Army Bans the Use of Privately Purchased Body Armor

Soldiers will no longer be allowed to wear body armor that was not issued by the military, Army officials said Thursday.

The order was prompted by concern that soldiers or their families were buying inadequate or untested armor from private companies, including the Dragon Skin gear made by Fresno-based Pinnacle Armor Inc., the Army officials said.

“We’re very concerned that people are spending their hard-earned money on something that doesn’t provide the level of protection that the Army requires people to wear. So they’re, frankly, wasting their money on substandard stuff,” said Col. Thomas Spoehr, director of materiel for the Army.

Murray Neal, chief executive of Pinnacle, said he hadn’t seen the directive.

“We know of no reason the Army may have to justify this action,” Neal said. “On the surface, this looks to be another of many attempts by the Army to cover up the billions of dollars spent on ineffective body armor systems which they continue to try quick fixes on to no avail.”

Nathaniel R. Helms, editor of the Soldiers for the Truth online magazine DefenseWatch, said he already had received a number of e-mails from soldiers complaining about the policy.

“Outrageously we’ve seen that [soldiers] haven’t been getting what they need in terms of equipment and body armor,” said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who wrote legislation to provide reimbursement to troops for equipment purchases. “That’s totally unacceptable, and why this directive by the Pentagon needs to be scrutinized in much greater detail.”

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said, “I don’t think the Army is wrong by doing this, because the Army has to ensure some level of quality.”

But, Rieckhoff said, the military is partially to blame for the problem because it took too long to get soldiers the armor they needed. “This is the monster they made,” he said.

Early in the Iraq war, soldiers and their families were spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on protective gear that they said the military was not providing.

In January, an unreleased Pentagon study found that side armor could have saved dozens of U.S. lives in Iraq, prompting the Army and Marine Corps to order ceramic body armor plates to be shipped to troops this year.

The Army ban covers all commercial armor. It refers specifically to Pinnacle’s armor.

“In its current state of development, Dragon Skin’s capabilities do not meet Army requirements,” the Army order says, and it “has not been certified to protect against several small-arms threats that the military is encountering in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The Marine Corps has not issued a similar directive, but Marines are “encouraged to wear Marine Corps-issued body armor since this armor has been tested to meet fleet standards,” spokesman Bruce Scott said.

Military officials have acknowledged that some troops -- often National Guardsmen or reservists -- went to war with lesser-quality protective gear than other soldiers.

But now, Spoehr said, “we can categorically say that whatever you’re going to buy isn’t as good as what you’re going to get” from the military.