The Army’s Official Face Mask to Be Issued to New Soldiers in 2021

Unless I misinterpreted this, the article said that while it normally takes around 2 years, in this case they were able to cut the time down to less than a year (from deciding to make it to it being issued out to everyone).

By law, military-issued clothing needs to be made entirely in the US. This likely made the process slower.

There also may have been a mandatory reverse-auction to source it.

Redundant, ineffective, and a waste of taxpayer money. But hey, it took half the time to be as wasteful, so that is an improvement!

In hindsight, these will be soon redundant. I remember lots of pundits (rightly) cautioning that it might take 1-2 years to get an effective vaccine. The army had to start designing before they knew how effective vaccines would be and when they'd be released. Sure, they had a guess that a SARS-CoV2 vaccine would be a much easier vaccine target than HIV, but there are often unforeseen difficulties.

They'll still be useful during the ~15 months or so that a vaccine rollout will likely take.