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Textiles and our
Military
The
United States Armed Forces’
Defense
Supply
Center –
Philadelphia, the
purchasing divisions for the Department of
Defense, estimates that over 8,000 different
textile items are purchased annually for use by
the U.S.
military, and this figure actually rises to over
30,000 line items when individual sizes are
factored into the item mix.
U.S.
textile companies supply the American warfighter
with everything from uniforms to high tech
protective clothing. We supply
defense contractors with industrial fabrics that
are vital to the operation of key pieces of
military equipment. We
supply every branch of the military. We are, in
the words of one former Secretary of Defense,
second only to steel in importance to the Armed
Forces of the
United
States.
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But if
this industry, this critical supplier to the U.S.
Department of Defense, is allowed to continue to
be devastated by unfairly traded imports from
China and
other countries, where will our Armed Forces go
for these 30,000 line items?
Will
our soldiers have to wait for Chinese textile
producers to agree to meet our military’s
specifications not just for quantity but for
quality?
Will
our soldiers have to wait for Chinese factories to
then produce the goods and ship them to the
U.S. or
whatever hot spot they are needed?
And if
our military receives the items and they do not
meet the rigid performance specifications our
Defense Department has established, do we put them
back on a boat to
China and
negotiate to start production over again?
Finally,
if China’s
government does not agree with a particular
foreign policy or defense policy and decides to
cut off the pipeline, will our warfighters be left
without the items they need in a hostile combat
zone?
We saw what happened when OPEC did that in
1973-74 with respect to oil. Do we want
to be faced with an embargo of potentially
thousands of different textile items?
Do
we want to be held hostage to the whims of
China,
whose form of government is diametrically opposed
to
ours? |
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These are just some of the
countless combat essential items the U.S. textile
industry provides so support our men and women in
the Armed
Forces
combat and flight
uniforms
helmets
flak
jackets
gear for extreme weather
operations
parachutes
aircraft fuel
cells
sandbags
tents and
shelters
sheets
blankets and hospital
supplies
airplane
panels
ammunition
bags/pouches
fabric for bullet-proof
vests/helmets
chemical protective
suits
communication lines
(optical fiberglass)
extreme weather protective
fabrics
interfacing and lining in
apparel and shoes parachutes and parachute
harnesses
personal flotation
devices
pontoon
bridges
rafts
ropes and
cables
ship
composites
stealth fighter plane
graphite fibers
wet
suites |
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National Council of Textile Organizations
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