Armies of Workers Gear Up to Supply Troops in the Gulf

Workers producing a nerve-gas antidote in St. Louis gave up their vacations. Boot makers in North Carolina, laid off until recently, are now working overtime. An Iowa food plant is turning out beef stew around the clock, and blind canteen assemblers in Seattle have gone to double shifts.

All are examples of the nationwide network of companies, large and small, that have geared up in an all-out effort to produce supplies for Operation Desert Shield as a possible military clash nears.

“Employees canceled vacations to stay on the job, and we’ve gone to a three-shift operation in our plant and added 170 workers,” said James H. Miller, president of Survival Technologies Inc., or STI, which is producing 1.8 million kits containing a self-injected nerve-gas antidote for U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf.

“I felt like it was something that I needed to do,” said Dee Goff, an STI employee who has worked seven-day weeks and given up her vacation, “not only for myself, but for my country and all the people in the service.”

Southern California’s high-tech weapons suppliers have not been called on yet to expand production lines. But the eventual deployment of more than 400,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf has rippled through hundreds of companies that are providing everything from 552,055 bottles of sunscreen lotion and 1.64 million sticks of lip balm to 1.3 million suits that protect against deadly chemical weapons.

“We are telling people to produce a lot faster, and everybody is pitching in,” said Tom Wray, a procurement analyst with the Defense Logistics Agency, which coordinates the supply effort.

As of Thursday, the Pentagon had requisitioned $374.5 million in medical supplies, $634 million in food and $703.6 million in clothing for Operation Desert Shield. Contracts have been negotiated in days, rather than the typical months. Some production has begun even before prices have been set.

To regular Defense Department suppliers, who had been facing a drastic loss of business as the military moved to cut its forces in the aftermath of the Cold War, the demands of the gulf deployment have led to an immediate about-face.

For instance, Wellco Enterprises, a major combat-boot manufacturer, had laid off workers at its two plants in Waynesville, N.C., and Puerto Rico, as a result of reduced military orders.

Then the company got a contract for 160,000 pairs of boots for American soldiers. The new boots, which are tan, contain a thermal barrier against the hot desert sand.

“We rehired well over 100 people, and we (have) shipped the first 15,000 pairs of the new boots,” said Rolf Kaufman, president of Wellco.

Many Pentagon emergency orders reflect similar demands related directly to the possible Persian Gulf conflict, such as Iraq’s potential to engage in chemical warfare.

At Survival Technologies’ St. Louis factory, workers are turning out kits that contain two cigar-shaped injectors that a soldier can use to administer an antidote to nerve gas and a second drug that restores the body’s normal chemical balance.

STI’s founder, the late Stanley J. Sarnoff, invented the self-injector, and the company has supplied it to the U.S. military for years. But the military market has been dwindling, and STI is moving into new commercial applications for the device.

Miller, STI’s president, said the commercial expansion has been slowed to devote full resources to the military’s needs since the company got the $19-million contract in mid-August last year.

“I have a son in the National Guard,” said Alice Jennings, an STI employee. “His unit hasn’t been called up yet, but this is something that John, or anybody else’s son, can use, so it’s important.”

The Defense Personnel Support Center in Philadelphia has contracted with five firms to produce 1.3 million chemical-protection suits at a cost of $102 million, or about $78 each. The agency anticipates needing up to 3.5 million suits because they typically last for only 22 days and are prone to tearing during maneuvers and practice, said spokesman Frank Johnson.

For some firms, the gulf crisis has generated a whole new line of business.

Raven Industries in Sioux Falls, S.D., makes cold-weather gear for the military. It had considered manufacturing chemical suits a year ago when the Defense Department announced plans for a major order. But the order was canceled because of budget cutbacks, and Raven backed away from the venture.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, the Pentagon placed emergency orders with four regular suppliers for chemical suits and began a frantic search for more. Raven was asked if it still wanted into the business.

The company said it was indeed interested. Raven bought an existing clothing factory in Madison, S.D., and began converting it to produce chemical protection suits. It received a contract to provide 250,000 suits for $22 million.

“We really started from the ground up, and we’re just at the point of presenting the first suits,” said Dale F. McAvoy, a general manager at Raven.

One major supply item is prepackaged “meals-ready-to-eat,” or MREs, for the military. Since Operation Desert Shield commenced, the government has sent more than 91 million MREs to the gulf from three firms in Ohio, Texas and South Carolina. The average cost is about $4 per meal; the total cost to date is more than $350 million.

