BAI castigates military for purchase of defective helmets

A reserve in uniform and helmet at a training center in Seol in June. [YONHAP]

It wasn't bad enough that the military purchased defective helmets that were delivered to troops even a year after acquisition.

It turns out it fudged the quality reports, too.

According to the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) on Tuesday, the military signed a 4.3 billion won ($3.3 million) contract in December 2021 to purchase helmets to replace outdated ones.

The BAI said the military conditioned the contract on inspecting the quality of the helmets after they were supplied, ostensibly due to the urgency of replacing the older ones, but really to avoid budget write-offs.

In its report, the BAI said the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) approved the military’s request to purchase the helmets without a prior quality check, despite little cause for urgency at the time.

During a meeting in December 2020 led by DAPA, the military cited the need to supply bullet-proof helmets to troops deployed overseas as peacekeepers.

However, the BAI found that helmets used by Korean overseas peacekeepers accounted for only 7 percent of the total supply, hardly enough to justify an immediate replacement.

“A situation arose where the military's entire 4.4 billion won budget [to acquire the helmets] would be written off," said a BAI official.

Many of the supplied helmets turned out to be defective.

While the military received the helmets in December 2021, the new helmets were distributed to troops in October 2022.

The BAI found that the Army Logistics Command couldn't accurately assess the impact depth of the helmets during a test conducted between January and March 2022.

The BAI's report emphasized the importance of testing impact depth, citing a U.S. study on injuries sustained by soldiers engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"According to the research, most head injuries during battle were caused not only by bullets but also by hard impacts on objects, including the inside of armored vehicles when bombs explode," the report stated.

The test was commissioned to the National Technical System (NTS), a U.S. ballistic-resistant test agency, and Korean research centers.

However, the U.S. agency did not test the impact absorption, claiming it was impossible to estimate due to the Velcro attached to the outside of the helmet.

The BAI found that the personnel in charge of overseeing the quality tests of bulletproof products for the military did not remove the Velcro, shroud, and side rail, despite being advised to do so by the Army Logistics Command.

The personnel randomly selected 27 helmets and bulletproof shell camouflage for testing.

The NTS and local research centers also found that the infrared reflection on the helmet bulletproof shell camouflage did not meet the required quality level.

However, the personnel in charge of overseeing the quality tests falsely reported that all requirements were met for impact absorption.

The BAI also discovered that over 2,000 helmets had faulty shrouds, and over 1,000 had side rail damage.

The BAI recommended that the people responsible be suspended, at the very least, and that the military establish measures to prevent contracts that allow supplies to be purchased before test results are cleared.

This is not the first time the military has been accused of procuring defective bulletproof items that could endanger soldiers' lives.

In May, the BAI reported that the majority of the 49,000 bulletproof vests were defective.

Yet they were distributed to soldiers as the vests passed tests using tampered samples.

Additional layers were added to the vests in areas where bullets would be shot during tests.

However, the vests procured by the military did not have the extra layer.

DAPA signed a contract with a defense company to purchase vests for 10.8 billion won in December 2021.

In the last five years, the military has spent 270.8 billion won purchasing bulletproof items, including helmets and vests.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]