PHILADELPHIA –
For nearly a decade, the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support’s Clothing and Textiles team worked to get service members lighter and more protective combat helmets.
Collaboration, innovation and resilience are words team members used to describe their efforts working with customers and vendors, navigating challenges like testing requirements and limited industry competition.
“The curvature of a helmet is extremely hard to make,” said Jennifer Scarpello, integrated support team chief of C&T’s Individual Equipment division. “It’s hard to pass the rigorous testing put on them, so that does not make it appealing to a company, but we slowly are growing the industrial base.”
Challenges with domestic manufacturers’ willingness to make helmets, caused a limited industrial base, Scarpello explained. Testing for critical safety items like helmets also undergoes rigorous testing requirements mandated mostly by the Army at Aberdeen Testing Center.
“Everything a warfighter would go through at the frontline, that helmet needs to withstand those requirements,” Scarpello said. “That means shock levels, blunt impact, velocity, [and] for example, a chin strap needs to be able to withstand 300 pounds of tear, or thread pull.”
Scarpello leads a team of seven acquisition specialists, who coordinate with C&T planning, customer operations and quality assurance or technical teams to oversee every part of introducing a new item into the supply chain.
The team uses innovative strategies to buy helmets, like the Army Combat Helmet Generation II. The ACH GEN II is the most desirable helmet by servicemembers, with the Army as its main user, Scarpello said.
“There’s a desire by the warfighter for a lighter, more protective helmet,” Scarpello said. “DLA undertook that task as an acquisition that’s never been fielded before [and] these contract actions started in 2018.”
Required attachments, like night vision goggles, add additional weight.
“They wanted something that would be lighter, so when you have attachments, it doesn’t bog them down,” said Eboni Martin, C&T division chief for Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment in Customer Operations.
With two contracts in place, C&T is procuring 228,000 ACH GEN II units, valued at $96 million, with 31,000 delivered, as recently as April, Scarpello said.
The first delivery of these helmets in March 2024 was a significant milestone for C&T as the ACH GEN II helmet replaced the Legacy ACH. C&T is procuring 52,000 units of these helmets, valued at $20 million, with 1,000 delivered so far.
“We started this effort 10 years ago and it’s really a collaborative effort with the services, we spend quite a bit of time, our technical people, our customer people, our acquisition people, in contact with them,” Martin said.
“What’s so important about these acquisitions that Jen did is she was able to bring these systems that had never been mass produced in the way we’re doing now, into the supply chain, so that the equipment can reach more soldiers,” Martin continued.
C&T has contracts in place for five different combat helmets, including the Legacy ACH and the ACH GEN II. C&T provided 14,000 Advanced Combat Vehicle Crewman Shell units, valued at $6 million, and the team recently awarded a five-year tier follow-on contract in early April. They also bought 44,000 Enhanced Combat Helmet units, valued at $44 million, and 18,000 helmets delivered so far.
In fiscal year 2024 C&T ordered 5,000 Next Generation Integrated Helmet Protection Systems, valued at $10 million, and all delivered. In fiscal year 2025 C&T provided 15,000 helmets, valued at $30 million to fulfill back orders, with first deliveries made in April.
“We’re on track to fully support all of the requirements that the services have which is good because as we were developing our procurements and they’re coming up with new technical data, [customers] have been using aging materiel, which they had a refurbishing program,” Martin said.
“[These procurements] also saves costs for them because they won’t have to refurbish as many helmets because they’re getting new helmets in,” she continued. “It also improves the technology that each soldier will receive, so that’s excellent. Contracting did a great job awarding all those contracts concurrently.”
In addition to making helmets lighter, improvements for versatility were also made. For example, the NG IHPS can be scaled up or down based on mission requirements, Martin said.
“They were all improvements to make it easier for soldiers to operate in the field,” Martin said.
Martin leads a team of 18 customer account specialists and are the initial touchpoint for customers submitting a supply request package for DLA to procure an item.
“For the customer we’re their ‘belly button,’ but most of the work is done by planning, acquisition and [tech] because they’re validating the technical requirements, going back with questions with the goal of coming up with a document that will have the least [number] of questions from industry,” Martin said.
C&T held a conference in March 2020 to go over the technical data for vendors interested in making the ACH GEN II and used lessons learned there for other helmet procurements to get a design that can go into production, Martin said.
Next in the lifecycle of procuring an item, materiel and demand planners create a demand package based on the customers’ requirements that can go out to industry, Martin said.
“And acquisition puts everything out to industry, does market research, gets quotes and ultimately evaluates and awards on sometimes first article samples, sometimes a product demonstration model is reviewed by [tech], so it’s a group effort to get it across the finish line,” Martin said.
Having good relationships with military service program offices is key to making suggestions in how they develop contracts so there’s synergy for DLA’s contracts, Martin said.
“Even though I’m on the customer side, it’s about the entire team building relationships, just being comfortable to go back and forth and look at information and offer suggestions, and then to have your suggestions and recommendations reviewed honestly in order to help move the process along faster,” Martin said. “In cases where we can be of a like mind, it makes things easier for us further down the process when we go through sustainment.”