Sunday - August 06, 2006
Under Armor: Is Military Procurement Broken or Fixed?
Life today is much different than it was just 25 years ago, and not just because
of the most obvious change, computers. Our entire economy has transformed our
expectations for product fulfillment in ways unimagineable back then.
Toothpaste came in metal tubes that had to be coiled up with a key and split and
leaked. Now you can get dozens of flavors and combinations of features in
toothpaste delivered in several ways, none of which require a key nor do they
leak. Although we'd long since gotten past Henry Ford's dictum that cars were
available in any color so long as it was black, the choices available in buying
a car rarely involved much more than picking a color and engine size.
In the Marines, you were issued your
gear. You got a cartrige belt that wasn't very different from the ones issued
in the 1940's. You got a pack that was the same as the one issued in Viet Nam.
Everything you got you were required to wear and
like.
But then things changed. Now,
Marines wear what they want, pretty much, so long as it doesn't look "too"
inappropriate. I haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I get
to use a pistol holster that I like, but I also got led into wearing under armor
t-shirts. This could have been a disaster.
Two things have happened in the Marine Corps to
influence this circumstance. First, we made "procurement professionals." If I
had stayed on active duty, as an aircraft maintenance officer I was sure to go
down the pipeline to become a procurement professional, a fate I dreaded. In
conjunction with that we created Marine Corps Systems Command, or MarCorSysCom.
This was an attempt to keep up with the larger services that had huge arsenals
of people who did nothing but overlook development and acquisition of new
gear.
Ever since we started with the
idea of procurement professionals and MarCorSysCom, and the earlier equivalents
in the other services, it has taken longer and cost more to bring new equipment
into the military. The MV-22 Osprey was well on the way to being fielded when I
was a second lieutenant back in 1986. It's still not fielded, but it's closer
now. The current war has been raging for five years now, so I think they're
discussing speeding up the process now.
To compensate for the military
professionals, the other new development is that someone decided to use our
Marines as our Research and Development Team. R&D is pretty important and
usually done poorly when it comes to personal gear, freeing up individuals to
find good gear has been a huge success. We no longer have strict rules on only
wearing and carrying gear that is issued to us. We can buy our own gear so long
as it looks military-like. We now have fantastic individual gear, from boots
that feel like you're walking on velvet and are very strong and durable at the
same time, to pistol holsters and packs that hold up under combat
conditions.
Someone
at MarCorSysCom watches what the Marines are buying, and if the gear looks okay,
they completely bypass the normal procurement system and buy one for everybody.
What a deal! So all the guys that like looking like cowboys get to wear leg
holsters for their pistols, and yet someone like me who doesn't like straps
tugging on my leg, or the 15 step process it requires to take care of bodily
functions, can buy a simple holster to tuck my pistol in the small of my back
where it is just as easy to reach, but easier to move around
with.
This has been brilliant.
But there's a problem. Sometimes gear that is inappropriate gets past the
system that shouldn't. I'm talking about Under Armor.
As an engineer who did in fact
successfully pass my heat transfer class, I have a great appreciation for the
principle that makes under armor such a good thing. It wicks up moisture, but
doesn't retain it well, allowing it to quickly evaporate. It's fantastic for
cooling off in the desert. After suffering in cotton t-shirts that soaked up
sweat and held that moisture on your body, I became a convert after trying the
one shirt I was issued and bought a bunch of these expensive shirts and wore
them everyday in Iraq.
Here's the
problem, they're made of a synthetic material. In the past, sythetics were
absolutely forbidden to wear in dangerous environments because when exposed to
flame they melt, and if they melt into your skin, 2d degree burns become
horrific injuries. This was well known by, I thought, everybody. When they
authorized us to wear under armor, I assumed that they had found some new
miracle fabric that doesn't melt.
Boy
was I wrong. Whoever was in the military procurement specialty section that
buys clothing seemed to have bypassed all the people who had common sense and
knowlege of what I had assumed was common knowlege. Untold numbers of Marines
and soldiers have been horribly scarred and live in agony, perhaps for the rest
of their lives, because they have no skin on their torsos where their shirts
melted.
I like the speedier adoption
of good gear. I just wish it could be combined with some semblance of sense and
responsibility.
Next time I go to Iraq,
or any other deployment, I'll be sure to stick with cotton
t-shirts.
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