> I will jump to his defense. That link illustrated > his point of so far > only spending 2% of the U.S. taxpayer donated money. > This is even > asterisked above. He did not provide a link for the > body armor > portion of the post and you indicate it was > irrelevant.
Fair enough then. His biggest sin then is that he was not specific. > That many US troops, primarily the reserve and > guards, lacked the > newest body armor, that there were problems and > deaths caused by the > lack of armor on vehicles, and that private citizens > were raising > money and sending them some body armor are all well > known. I read AARs for the performance of the M1A1. It performed VERY well. I didn't see anything for Bradleys, but then I haven't heard much about knocked out Bradleys either (and being ex-Army I tend to lock into such things). I did see a report where one Bradley had been hit and its reactive armor performed very well. The problems with the Stryker go far beyond anything that its supplementary armor upgrade can do (the vehicle is already quite wide and overweight; the supplemental "bar" armor only increases these problems). The same report I read about the Interceptor armor (sorry, don't have the link anymore) seemed to indicate the problem with the body armor had more to do with procurement problems (the Gov't was already buying up the TOTAL production of the manufacturer). Further, it is a reasonable conclusion to surmise that the Interceptor body armor was not issued to Reserve/Guard formations because these were rear-area troops (I don't think there has been many Guard units in combat roles until very recently, last couple of months) and thus may not require that level of protection (for the same reason such troops would normally be issued pistols or carbines instead of full rifles or machine guns, because their primary job did not involve combat). Of course an insurgency war confuses the issue, but I didn't get the feeling this was outright incompetence or had sinister motives. Damon. ===== ------------------------------------------------------------ Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
