The U.S. Marine Corps recalled 5,277 bullet-proof vests that the Marines issued to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Djibouti after a newspaper broke the story that some of the vests tested failed to stop a 9mm round, which is a minimum Marine Corps standard for body armor.
The vests, which were made by the Point Blank Body Armor of Pompano Beach, Florida, failed several tests. The Marines equipped their soldiers in forward combat areas with the vests, and it was only after the Marine Corps Times broke the story that they issued the recall.
The “Outer Tactical Vest” is part of the Interceptor body armor outfit and received much praise from the military and body armor experts. It’s very unfortunate that this batch of vests did not perform to minimum standards, and it’s even more unfortunate that the Marines did not prevent this vest from being issued when the problem was first discovered last year.
“Good enough” is NOT good enough. Not when it comes to saving lives of troops in harm’s way.
It should be noted that not all the vests tested failed. There were a couple of batches that did fail and those batches were sent along with the rest to the military for distribution to the troops.
It should also be noted that the Marines requested a waiver for the affected vests.
Here’s the story as reported by CBS, and here’s a link page from the Marine Corps Times that has all the documentation on the story. Why didn't the Marines do more to stop this from happening, and why did they wait for the press to get wind of the story before doing something to correct the problem?
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