USA — Army Recalls 44,000 Combat Helmets

The Depart­ment of the Army announced today that it has ini­ti­at­ed a recall mes­sage for approx­i­mate­ly 44,000 Advanced Com­bat Hel­mets pro­duced by Armor­Source LLC (for­mer­ly Rabin­tex USA LLC). These hel­mets do not meet Army spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

The 44,000 hel­mets rep­re­sent about 4 per­cent of Advanced Com­bat Hel­mets issued to sol­diers. Suf­fi­cient hel­mets pro­duced by oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers that meet Army require­ments are cur­rent­ly avail­able in the Army’s inven­to­ry. The Army will imme­di­ate­ly issue these hel­mets to sol­diers world­wide serv­ing in those units iden­ti­fied to have recalled hel­mets. Army Cen­tral Issue Facil­i­ties have been direct­ed to remove all affect­ed hel­mets from the inven­to­ry and to direct­ly exchange non­com­pli­ant hel­mets turned in for hel­mets meet­ing Army spec­i­fi­ca­tions. The recalled hel­mets will be sent to the Defense Logis­tics Agency Defense Reuti­liza­tion and Mar­ket­ing Ser­vices for demilitarization. 

The exact risk to sol­diers wear­ing the recalled hel­mets is still being deter­mined; how­ev­er, sam­ple test­ing from a quar­an­tined inven­to­ry revealed that the hel­mets did not meet Army specifications. 

The mat­ter is under inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Office of the Inspec­tor General. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs)