Last month, the Government Accountability Office issued a report focused on what it said were errors the U.S. Army was making in the testing of new ballistic plates, and now the Secretary of the Army John McHugh is taking action, announcing today that the National Research Council (NRC) will perform an independent assessment of the Army's body armor testing.  

McHugh said that “Army will render its total cooperation” to the study, in which the NRC will perform an independent assessment of ongoing body armor testing.“The Army is constantly refining and improving its testing processes and procedures, and we welcome additional expertise to help ensure that we continue to field the best body armor available.” The GAO report found several anomalies in the tests it observed, with “the most consequential of the Army's deviations from testing protocols,” coming when Army testers “incorrectly measured the amount of force absorbed by the plate designs by measuring back-face deformation in the clay backing at the point of aim rather than at the deepest point of depression.”

No word on when or where the test will be conducted, but it will be interesting to see what conclusions an independent study arrives at, and what the Army and GAO will have to say.