Another ABU thread.... well somewhat different

Yeah mine is a commercial made Propper

panzerwerk wrote:

Yeah mine is a commercial made Propper

If its badged with name tape , it was most likely a private purchase item , so it was used and is right as rain , it was just not an issue piece , so its real !

CollectinSteve wrote:Yeah, the NSN number means very little. It's the SPA number that matters. Commercial pieces can have NSN, but not SPA.

Steve is right. The primary reason for a private purchase is the gov't issue stuff is unavailable to the particular soldier. The ACUs came out VERY slowly in official channels, very quickly in places like US Cavalry. Soldiers who just couldn't wait to get their new ACUs (hard to believe, I know it ) could get their hands on a Propper commercial version in a couple of days right in the mail. The problem of soldiers purchasing outside of the system was so great that the Army had to remind soldiers, quite forcefully, that it was an offense to do so. 25th Infantry Division even had the warning posted to their homepage!

The other thing that can happen is when a soldier is stationed outside of his normal base environment. For example, at a training school that doesn't have a PX for their branch of service (like Ft. Sill). I knew a Marine Major that had to buy his own body armor even before going to Fallujah! He was flying out directly from some oddball posting to Kuwait and was told he had to go into theater kitted out. But nobody could get the kit to him in time, so he bought it out of his own pocket money (I assume he got reimbursed later).

Steve

panzerwerk wrote:In a nut shell , yes ....... the guys have acronym for it, SNAFU . Situation normal all f***ed up.

CollectinSteve wrote:
The other thing that can happen is when a soldier is stationed outside of his normal base environment. For example, at a training school that doesn't have a PX for their branch of service (like Ft. Sill). I knew a Marine Major that had to buy his own body armor even before going to Fallujah! He was flying out directly from some oddball posting to Kuwait and was told he had to go into theater kitted out. But nobody could get the kit to him in time, so he bought it out of his own pocket money (I assume he got reimbursed later).

Steve

nkomo wrote:

CollectinSteve wrote:
The other thing that can happen is when a soldier is stationed outside of his normal base environment. For example, at a training school that doesn't have a PX for their branch of service (like Ft. Sill). I knew a Marine Major that had to buy his own body armor even before going to Fallujah! He was flying out directly from some oddball posting to Kuwait and was told he had to go into theater kitted out. But nobody could get the kit to him in time, so he bought it out of his own pocket money (I assume he got reimbursed later).

Steve

Steven is 100% correct about commercial vs. issue. Lots of soldier went into OIF with commercial items. I remember our local news station doing several segments where local people were having to buy their sons and duaghters body armor because the Army didn't have enough to go around. As a matter of fact, they started a fund raising campaign to help defray the costs being shouldered by these familes.

CollectinSteve wrote:The primary problem is how much do you keep in stock for what sort of engagement. When Desert Shield kicked off it was the single largest deployment of US forces since the early 1970s. If equipment needs never changed, if technology never improved, then you could stockpile enough gear for the worst case scenario and never have to worry about it being outdated. From a logistics standpoint, unfortunately, reality is different.

One criticism of OIF is that there was plenty of time to procure the correct amounts of equipment necessary for the force that actually attacked into Iraq. But there were two problems with that:

1. The initial buildup of forces was being done "under the radar" of Congress for the first few months. If everything had been done in the open, and competently, Congress could have authorized the funds necessary for the additional materials in time for the decisions to have had some impact on readiness levels. But since they weren't asked for such authorizations until after the invasion that opportunity was lost.

2. The initial size of the invasion force was about 60% smaller than the actual force that entered Iraq, which itself was about 20% smaller than the eventual size of the force after the insurgency gained ground. And of course this was about 30-50% lower than the head of the Army recommended. The point here is that the leadership underestimated the force size and therefore it isn't surprising that they underestimated the needs of a larger force. Had the initial plan been more realistic in its needs from the outset, it is logical that the supply problems would have been less serious than they were.

Some people may take the above comments to be politically partisan. I can assure you they are not intended to be taken that way. It's just an assessment of how sub-optimal planing produces sub-optimal results. Since there's hardly anybody that would say that the planning for OIF was as good as it could have been, not to mention should have been, it's not surprising that there were noticeable deficiencies in critical areas.

Steve