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Right now 4000 up armored humvees are immediately needed in Iraq. The army cannot produce 3500 of them in the next 18 months. This is ridiculous given the significant number of casualties currently inflicted on the occupants of unarmored humvees in Iraq today. Priority needs to be focused there. Last month 3076 commercial hummers were produced by GM alone. This is a clear indication to me that no effort has been made to put uparmored humvee production into a war production modality. Stop screwing around and get those damned uparmed humvees into Iraq!

Here are some stats on the Uparmored Humvee deficiencies.

There are 8500 soft humvees in Iraq not. Less than 1700 armored humvees have ever been produced. The army believes it is deficient by 3500-4000 armored humvees in Iraq. Less than 3500 armored humvees will be produced between now and June 2005.

A very high proportion of our ground casualties are coming from IEM, RPG and small arms fire placed on trailing vehicles in convoy. Most casualties seem to be occurring in unarmored humvees.

Production rates remain suboptimal and even with current plant expansion planned, will not reach more than 200 per month by year-end. This is a ridiculous situation and I'm asking any freepers that have some ideas on this to help forward them to me as I am very active with congress on this matter. At the same time realize that 50,000 commercial grade hummers will be produced by GM along next year and those are subsidized with a small business tax deduction by $100K. Thus your local dentist gets a yellow hummer but your boy in Iraq rides around in essentially an open bed pickup taking RPG, machinegun and IED hits.

Anyone that has ideas or a means of resolving this issue, please contact me.

Can anyone explain what is so complicated about an Up-Armored HMMWV that the most technologically advanced nation in the history of the world can only build 220 of them in a month? Or 500 by 2007?

How many planes, tanks and boats did this country build each day, during WWII?

And has anyone heard any plans to ship the Up-Armored HMMWVs from Bosnia to Iraq? There is no need for them in Bosnia; they just use up more fuel and give you less elbow room.

Come on people. We are talking about accelerating FUTURE technology into today's battlefied.

Notice that you don't see any tanks opposing us on today's battlefield. 120mm, 105mm, and 155mm canons do precisely *what* against RPG's, landmines, and IED's?

New turbines or diesel engines do precisely what to protect our soldiers and eliminate our enemies?

Think, people! We aren't fighting the Soviet tank armada in East Germany. We're fighting lightly armed amatuer fanatics who blend in with civilian populations (and might quit and go back home at any minute, there is no conscription - or might blow themselves up, or might engage in a suicidal banzai charge, or might lob a few mortar rounds or RPG's before running away).

We need better mine detection on all of our vehicles, bar none.

We need better situational awareness.

We *don't* need a new Soviet-tank-killer. Newsflash, the CCCP is dead and gone. It's the Soviet remnants, sold far and wide, that we have to deal with. AK-47's. SA-7 Strella's. RPG's. Some Katyushka rockets. Some C-4. Some mines.

. The plan was to build 1,600 engines to be installed on all Abrams tanks and Crusader artillery vehicles. But the cancellation of Crusader and cutbacks in the Abrams upgrade program drove down the number of engines to fewer than 600.

Why don't they just buy all 1600, shelve 600 as spares, and find 400 other uses for them.

Government today doesn't under stand supply/demand pricing.
Oh, it's so expensive, we can't buy that many.
Ok, now the price is X+.
Oh, that's even more expensive we'll have to cut the order
even more.
Ok, now the price is X++.
OH Oh, now we'll have to cancel the order and start over.

Yee Gods what a way to do things.

"While the FCS previously was viewed as a long-term modernization effort, now the chief wants FCS to begin delivering technologies as soon as possible."

The FCS has just got bitten by the Crusader disease.

I fault Rumsfeld partly for this. He should NEVER have put an Air Force General as CSA. I believe this to be a direct result.

"An expected higher price for the LV100 (as a result of a smaller order) and technical problems experienced in the program have prompted the Army to reassess whether it should cancel the project and start over."

Oh GOD this is stupid!

The LV100 engine in some form was around in at least 1994. They should develop the damn thing. Already a lot of sunk cost in it.

Thanks to all who pinged me here.

A few comments: None of the alternatives people are suggesting will protect adequately against RPG or IEDs. The M1114 is ineffective agaiinst RPGs and not perfect on mines or IEDs. Yes, it beats a cotton T-shirt. We had both M1114 uparmored HMMWVs and Toyota Tacomas hit by mines/IEDs and the outcome was broadly similar. Both vehicles were thoroughly destroyed; all aboard survived, mostly wounded.

The SISU, Stryker, VAB and other foreign APCs/recon vehicles, all are as vulnerable to an RPG as a HMMWV is, ditto mines and IEDs.

Then there is a philosophical question -- in the sense of, philosophy of war. Armoring your vehicles is en excellent defensive play, but the way we will win this war is offensively, not by improving or even perfecting our defense. Not that our defense should not be improved -- what ranger is pointing out is worth paying some attention to -- but we shouldn't lose sight of where it fits in the whole war plan.

That said, somehow I doubt that 3000+ civilian HMMWVs were built in a month. Only about 10,000 military HMMWVs and 11,000 civilian H1s have been made in the last ten years - not even 100 of each a month. The Hummer H2 has nothing in common with the military vehicle but the styling, and is unsuited for military use; it's basically a badge-engineered Tahoe for conspicuous consumers.

The multiple variants of the military HMMWV already create a maintenance nightmare. Even the spare wheels don't interchange, which shows you just what a government monopoly like TACOM gets you. The trade-off is that the system is supposed to react quickly in wartime. Unfortunately, the Army's massive Stateside bureaucracy remains self-absorbed and unengaged.

Yes, we should protect our soldiers, and ranger is showing us how an involved citizen can rally the government to do so, but realize that it is our ability to take the war to the enemy (even this elusive enemy) that will give us the win.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F