Soldiers Ordered to Shed Armor or Face Losing Benefits

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Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits

By Nathaniel R. Helms

Soldiers for the Truth Saturday 14 January 2006 Two deploying

soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the US Army

appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin

Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for

combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told

them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their

beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life

insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased

body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance

benefit and facing disciplinary action. The soldiers asked for anonymity

because they are concerned they will face retaliation for going public with the

Army's apparently new directive. At the sources' requests DefenseWatch has also

agreed not to reveal the unit at which the incident occurred

for operational security reasons. On Saturday morning a soldier affected

by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that " all "

commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order

came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations

Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. It arrived

unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The

soldier said the order was deeply disturbing to many of the men who had used

their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their

mobility and ballistic protection. " We have to be able to move. It (Dragon

Skin) is heavy, but it is made so we have mobility and the best ballistic

protection out there. This is crazy. And they are threatening us with our

benefits if we don't comply. " he said. The soldier reiterated Friday's

reports that any soldier who refused to comply with the order and was

subsequently killed in action " could " be denied the $400,000 death benefit

provided by their SGLI life insurance policy as well as face disciplinary

action. As of this report Saturday morning the Army has not yet responded

to a DefenseWatch inquiry. Recently Dragon Skin became an item of

contention between proponents of the Interceptor OTV body armor generally issued

to all service members deploying in combat theaters and its growing legion of

critics. Critics of the Interceptor OTV system say it is ineffective and

inferior to Dragon Skin, as well as several other commercially available body

armor systems on the market. Last week DefenseWatch released a secret Marine

Corps report that determined that 80% of the 401 Marines killed in Iraq between

April 2004 and June 2005 might have been saved if the Interceptor OTV body armor

they were wearing was more effective. The Army has declined to comment on the

report because doing so could aid the enemy, an Army spokesman has

repeatedly said. A US Army spokesman was not available for comment at the

time DW's original report (Friday - 1700 CST) was published. DefenseWatch

continues to seek a response from the Army and will post one as soon as it

becomes available. Yesterday the DoD released a news story through the Armed

Forces News Service that quoted Maj. Gen. Steven Speaks, the Army's director of

force development, who countered critical media reports by denying that the US

military is behind the curve in providing appropriate force protection gear for

troops deployed to Iraq and elsewhere in the global war against terrorism. The

New York Times and Washington Post led the bandwagon of mainstream media that

capitalized on DefenseWatch's release of the Marine Corps study. Both newspapers

released the forensic information the Army and Marines are unwilling to discuss.

" Those headlines entirely miss the point, " Speaks said. The effort to

improve body armor " has been a programmatic effort

in the case of the Army that has gone on with great intensity for the last five

months, " he noted. Speaks' assessment contradicts earlier Army, Marine and

DoD statements that indicated as late as last week that the Army was certain

there was nothing wrong with Interceptor OTV body armor and that it was and

remains the " best body armor in the world. " One of the soldiers who lost

his coveted Dragon Skin is a veteran operator. He reported that his commander

expressed deep regret upon issuing his orders directing him to leave his Dragon

Skin body armor behind. The commander reportedly told his subordinates that he

" had no choice because the orders came from very high up " and had to be

enforced, the soldier said. Another soldier's story was corroborated by his

mother, who helped defray the $6,000 cost of buying the Dragon Skin, she said.

The mother of the soldier, who hails from the Providence, Rhode Island area,

said she helped pay for the Dragon Skin as a Christmas

present because her son told her it was " so much better " than the Interceptor

OTV they expected to be issued when arriving in country for a combat tour.

" He didn't want to use that other stuff, " she said. " He told me that if anything

happened to him I am supposed to raise hell. " At the time the orders were

issued the two soldiers had already loaded their Dragon Skin body armor onto the

pallets being used to air freight their gear into the operational theater, the

soldiers said. They subsequently removed it pursuant to their orders.

Currently nine US generals stationed in Afghanistan are reportedly wearing

Pinnacle Dragon Skin body armor, according to company spokesman Paul Chopra.

Chopra, a retired Army chief warrant officer and 20+-year pilot in the famed

160th " Nightstalkers " Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), said his

company was merely told the generals wanted to " evaluate " the body armor in a

combat environment. Chopra said he did not know the

names of the general officers wearing the Dragon Skin. Pinnacle claims

more than 3,000 soldiers and civilians stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are

wearing Dragon Skin body armor, Chopra said. Several months ago DefenseWatch

began receiving anecdotal reports from individual soldiers that they were being

forced to remove all non-issue gear while in theater, including Dragon Skin body

armor, boots, and various kinds of non-issue ancillary equipment. Last

year the DoD, under severe pressure from Congress, authorized a one-time $1,000

reimbursement to soldiers who had purchased civilian equipment to supplement

either inadequate or unavailable equipment they needed for combat operations. At

the time there was no restriction on what the soldiers could buy as long as it

was specifically intended to offer personal protection or further their mission

capabilities while in theater.

 

 

 

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