File: 970903_oct1_0051.txt
Page: 0051
Total Pages: 106

NBC Defense

also were not comfortable wearing the buryl gloves. They wanted something more like
a surgical glove. Others working with keyboard input and sensitive equipment controls
had similar conunents.

(S) The-Green Vinyl Overboot (GVO) was introduced in SWA to front-line uniis
as a replacement for the chen-dcal protective overshoe (black booties). Marines felt
much more maneuverable wearing the GVO in the desert. The black booties, because of
their design, tended to collect a great deal of sand making movement more difficult.
One complaint from all Marines was that there were many cases of mild immersion foot
caused by prolong wea- of protective boots during the assault.

(S) From the logistical resupply point of view, the SMU faced major problems in
filling critical backorder demands for both protective masks and suits. On suits
specifically, SMU records and message traffic indicated that MCLB Albany failed to act
on MEF supply demands for OG84 protective suit requests from SepEember through
December 90. The SMU provided documentation that shows Albany cancelled requests
from I MEF for approximately 110,000 OG-84?s without explanation. The failure for
Albany to act on these critical demands for protective suits for a period of about four
months put a great deal.of strain on the SMU and slowed preparation of Marines to
right in a chen-Lical environment. This is a very sensitive issue and should be looked at
internally to insure a situation like this doesn't happen again.

(S) Overall their was an enormous amount of data collected on NBC equipment
by El-lis effort. A follow-on effort should be initiated to take advantage Of the
information collected in survey conunenes and interviews. Collected data on individual
equipment should be very useful in future equipment trade-off and Cost Operational
Effectiveness Analysis (COEA).

(U) b. Conclusions

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