One of the firms, Cinpac in Cincinnati, tripled its work force to 1,000 to handle its share of the order. Workers applying for the new jobs in November, 1990, blocked traffic at the plant.

As happens in every war, soldiers in the field complain about the food. The Pentagon has tried to respond by augmenting the MREs with such items as Lunch Bucket, a commercial, microwaveable meal produced at Dial Corp.’s plant in Ft. Madison, Iowa.

Dial is producing 14 million of the meals in eight varieties, including beef stew, lasagna and chili with beans. The total cost is $20.9 million. Instead of popping the containers into a microwave oven, however, military cooks are boiling them in big drums, 200 at a time.

“We’ve been running practically around the clock and on weekends,” said Nancy K. Dedera, an official with the company.

Extra shifts also have been added at the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle. There, 15 blind employees are working six days a week assembling special canteens that use a sealed cap to keep water safe from chemical and biological warfare agents.

“These employees take a lot of pride in doing these types of jobs, especially under these circumstances,” said Renee A. Obrycki, a contract administrator at the nonprofit center.

The Pentagon is eager to dispense statistics about the vast stores of supplies and materiel being shipped to the gulf and to storage depots around the world: 709,206 cans of foot powder, 615,559 vials of vaccine, 3.3 million pairs of desert camouflage trousers and an equal number of coats.

One area where military officials are far less forthcoming, however, is in the shipment of body bags and the temporary aluminum caskets known as transfer cases. Rumors have circulated for weeks of massive shipments of coffins bound for the gulf.

Beyond denying that any such shipments have occurred, a Defense Logistics Agency spokeswoman would say only that the Defense Department has made arrangements for “mortuary supplies for all contingencies.”

OPERATION DESERT SHIELD REQUISITIONS The deployment of U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf has created business for hundreds of firms. Here’s a sample: Item: 91 million prepackaged meals Value of Contract: $350 million Supplier/Headquarters: Three companies: Cinpac, Cincinnati; So-Pac-Co, Mullins, S.C., and Right Away Food Corp., McAllen, Tex. Item: 14 million Lunch Bucket prepackaged meals in eight varieties Value of Contract: $20.9 million Supplier/Headquarters: Dial Corp., Phoenix. Item: 25.6 million food entrees Value of Contract: $44.6 million Supplier/Headquarters: Geo. A. Hormel & Co., Austin, Minn. Item: 577,632 cans of chicken, beef, pork Value of Contract: $10.4 million Supplier/Headquarters: Oregon Freeze Dry, Albany, Ore. Item: 1 million pairs of desert tan trousers Value of Contract: $17.5 million Supplier/Headquarters: Wrangler, Greensboro, N.C. Item: 2.1 million pairs of desert tan trousers Value of Contract: $31 million Supplier/Headquarters: Propper International, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Item: 160,000 pairs of desert boots Value of Contract: $7.6 million Supplier/Headquarters: Wellco Enterprises, Waynesville, N.C. Item: 166,500 pairs of desert boots Value of Contract: $7.8 million Supplier/Headquarters: Belleville Shoe Co., Belleville, Ill. Item: 552,055 bottles of sunscreen lotion Value of Contract: $823,155 Supplier/Headquarters: Three companies: Johnson & Johnson, Skillman, N.J.; Schering-Plough, Memphis, Tenn., and Westwood Pharmaceutical, Buffalo, N.Y. Item: 1.8 million nerve-gas antidote kits Value of Contract: $19.1 million Supplier/Headquarters: Survival Technologies Inc., Bethesda, Md. Item: 250,000 chemical protection suits Value of Contract: $22 million Supplier/Headquarters: Raven Industries, Sioux Falls, S.D. Item: 350,000 chemical protection suits Value of Contract: $26.9 million Supplier/Headquarters: Isratex, Brooklyn, N.Y. Item: 200,000 chemical protection suits Value of Contract: $15.6 million Supplier/Headquarters: Sidran Inc., Dallas Item: 1.64 million lip balm dispensers Value of Contract: $210,598 Supplier/Headquarters: A.H. Robins Co., Richmond, Va. Item: 709,206 cans of foot powder Value of Contract: $276,598 Supplier/Headquarters: Moyco, Philadelphia. Source: U.S. Defense Personnel Support Center, Philadelphia