Today’s lesson; defective people make defective helmets
According to The Hill, the Justice Department released a report the other day that Federal Prison Industries (a work program for federal prisoners also known as UNICOR) failed to successfully manufacture helmets for people actively engaged in combat;
The helmets produced contained serious “deformities,” according to the report, including “ballistic failures,” “blisters” and “expired paint.” They were also manufactured with “unauthorized methods.”
“A surprise inspection by the [inspector general’s office] and military personnel uncovered inmates … openly using improvised tools on the helmets, which damaged the helmets’ ballistic material, and created the potential for the tools’ use as weapons in the prison,” the report found.
The inspector general also discovered “testing and quality control” problems, as FPI “pre-selected helmets for inspection,” violating the terms of a Defense Department contract that called for random testing.
I understand the need for the government to save money, but this isn’t an area for scrimping. Apparently, UNICOR is still manufacturing Body Armor according to their website “to meet the correctional and law enforcement needs of our Federal customers.” No conflict of interest there, huh?
Inspectors found no evidence of an incident involving the defective equipment that caused death or injury to someone using that equipment, according to The Hill.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
The good news is that it’s just helmets and that the inmates are not involved in making solar energy collectors or Prius car batteries.
So? they are going to wait until there is a serious wound or death due to defective equipment before doing something about it!! sounds like our embecilic govt!!
Given the prevalence of Islamic radicals in our prisons we might just as well outsource production to Raqqa.
Glad to see my tax dollars at work again… sort of.
With all the Nation of Islam recruiting going on in prisons, why would we trust them to make helmets for military fighting in the middle east?
Think it was Dick Gregory wpo talked about the space program”Here you are, floating around in limitless vacuum, a million miles from the nearest help – in a space capsule made by the lowest possible bidder”.
He also said that one of the original Mercury astronauts was black…”He just looks like that since they told him what he volunteered for”
Perhaps FPI could try a hand at F-35s…we would still get a shitty product, but it would be a cheaper shitty product…
Has everybody here seen that episode of the television series, “LAW AND ORDER” (which is in syndicated reruns), where a murder is committed by an Afghan war veteran in New York City in revenge for a fellow soldier having been killed in battle due to a defective ballistic vest?
In that episode, the show concluded with the United States Army forcing the New York City prosecutor to drop the case.
I recall several office items being made by blind people and never having issues with them.
I vaguely recall back in 2008-09 having to check serial numbers of every ACH in our inventory and every helmet every Soldier was issued. I don’t recall what the reason was, but we were given a certain series # to look for and any of those helmets would have to be sent somewhere. It was a huge deal and we had a short time to do it.
I remember that! In my unit at the time we were all lined up for IWQ and the supply sergeant came through checking everybody’s Kevlar and putting a red dot on the ones that were going to have to be replaced-has to have been the same issue.
I remember in 2009-2010 doing the same thing on the ACH and on sappy plates also up at camp Stryker
If I remember it right on the sappy plates if the bar code was missing they where sent to DERMO in Kuwait it was a sticker on the inside of the plate
I found out the ACH I wore in 2009-10 in Baghdad was on the list after I got back – IIRC the kevlar pieces weren’t placed properly when the helmets were constructed, leaving potential weak spots.
Yes, was told my Sappy Plates were being recalled. Asked WHY? You already know the answer. Had already being in country over 6 months.
I would love me a box or twenty of those Skilcraft pens we used to have.
And a box of the green “paper brain” notebooks.
I believe Lighthouse for the Blind makes those
??????
fyi, when the .45 Government was adopted in 1873 (what we call a .45-70 nowadays) it used a folded-head copper case instead of the more modern solid-head brass cases we know now. The rim area was literally folded soft copper. Copper heats up very quickly and is softer than brass- when soldiers jacked rounds into the dirty chambers of their Springfields, the round would fire but the cartridge case would be stuck in the chambers, so the extractor would literally rip the rim of the case off (leaving the chamber blocked by the remaining tightly stuck cylinder of the body of the case.) Many of Custer’s Springfields recovered there were found to be gouged around the chambers where troopers were frantically trying to unjam their useless rifles using knives or whatever they could try. This was a known problem since the round was introduced, yet Little Big Horn didn’t take place till 3 years later. Times change but government inaction never does.
If these piece of shit inmates are so good at this work, why don’t we use them to prepare items for Congress? Let Congress lead the way by using inmate prepared meals and equipment around their offices.
Making license plates and small rocks out of big ones are good options…beyond that we need to seriously consider which inmates we’re using for the work.
The Nazis used prisoners for their was effort, and that did not turn out too well for them.
VERY TRUE, they used slave labor to make munitions which resulted in a LOT of dud shells.
Program is run by the same version of bureaucrats that screw up everything they touch unless the upside can be diverted in their direction. Or for “the cause”.
Inmates will get away with what authorities let them. The blame lies solely on those who operate the prison and those paid to ensure quality control. Back in the day, we used a lot of quality office stuff from prison industries. Fire the high priced bureaucrat responsible and move on. The alternative is they will bid the job to an outfit in China.
I don’t know if blaming the inmates is the way to go. The companies supplying the materials and ultimately in charge of inspections seem to be at blame here. They are the ones making money off inmate labor and couldn’t even ensure they gave them the proper materials and all that. Plenty of blame to go around, but it sounds like the majority of it was inmates working with what they were givien and doing as they were told.
Don’t believe that for a minute. I have worked with and seen the type of work convicts do. You can give them the finest of materials and they will still screw it up or only meet the absolute minimum standard. They are convicted felons for a reason, not because they were fine, upstanding members of the community.
I wonder how much money UNICOR has given to which politicians in order to get that contract and will they get fined or have to return money to the Government? I’m sure it depends on who they’ve bribed (*OOPS*, donated to).
If you think the helmets are bad, you need to see what the uniforms the convicts make are like.
Besides usually not being sized correctly, they tend to (literally) fall apart after 3 or 4 washings.
I contacted several Congressmen about this and got no response from them. Go Figure
I remember being issued some ACU Uniforms in 2005 that were made by Goodwill and they lasted maybe two months, I doubt that convict labor would even produce something even that good.
In the early 80’s our wall lockers were made by prisoners
I worked for UNICOR for the last 13 years of my Bureau of Prisons career, so bear with me here. Inmate labor makes, and has made a lot of military parts since it began in 1934. Theyve made everything from slave cables to wiring harnesses for F16s.
Having read about this pisses me off too because I have one of those damn helmets in my locker right now. But there are several issues at play here.
First, are there inmates who could give a shit working “for the man”? Yes. And they dont last long inside a factory because its a money-making venture. The vast majority of inmates, knowing they are making things for our fighting men, take great pride in what they are manufacturing. i know that may sound strange but its true.
Second, while QA is mostly done by inmates, there is at least one staff member who oversees the process. So more than likely, that QA manager was probably trained/told that those defects were okay.
Third, I would like to read the contract to see what it said and what was acceptable according to Uncle Sugar.
Now you can light me up all you want, my factory made exec level furniture and we were part of the contract that replaced furniture in the Pentagon after 9/11. Three companies were part of that contract. One company, a civlian one, was kicked off the contract for sending shitty products. You didnt hear about that, now did you?