Dragon Skin, in context of the procurement system.

I just can't leave it alone. Neither can Cassandra.

WASHINGTON - The system for delivering badly needed gear to Marines in Iraq has failed to meet many urgent requests for equipment from troops in the field, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press.

Of more than 100 requests from deployed Marine units between February 2006 and February 2007, less than 10 percent have been fulfilled, the document says. It blamed the bureaucracy and a "risk-averse" approach by acquisition officials.

Another little gem, this time by a contractor, Titus Casazza, president of LE Systems:

"The bureaucrats and lab rats sitting behind a desk stateside are making decisions on what will be given to our soldiers even if contrary to the specific requests of these soldiers and their commanding generals," he said.

Read the whole article here. As always, I recommend you click through to get the whole context, not just my snippets.

This article came to my attention right after I got this email, from a good friend and former colleague, who is "In A Position To Know" - it has been redacted a touch at his request to protect the guilty, but while this talks about Dragon Skin, the part I'm quoting here is about more about procurement in general, with Dragon Skin as a training aid:

I have three general observations:

Theory vs. Practice. My experience with hundreds of “good ideas” is that most fail on the simple issue of environmental and operational conditions. Heat failure is the biggest problem – most things that the we see are engineered to commercial standards, typically about 120 degrees F. When exposed to higher temps, they start failing like jocks in a physics exam. Looks to me like that was Dragon Skin's number one problem. It also had big problems when exposed to petroleum products – not that getting soaked with diesel ever happens in real military life (sarcasm off). Bottom line is that they have a problem with their glues and laminations – I’d send them back to lab and tell them to fix it.

Weight budget. Everybody keeps adding weight and arguing that its only a few ounces or pounds. They all add up. [emphasis mine] Dragon Skin offers a slightly larger coverage area, but imposes a severe weight penalty. Not too many soldiers are going to sign up for that, ATEC, PEO Soldier, and the Acquisition Corps aside.

Snake Oil Salesmen. I haven’t met this guy [Murray Neal, CEO of Pinnacle Systems], but he reminds me of others of his ilk whom have beaten a path to the Services. They claim to be interested in saving soldiers lives, but their behavior suggests that their real interest is in sales and profits. Most of these guys are very good at leveraging their political and media contacts and know how to push the right buttons. They don’t take no for an answer, and will badger the politicians and bureaucrats until they get what they want. I am very suspicious of this guy. His stuff may have promise, the idea has been around for a few thousand years, but he clearly doesn’t have it right yet. I have a pretty low opinion of the [Un-named Federal Agency] dicks (gets lower every day based on my daily experiences), and of the Acquisition Corps overall, but when forced to make a call between what the Army is saying, vs NBC, this guy, and self serving politicians – I’m going with the Army for the time being.

Just noting that no one seems to be happy with the procurement system. As noted in the paper cited by the AP article:

"Process worship cripples operating forces," according to the document. "Civilian middle management lacks technical and operational currency."

Word.

*That said* my Impeccable Source With Experience In The Field added this when I sent him this post to make sure I wasn't violating a trust and confidence:

I saw the article on Marine gear. This article is based on a false premise. It assumes that the 100 urgent requests from Marine units were all valid. From my experience, they aren’t. Many ONS (Operational Needs Statements), UONS (Urgent Operational Needs Statements), and JUONS (Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statements) that I have seen are redundant, OBE, and just the military version of Home Shopping Network. With access to the internet, many units surf around for “neat stuff” and ask someone else to buy it for them. Often they ask for stuff that has already been looked at and rejected in favor of another solution. Sometimes they ask for stuff that just doesn’t work. Congress can claim that they are prepared to “take care of the troops”, but the cold hard truth is that they have funded DoD at a level that does not permit buying everything on the wish list, and we shouldn’t.

I think that what is correct about this report is that the Marines were late to the table on MRAP. The Army moved ahead with small buys for specialized missions: Route Clearance and EOD. The Marines passed. After they saw how the EOD vehicles (Cougar and RG31) performed in theater, they reversed course and went for the whole enchilada. [Army procurement] is overrun by all of the MRAP candidates running around going through the testing gauntlet. They are a big improvement over the uparmored HMMWV’s, but the production line is going to take a while to gear up.

The Army bought lots of the laser dazzlers for the troops and, I believe, some for the Marines as well. They have been very popular as a EOF tool [Armorer's note: Escalation Of Force], do a great job stopping civilian cars at checkpoints and without the body damage associated with 5:1 .50 cal [Armorer's note: 5:1 means 5 ball, 1 tracer mix]. Don’t know why MCCDC rejected the laser dazzler.

As ever - everything is muddier and less spectacular than will fit in the column-inches provided. Lose context, you can even change meaning. One nice thing about a blog - you can update it as it goes along.