By Geoff Fein
ATK [ATK] recently received a $20 million order from the Marine Corps for upward of 50,000 additional scalable plate carriers to help reduce weight and provide Marines with a scalable armor protection system, a company official said.
The company began delivery of the systems this month and will provide the units to Marines up to January 2010, Scott Carver, vice president and general manager of ATK Tactical systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“It’s an armor system that allows the Marine to scale up and down the weight and area coverage of the system based on their needs,” Carver said. “It’s a product that is really the Marine Corps answer to lighten the load.”
With the changing theater from Iraq to Afghanistan, the environment is much harsher and mobility becomes increasingly more important, Carver said. “So a scalable plate carrier is a lighter weight solution that still offers coverage with increased mobility.”
The Marine Corps has two armor systems: the Marine Corps Tactical vest and the Scalable Plate Carrier, he added.
ATK delivered the 15,000 units in 2008.
“The Marines love it, which is why they came back and ordered the additional quantity,” Carver noted. “We’ve kind of built the business on our ability to rapidly design and field new products. We turn about 1,000 products a year out of our design department.”
ATK also builds a suite of pouches and accessory items that attach to the carriers. The Full Spectrum Battle Equipment goes to all force reconnaissance personnel, security forces, and explosive ordnance disposal units for the Marine Corps, Carver added.
“We are the primary load carriage provider for the Special Operations community. A lot of what we are doing for the Marine Corps and Army comes from technologies and systems that have been developed for Special Operations that have trickled down,” he said. “For the Special Operations community, every operator gets probably 30 to 40 different products we manufacture.”