Army Pulled 8,000 Armor Plates from Field

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Army Pulled 8,000 Armor Plates from Field
February 10, 2009
Military.com|by Christian Lowe

As a precautionary move separate from a recent recall of 16,000 bullet-resistant plates from the combat theater, the Army pulled more than 8,000 of the plates from the front lines late last year for fear that they might not be able to stop the rifle rounds they were designed to defeat.

According to the top enlisted advisor for the Army's Program Executive Office Soldier -- the service's top gear-buying office -- officials were worried that a production lot of 8,018 enhanced small arms protective plate inserts, or ESAPIs, might have manufacturing flaws that were not up to specifications.

So in December, the service recalled the plates and sent them to ballistics labs for testing to see if they were up to snuff.

"We opted to pull those 8,000 plates just to see -- just as, again, part of our surveillance program" to monitor quality, said Sgt. Maj. Tom Coleman, PEO Soldier sergeant major, in a Feb. 6 interview with military bloggers.

Army officials had failed production lots of plates that were manufactured before and after the recalled plates, so engineers decided to pull the 8,018 to make doubly sure they should have been fielded.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/army-pulled-8000-armor-plates-from-field.html