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Companies Sold Millions Of Dollars Worth Of Broken Combat Helmets To Pentagon

REUTERS/Andrew Burton.

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Jonah Bennett Contributor
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A new investigation has revealed that two companies sold millions of dollars of defective combat helmets to the Pentagon.

Department of Justice inspector general Michael Horowitz released a report Wednesday detailing misdeeds perpetrated by Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a government-owned group that provides prison labor, and ArmorSource LLC, a private contractor based in Ohio.

Both groups sold Kevlar helmets to the Army and lightweight helmets to the Marine Corps, which suffered from serious “ballistic failures” and “expired paint.”

Investigators also found that inmates working for FPI sometimes experimented on the helmets, making them unreliable, yet serving the prisoners’ own interests by turning them into weapons for potential use against other inmates.

FPI even tried to get around the problem of dysfunctional helmets by cherry picking undamaged gear for investigators to inspect, instead of picking helmets at random as was stipulated.

“The investigation also found that manufacturing documents were altered by inmates at the direction of FPI staff that falsely indicated helmets passed inspection and met contract specifications,” the report stated.

Once investigators were able to move past carefully selected helmets and fake documents, they found deep, unavoidable problems with the military gear.

“A surprise inspection by the OIG and military personnel uncovered inmates at the Beaumont FPI facility openly using improvised tools on the ACH helmets, which damaged the helmets’ ballistic material, and created the potential for the tools’ use as weapons in the prison, thereby endangering the safety of factory staff and degrading prison security,” the report stated.

Thankfully, the report did not determine that any troops died as a result of the defective helmets.

Despite shady activity, DOJ officials elected not to file any criminal charges.

Since the Army had to recall 126,052 helmets, the government lost around $19 million. The Marines lost just $1 million, since 3,000 helmets were sold out of a possible total of 23,000.

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