Friday, January 30, 2009

Not Close Enough for Government Work?

From thedweeze:
Just heard this on Shep's show (approx 7:40PM): The Army has 'recalled' 16,000 sets of body armor. They were their usual obfuscatory selves about explaining exactly why this particular 16,000 units and what the criteria were. The reason I'm alerting you all is that in all likelihood these things will hit the surplus market late this Spring or early Summer and folks need to be aware of exactly what they're looking at.
OK, here's the story.
[B]ullet-shielding ceramic plates in the armor failed testing...
Seems like it would be a hell of a liability if they released these into the civilian market...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know about a liability. This sounds like some little glitch in the testing process was over looked or not recorded as it should have been. There have been no problems reported with them.
Here's one to think about. 16,000 plates are a little over 1 percent of the total amount the government has received. Which means there's a lot of these things that have not been put to use. The government is stockpiling these things, I wonder what for.

me said...

WWIII. The war to liberate mother nature.

How else can you POSSIBLY put people to work, reduce CO2, and get rid of those pesky folks who support the nation (going to a global economy dontchaknow)? Think about it.

Anonymous said...

Consider: The Department of Defense is forced to use Affirmative Action when it hires applicants who will be testing armor, jet engine parts, commo gear, everything they ship in-country. They commission manufactruring from the lowest bidder. Better-than-necessary plates cost more than almost-good-enough plates to make, but no one will ever know unless the guy takes a center hit, right? Ford made extra millions when it decided that lawsuits by the survivors of Pinto explosions and the families of those killed would cost les than redesigning the gas tank.
Plus, armed forces members can't sue. So many people signed up after 9/11 and haven't been allowed to leave because of stop-loss contract breaches, they won't run out of soldiers.
And anyone traumatized but alive by having it happen to them or seeing it gets their privately-owned guns taken away when they come home.
The plates, I believe, are replaceable. They install in a chest and back pocket on the vest. So I'm confused.

Anonymous said...

Seems like it would be a hell of a liability if they released these into the civilian market...

Depends on how well protected you want your civilians to be...