PDA

View Full Version : From Karbala Gap to Credibility Gap



thedrifter
01-20-04, 06:59 AM
01-13-2004

From the Editor:

From Karbala Gap to Credibility Gap





By Ed Offley



I have good news and bad news ….



The good news is that when the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division began deploying to Iraq last month, all of its troops were carrying the Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) system, which can stop a 7.62mm rifle round.



The Interceptor Body Armor system consists of an eight-pound Outer Tactical Vest with front and rear pouches that can carry the four-pound Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI) ceramic plates. The new gear replaces the older Army flak jacket that weighs nearly 25 pounds and is much less capable of protecting the soldier’s torso from gunfire or shrapnel.



The bad news, angry 1st Cavalry Division soldiers from Fort Hood say, is that the other 16,000 soldiers in four more brigade combat teams slated to be on the ground in Iraq by March currently have none of the SAPI armor plates that make the IBA effective. That’s because the division had to pool its entire supply of armor plates in order to equip that one brigade.



The good news from Fort Hood officials is that Army and the 1st Cavalry Division leaders promise, in a spokesman’s words, “No soldier will travel forward of the line of departure [from Kuwait into Iraq] without SAPI plates within their OTV’s.”



The bad news is that a number of division soldiers remain doubtful and wary as to whether this promise will be kept.



Unless you’ve been hiding in your own spider hole for the last two months, the broad outlines of this Army supply scandal are now well known: The Army failed to acquire sufficient numbers of the SAPI plates because officials did not foresee the need to equip all soldiers with the plates. As a result, Army units and individual soldiers slated for Iraq duty have had to scramble to find sufficient numbers of them.



One company commander in the 1st Cavalry Division recently wrote me in frustration after his battalion was ordered to return its entire inventory of the SAPI plates (but keeping the OTV vests) just two months before his unit’s scheduled deployment. The battalion had fewer than 200 sets for nearly 800 soldiers at the time, he said. Now, troops are engaged in last-minute field training with none at all.



“After the division consolidated all on-hand SAPI plates, we had just enough to outfit the 1st BDE,” the officer explained. “We’ve known we were deploying [to Iraq] for the last six months. There are only 480,000 soldiers in the entire U.S. Army, so there’s no reason we don’t have the plates on hand.” The 1st Cavalry Division is scheduled to relieve the 1st Armored Division occupying the Baghdad area.



How did the U.S. Army dig itself into this hole? Two months ago, senior Army leaders admitted that the service had been simply unprepared for the outbreak of the ongoing guerrilla insurgency in Iraq.



“Now, where was the error – and I say it’s an error made in planning – to send those troops to forward-deployed regions, and the conflict in Iraq, without adequate numbers of body armor?” asked a baffled Sen. John Warner, R-VA, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.



In a joint statement to the Senate committee on Dec. 4, acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker stated:



“Last year, commanders in the field identified a shortage of IBA in theater. The original requirement for IBA was based on issuing it only to the

dismounted fighting soldier [italics added]. In June 2003, as the threat to our soldiers changed, the basis of issue was changed to include every soldier and

Department of Defense civilian in theater.”



Brownlee added, “Events since the end of major combat operations have differed from our expectations and have combined to cause problems.” Translation: We never thought the insurgents would go after convoys and rear-area troops.



You can almost hear George Armstrong Custer saying the same thing at Little Big Horn: “Events have differed from our expectations and have combined to cause problems.”



For the last eight weeks, Army officials say, several contractors have increased the production rate of the SAPI plates up to 25,000 per month. “At this pace, every soldier and Department of the Army civilian in theater will soon have IBA,” Brownlee and Schoomaker added in their December testimony.



Division spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Fisher on Monday told DefenseWatch essentially the same thing: “It is the Army’s plan that no soldier will go forward of the Iraqi border without SAPI plates, and it is an order within the 1st Cavalry Division that no soldier goes forward without SAPI plates.” Fisher confirmed that the division had earlier collected all existing SAPI plates from the troops to reassign to the then-deploying 1st Brigade.



Fisher said he did not know where the SAPI plates would come from to outfit the remaining soldiers in the 20,000-man division. Some Army sources say units rotating back to the United States will likely hand in their SAPI plates to be used by the replacements.



So while the situation seems to be finally getting under control, the Army has an uphill battle to convince its unhappy soldiers.



“This is a major morale issue,” the 1st Cavalry Division officer said, noting that his soldiers are already concerned by the number of U.S. casualties being experienced in Iraq, and are frustrated that they cannot conduct realistic training wearing the fully-loaded vests. “The plates add a great deal of weight to the OTV, it’s a huge difference, it weighs something like 16 pounds with the plates, so it’s imperative you train with the plates to become accustom to the weight of the plates,” he said.



“We've been told that we're going to receive SAPI plates prior to entering theater, but we might not get them until we're in Kuwait,” the 1st Cav officer continued. “It’s even been suggested that we’re going to get them from the 82nd. I’m not convinced.”



“Word from higher is that we will receive them [SAPI plates] once we arrive in Kuwait, another 1st Cavalry Division soldier wrote DefenseWatch. “The check is in the mail.”



Nine months after the U.S. Army swept through the Karbala Gap en route to Baghdad, it is still struggling to extricate itself from a self-inflicted credibility gap.



Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.


http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=FTE.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=20&rnd=324.83056002900713

Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

jryanjack
01-20-04, 07:21 AM
Didn't realize that rear area troops and supply convoys would be attacked???? WTF, won't they ever learn from the past!