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During Congressional hearings last month a number of soldiers gave testimony supporting the Interceptor armor supplied to the Army by Point Blank Industries. One in particular is significant:

Staff Sgt. Jeremie Oliver of Fort Hood, Texas, has been in Iraq since October 2006, wearing his body armor every single day. "It works very well," he has reported. The husband and father of four children was shot on Father's Day this year.

"We were on patrol securing a site ... a shot rang out and I got hit in the chest. I was in a Bradley, standing up in the hatch, plotting a grid on my GPS. At first I didn't know what had really happened, but then I felt the pain. I sat down, realized what happened, and opened my vest. The bullet had not penetrated the vest, so we continued the mission and went after the enemy."

I’ve written about the Body Armor issue a number of times. From what I’ve read and heard the Pinnacle Dragon Skin armor is tactically superior to the Interceptor vest, although it is more expensive than the Interceptor vest. It should also be noted that many soldiers have died in Interceptor vests. They were not available to testify about Interceptor failures.

VoteVets, an organization created by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, assisted during the 2006 mid-term elections with a hard-hitting TV commercial that pointed out the inadequacies of the Interceptor vest. Amazingly, even in 2006, soldiers were being deployed to Iraq with less-than effective body armor.

It’s important to understand the Army desires to protect the troops as much as possible. They have been testing a new solution to the problem SSG Oliver experienced: being shot while standing in the hatch of a vehicle.

The U.S. Army plans to outfit thousands more vehicles with Common Remotely Operated Weapon Stations (CROWS), which allow gunners to fire on targets from the safety of armored crew compartments.

In August, Army officials intend to choose one firm from among several competitors to receive a contract for 1,500 CROWS stations. In total, the contract could grow to as many as 6,500 CROWS, Army officials said.

“The Army is looking at the CROWS system for the up-armored Humvee, Fox [reconnaissance vehicle], RG-31 [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles] and the Abrams [tank], so right now the Army is trying to finalize the basis of issue regarding how many CROWS to order and who gets them,” said Richard Audette, deputy project manager for soldier weapons at the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.

Remote weapon-firing capability is a requirement for new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, so more CROWS could wind up being added to expected orders, Audette said.
“Remote weapon stations is a growing industry, if you would, because there are things like MRAP vehicles and other mine-resistant vehicles,” [COL Carl] Lipsit [project manager soldier weapons at Picatinny Arsenal] said. “The goodness of keeping everybody inside that specialty vehicle under armored protection is a valuable thing. CROWS does that for you, keeps people inside. Yet you are still engaged and can still see day and night. With the zoom capability, you can fire all the weapons.”

This would certainly ensure more operator safety and probably survivability. In the installation photo above, the weapon is the Army’s long-time favorite, the “Ma Deuce,” the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, a standard vehicle heavy weapon. It is prone to jams and stoppages, according to Army tests about once every 500 rounds.

One weapon that may go on some of the CROWS stations is ATK’s new high-speed Lightweight 25mm (LW25) Bushmaster chain-gun, which can fire up to seven times as many rounds between jams as the ubiquitous .50-caliber machine gun, ATK officials say. The company developed the gun to fire various heavy rounds that can do the jobs of the .50-caliber and the 40mm grenade launcher.

The Army intends to test-fire the LW25 from an MRAP vehicle in the coming weeks.

ATK is the basic manufacturer for the M242 Bushmaster 25 mm chain gun presently used in the Army’s Bradley vehicles as a turret gun.