The Disappeared Body Armor Enigma - A Reprise

Regular readers may remember a discussion in these pages about body armor for the troops, or to be precise a lack of it. In odd moments I followed this discussion up with some research. Here is what I found.

In September of 2003, General John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, told a House Appropriations subcommittee that he could not "answer for the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in short supply." This skimping led to an Army decision to only give plated vests to dismounted combat troops, a disasterous move which has led to demands for a House hearing. To date official answers are in short supply, even though up to one fourth of all soldier's deaths may be due to a lack of sufficient body armor.

Although some of the delays in getting body armor to the troops seem to rest at the door of Army testers, the most likely explanation remains that the Administration did not plan for extensive ground action after the first phase of the war was declared "Mission Accomplished". If they had, they would have realised that clerks and convoy drivers would become just as much at risk as combat troops, and would surely have discovered that there simply was not enough production capacity to provide enough ceramic inserts for body armor quickly enough to prevent deaths and injuries.

Certainly, Ceradyne Inc. could have told them. One of their directors, Milton Lohr, was Deputy Undersecretary of Defence for Aquisitions in the Bush Snr. administration and had also represented the U.S.' interests at important NATO meetings on shared technology. Their CEO, Joel Moskowitz, is one of the most high profile individuals in this industry sector. Ceradyne have mounted a monumental capatalisation and production effort in the last year, including a $2 million dollar spend on new facillities for ceramic armor insert production. This has paid of for the company, netting them a single contract for $461 million amongst others which bring their total orders to well over half a billion dollars this year. In consequence, their share price is up over 400% in the same period, and profits are up over 350%. After all, it's a sellers market right now, and Ceradyne have won most of their contracts either as the only bidder or as the only bidder who had any chance of delivering the product quickly enough.

Now, as if this debacle which directly cost the lives of Americans is not bad enough, Rumsfield seems not to have learned his lesson and is asking for a supplemental budget to include amounts for new body armor, instead of making it a priority of the main Defence budget. This is either an inability to learn from mistakes or a sneaky move to keep the manufacturers of the big-ticket items "on-side" by making sure their programs are paid for first.

Regards, C