rescanned during their midtour leave,” he wrote.
The auditors acknowledged that the Army has taken actions to improve its quality assurance processes but warned: “We urge diligence as the protocol can only be effective if it is closely followed.”