Collapsing cots cause concern in Kuwait(US Troops from private contractor)

[RamboLiberal]

Posting this cause it's one of those can't they do anything right and I'm wondering if KB&R supplies the troops with these and how darn much we taxpayers are paying for this junk!

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=20637

It’s become an all-too-familiar pratfall here at Camp New York.

Tired soldier loaded with gear plops down on his cot after a long day of training. Crash! He lands on the floor with an embarrassed thud, while his buddies laugh themselves stupid.

“They’re junk, that’s all they are,” griped Pfc. Jonathan Bell, 20, of the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment, whose cot collapsed under his 205-pound bulk. “The legs just cave.”

The cot casualties are mounting. Spc. Shaun Smith, 27, of Atlanta, a supply clerk with the Georgia National Guard’s 277th Maintenance Company, estimated more than 500 have been turned in for replacements in the past week. That doesn’t count many more collapsed cots that soldiers still are using, propped up with boxes or their own rucksacks.

<snip>

But Camp New York’s come from a private contractor in Kuwait. The brightly colored blue and green cots fold up simply and come in easy-to-carry bags. They are made in China and carry the Saudi brand name Al-Sanidi. They look more suited for weekend camping than the rigors of Army life.

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Wanna bet the Pentagon is paying top dollar for these POS cots.

and the private contractor is laughing all the way to his Swiss bank account. However, a solution is at hand. Once the Pentagon finishes development of Rummy's Robo-soldiers, there'll be no more need of cots as Robo-soldier won't need to sleep. He'll just blow up and destroy shit 24/7.

Edited to add this:
DARPA creating a race of robo-grunts

The Defense Sciences Office of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for a few good proposals to exploit soldiers in ways Rommel and Tojo could only have dreamed of.

Imagine divisions of grunts able to go without food and sleep for days on end while performing at peak level. That's the perverse dream of the Defense Sciences Office's new Metabolic Dominance Program .

"The vision for the Metabolic Dominance Program is to develop novel strategies that exploit and control the mechanisms of energy production, metabolism, and utilization during short periods of deployment requiring unprecedented levels of physical demand. The ultimate goal is to enable superior physical and physiological performance by controlling energy metabolism on demand," DARPA explains.

Much of this will be a matter of uncapping the natural safety mechanisms against excessive strain that humans have evolved with - overclocking the grunt, so to speak. But the DoD doesn't seem much concerned by the potential ill effects; nowhere in the call for proposals is there a request for a long-term health impact study. The long-term effects will apparently be discovered the old-fashioned way.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GRE402A.html

[burrowowl]

2. From armor to cots to

bad food, etc. The American taxpayer is paying through the nose to enrich these corporate bastards and the soldiers are being treated like dirt.:puke:

[frogbison]

3. Excellent

alliteration...

Collapsing cots cause concern in Kuwait...cot casualties are mounting.

What can I do to help?

[I AM SPARTACUS]

5. ...not "mounting"...climbing

[I AM SPARTACUS]

4. ya gotta love what the Lousiana boy says...

“I’d rather sleep on the floor,” said Bell, of Franklinton, La. “This is the worst camping trip I’ve ever been on.”

[NYC]

6. Made in China.

Do they have the best interests of our soldiers at heart? Or are they focused on profits?

[PaveThePlanet]

7. Great....is this what we can expect on America's Funniest Home Videos

for the next few years? Is that show even on anymore? What ever happened to that idiot that hosted that show?

[shanti]

8. omg

i bought one of these last summer at grocery warehouse. they ARE cheap, made in china crap, i paid 10 bux. now you know what brown and root is doing with our money - NOTHING!

[imax2268]

9. our tax dollars at work...

how nice...

[Columbia]

10. They should be happy they even have cots

When I was in Iraq, I slept in a hole most of the time.