Must Read: Pentagon Study Links Fatalities to Body Armor

Washington, DC * The New York Times this weekend published a report on a secret Pentagon study showing that approximately 300 hundred American soldiers killed in combat in Iraq could have survived if the Pentagon had provided them with sufficient body armor. The report found that up to 80% of the Marines killed from upper torso wounds could have been saved if troops had been provided with additional protection that commanders in the field began requesting "almost from the beginning" of the war.

The report also found that, because the Pentagon failed to provide the requested body armor, troops desperate for protection began "hanging their crotch protectors under their arms" and buying their own sets as early as early as Fall 2003.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

Pentagon Study Links Fatalities to Body Armor
By Michael Moss
New York Times
January 7, 2006

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.

Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.

For the full report, click here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/politics/07armor.html?8bl

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