Washington post article

[Guest guest]

I am betting that because our protective gear is not what it should

be we will b over relying on vaccines to make up for the short

comings.

washingtonpost.com

Troops Lack Protective Gear, Say Lawmakers

Safety Against Chemical, Biological Arms Doubted

By Vernon Loeb

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, November 30, 2002; Page A01

As the Pentagon girds for possible military action against Iraq, it

is having problems providing U.S. troops with state-of-the-art

protective gear against chemical and biological attacks, lawmakers

from both parties said this week.

The lawmakers' worries have been buttressed by the General Accounting

Office, which recently reported " continuing concerns " about

equipment, training and research. The GAO said that for six

years, " we have identified many problems in the Defense Department's

capabilities to defend against chemical and biological weapons and

sustain operations in the midst of their use. "

Rep. Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the Government Reform

Committee's national security subcommittee, said the latest problem

Pentagon officials uncovered involves gas masks that have the wrong

gaskets and will require extensive inspections to ensure that they

are functioning properly.

Shays said he is also concerned about the Defense Department's

inability to manage millions of protective suits so that units likely

to deploy to the Persian Gulf receive the highest-quality gear, with

250,000 defective suits unaccounted for in the Pentagon inventory.

" I visited the troops in Europe, who I believe will be first

responders in Iraq, and they did not have the best equipment we have,

and that is a concern to me, " Shays said. " We don't know where some

of our best suits are -- they are God knows where. And in some cases,

we've mixed bad inventory with good. "

J. Decker, the GAO's director of defense capabilities and

management, said he was not convinced that the Pentagon had enough

new, highly protective, lightweight suits to equip all forces likely

to fight a war in Iraq.

With the new suits in relatively short supply, Decker said, the

Pentagon must rely on millions of older suits manufactured since

1989. But the quality of those charcoal-lined garments, he said,

diminishes with age.

A Capitol Hill source, who asked not to be named, said recent

Pentagon tests had revealed that the older suits are good for only a

day or two after they are removed from their protective packaging. If

additional testing turns up similar results, the source

said, " they've got a big problem. "

The GAO told Shays's subcommittee in October that the Pentagon could

not locate 250,000 defective suits manufactured since 1989 by a New

York company called Isratex, whose officers have been convicted of

intentionally providing the military with defective garments. An

additional 530,000 defective suits produced by the firm have been

located and removed from military stocks.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Defense Secretary H. Rumsfeld, a

member of Shays's subcommittee, Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.),

cited " extremely troubling " testimony by his subordinates on chemical

and biological preparedness, particularly with regard to the 250,000

defective suits still missing.

In the letter, Schakowsky asked Rumsfeld to certify that all troops

deployed to the Gulf for any possible military action against

Iraq " have been provided with equipment to protect against chemical

and biological attacks in quantities sufficient to meet minimum

required levels previously established by the Department of Defense. "

The threat to U.S. forces is particularly acute as the Bush

administration puts the finishing touches on invasion plans to topple

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if his government does not relinquish

its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and fully cooperate with

U.N. weapons inspectors.

The CIA says Iraq most likely has stockpiled " a few hundred metric

tons of chemical warfare agents, " including the nerve agents VX,

sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas, and also possesses anthrax and

other lethal biological agents that could be weaponized.

Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces

during the Gulf War, even though Hussein ordered commanders to fill

Scud missile warheads, bombs and artillery shells with chemical

agents. But many analysts say Hussein and his most loyal commanders

will not hesitate to use them in another war, because this new

military campaign would be for the explicit purpose of toppling

Hussein's government.

-Winegar, the Defense Department's deputy assistant

secretary for chemical and biological defense, said she believed the

Pentagon would be able to reach a " goal " for providing all troops

sent to the Gulf with the new protective suits, officially named the

Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology, or JSLIST,

suits.

-Winegar also said recent tests had given defense

officials " complete confidence " in the protective capabilities of the

JSLIST suits and the older garments.

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry

Division during the Gulf War and is under Pentagon contract to brief

the commanders of units likely to deploy on what to expect in any

military action against Iraq, said he believed that U.S. forces were

well prepared for chemical or biological attacks.

" Every fighter wing, every Navy ship at sea, every Army battalion is

fully equipped to fight in a chemical environment, " McCaffrey said.

He underscored the threat last month when he told commanders of the

3rd Infantry Division at Fort , Ga., that they should expect

to be attacked with chemical weapons.

Lt. Col. M. Twitty, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's

2nd Brigade, deployed in Kuwait, said his unit was well equipped and

well trained to withstand chemical or biological attacks, having

trained in offensive and defensive operations for as long as seven

hours in full protective gear.

" During these training maneuvers, we tested our soldiers' ability to

fight, test for agents [and] decontaminate themselves and their

equipment, " he said. " Additionally, we have conducted foot marches in

[full protective gear] over long distances. "

The U.S. military's preparedness for chemical and biological warfare

has greatly improved since the Gulf War, when 100,000 troops were

exposed to trace levels of sarin nerve gas when engineers blew up

sarin-filled rockets at a munitions dump in Khamisiyah in March 1991.

In addition to the new protective suits and masks, U.S. forces are

equipped with armored M-93 Fox vehicles that detect mustard gas and

nerve agents on the battlefield in less than a second, sounding

alarms that give soldiers time to climb into protective suits, masks,

boots and gloves. Military units also surround their bases with M8

alarms to detect the presence of nerve agents.

The Pentagon has also recently installed 52 stationary biological

sensors called Portal Shield in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United

Arab Emirates and Bahrain to complement a mobile biological sensing

system towed by a Humvee that is designed to patrol the battlefield

and provide early warning of a biological attack.

But unlike chemical sensors, biological sensors take as long as 20

minutes to detect the presence of germ weapons, greatly increasing

the risk that soldiers would be exposed to biological agents before

donning their protective gear.

Even the Pentagon's new JSLIST garment and M40 silicone rubber gas

mask cannot stop some biological agents and a powdered version of VX

nerve agent called " Dusty VX. "

One difficulty in assessing the Pentagon's readiness in the chemical

and biological arena is that much information about the protective

qualities of the new equipment remains classified.

-Winegar declined to discuss whether the military's protective

suits would be effective against Dusty VX.

" It's classified information, " she said, " and it's an operational

security concern. "

© 2002 The Washington Post Company