[Team Sergeant]

Q Was the Army concerned at all that it would get sued if it released this information, that it would allow Pinnacle to say, you're releasing proprietary information?

GEN. CUCOLO: No.

GEN. BROWN: Let me -- Tony is spot-on.

It is the policy of the United States that we will get goods and services to support the Department of Defense from the maximum extent possible from the commercial industrial base. We cannot go to war without the industrial base. And almost universally the contractors in this country and the Defense producers in this country have responded in magnificent fashion. We can't do it without them. They are a critical piece of the information.

I manage over 400 specific soldier items and deal with thousands and thousands of contractors. We don't see it in the interest of the U.S. Army or in the interest of the Department of Defense to cast aspersions on the good, well-intentioned efforts of any of our contractors, because they may be able to product-improve their product and come back. And we may have something better, and then we're ready to go.

As I've mentioned, we're very interested in this type of armor, this concept. It has great promise, but it is not meeting our requirements as we speak today. I've also said in the past that should Pinnacle make product improvements or changes to their product, we are prepared to look at it again, as we have looked at it four times already since May of '04.

Q The owner of Pinnacle admits that the test may have problems with it. He says there were problems with the adhesive. And what he's calling for is an independent organization to do a test with the new stuff that they've made correcting the problem.

Are you guys open to that idea of having an independent --

GEN. BROWN: If they have a made a product improvement, my first recommendation to them would be to compete in the full and open competition that is currently open right now. The second recommendation I would make to them is to come in and explain to us what their product improvement is.

Q (Off mike) -- lab that's not connected to DOD, an independent lab doing it, or the operational test evaluation -- (off mike)?

GEN. BROWN: We have conducted the same live-fire -- we test to a standard. We have conducted the same test standard for all of our current body armor producers. Every one of them is tasked with zero failures. This has passed with 13 failures. If they make a product improvement, we are willing to test again to that standard and see if they can make it.

But, as I said, it is about the bullet, but it's not all about the bullet. Forty-seven pounds versus 28 pounds -- it's a well-known fact that the architecture for the soldier as a system is the human body. The human body does not change. You should not load the soldier -- although we do it sometimes -- you should not load the soldier with more than one-third of their body weight. For a 150- pound soldier -- many of which our soldiers are -- 47 pounds would be that one-third. That would be before we added a helmet, before we added a rifle, before we added boots, before we added NightSight, before we added water, before we added ammunition, before we added any other mission equipment. It is simply not meeting Army requirements at this time.

Q No, but if an Army soldier weighs 150 pounds -- (off mike)?

GEN. BROWN: Still, whatever size the soldier -- I'm 220 pounds, okay? You're welcome to come up and pick this up after the interview. I think you'll see what I'm talking about. If you put that thing on in 120 degrees in Baghdad, you're going to last 10, 15 minutes. That's before you add artillery protection or you add any other mission equipment. I think you'd like to have a helmet and a rifle, wouldn't you? A rifle weighs six pounds, a helmet weighs 4.5 pounds. That's 10 more pounds right there. Okay.

Q General, can you talk about any congressional interest in this issue before the testing and particularly after this NBC report? They claim that there's calls for hearings, that sort of thing. What have you heard?

GEN. BROWN: Well, we have had congressional interest both before and after. Before, we would normally get inquiries from staff both in the military legislative assistant's personal staff, professional staff or members themselves, and we were glad to go over and brief them. When we briefed them, the universal response was, you have a very compelling case here.

Since the report, we have gotten a flurry of interest, as you might expect, and I believe that we are planning on going over to the Hill on Wednesday or Thursday. We're still working out the dates at this point in time. But yes, there's been a great deal of interest at this time.

Q Is that for hearings or is that just for meetings?

GEN. BROWN: It's for discussions with key members over there.

Q So is the army going to release the testers' report from the May 2006 test?

GEN. BROWN: Again, putting that out in the public domain is informing the enemy. And we have chosen not to do that at this time.

GEN. CUCOLO: Other questions.

Q I just want to clarify. Which portion of this did you present to the reporter for NBC?

GEN. BROWN: All of it.

Q Including the --

GEN. BROWN: We did not give her the actual test articles or show her the actual test articles, but we showed her the video, we showed her the test protocol, the results. And we discussed the user suitability, such as the weight and those sorts of things.

Q Do you believe there was something wrong in the test performed in the NBC report that might -- gave these results?

GEN. BROWN: I don't know anything about that test that was performed, but I'd tell you there were questions raised in my mind because the lab workers that I observed were slapping the body armor up on the test stand with one hand and then strapping it in. If you pick that up, I defy you to say that that lab worker could have done that.

Also, you'll note they were firing through a very calibrated piece of equipment, and they very easily could have targeted that round to hit in the area of coverage of three overlapping discs. I'm not saying that's that happened. I don't know. The fact is, is we don't have any of the test data, and contrary to what was reported on the news, none of that test data -- conditions, shot standards -- have been provided to us.

Q How about our body armor -- (off mike)? Can you comment on that?

GEN. BROWN: What are you specifically --

Q How did they get ESAPI?

GEN. BROWN: Oh. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we have six producers of ESAPI. There are producers out there in the open market, on the Internet and other places, that purport to have ESAPI, but it is either not certified or it is counterfeit. The contracts we have with our six producers are DO-rated contracts. That is a type of contracting priority that means the contractors must provide all of their production to us. If they obtained that test sample from one of those contractors, that contractor was in violation and there may have been things that we need to look into. I'm not convinced that those plates were certified ESAPI plates.