Protective Suits For Military Found Defective, Merit Warning

The Pentagon has alerted U.S. facilities around the world that hundreds of thousands of protective suits meant to shield GIs from gas and germ attacks may have holes and other critical defects, according to military officials and documents.

The Pentagon learned about the flaws five years ago but did not consider the problems crucial and needed the gear for U.S. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia, criminal investigators say. Not until late last year did a second study on the same suits judge identical flaws grave enough to warrant a global warning, the investigators said in an interview.

On Feb. 9, the Pentagon cautioned commanders not to use any of the 778,000 suits except in training. The suits, not all of which are defective, cost the government almost $49 million.

The defects included “cuts, holes, embedded foreign matter and stitching irregularities,” the Pentagon inspector general said in a report being released this week. The defects potentially could kill people wearing the trousers and jackets in a “chemical-biological contaminated environment,” the report said.