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US Marines recall body armor amid safety questions

By Will Dunham / Reuters

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Marine Corps has recalled body armor given to thousands of troops fighting in Iraq because of questions about whether it offers adequate protection, officials said on Monday.

The Marines bought 19,000 torso-protecting "outer tactical vests" from Point Blank Body Armor Inc. of Pompano Beach, Florida, but the vests failed tests by military ballistics experts involving 9mm pistol rounds.

However, the Marines said the body armor subsequently passed tests by a private firm.

The Marines defended the vests and denied risking the lives of troops in war zones by giving them poor equipment, arguing that the vests were vastly superior to the "outdated" flak jacket they replaced.

Even so, the Marines said they were recalling more than half of the roughly 10,000 vests given to troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and missions in the Horn of Africa region because media coverage about safety questions would "sow seeds of doubt in the minds of Marines in active combat."

"This is the best quality equipment we could field," said Maj. Douglas Powell, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. "I would wear this vest in combat."

Powell said the vests had drastically reduced torso injuries. "The vest is not designed to stop bullets," he said. "The vest is designed to stop shrapnel."

The Marines acknowledged providing the vests to troops after signing waivers permitting their use, despite the fact that the equipment did not meet certain minimum standards.

Of the 14,000 vests not being recalled, 10,000 were from lots that were never accepted or fielded, the Marines said. Another 3,000 "passed all quality and testing standards," and 992 more were sent into the field with what the Marines termed a "perfunctory waiver."

The Pentagon has faced persistent questions since the 2003 Iraq invasion about whether troops were being given the best quality or sufficient supplies of armor and equipment.

'LITTLE CONFIDENCE'

The Marine Corps Times first reported questions about the body armor and made available a July 2004 memo by James MacKiewicz, a military ballistics expert responsible for verifying that the vests met quality standards. In it, MacKiewicz expressed "little confidence in the performance of the items to provide the contracted levels of protection."

The vests failed because they were penetrated by 9mm pistol rounds and came up short on other quality measurements, the military testers found.

"We maintain these vests are effective at meeting the threat posed by 9mm pistol rounds. Present combat operations preclude us from retesting at this time to prove to our Marines these vests are effective. Therefore, we initiated the recall," the Marines statement said.

The recall involved less than 3 percent of the total number of outer tactical vests provided to troops, the Marines said.

"I'm not sure why they failed the Army tests. Testing is something that has lots of variables in it," said Ishmon Burks, spokesman for Point Blank Body Armor's parent company DHB Industries Inc.

"But the vests are being tested and they are performing in the only test that matters: and that's in the field and in combat. At the end of the day, it's working," Burks added.