Cold-War Thinking Prevented Vital Vehicle From Reaching Iraq

Wall St Journal ^ | 3-19-04 | Greg Jaffe

[SJackson]

WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, the Army began producing an armored Humvee capable of providing protection from many roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

Like most soldiers in Iraq, Capt. Cameron Birge hasn't set foot in one of those vehicles. Instead, he leads convoys through one of the country's most violent regions in a Humvee -- the modern successor to the Jeep -- with a sheet-metal skin that can't even stop bullets from a small-caliber handgun. To shield himself, Capt. Birge removed his Humvee's canvas doors and welded on slabs of scrap metal. He spread Kevlar blankets over the seats and stacked sandbags on the floor.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

[Cannoneer No. 4]

[VaBthang4]

"Until it runs off a road. Then it won't bog if it isn't armored, but will if it is, because the chassis was not designed for the extra weight, and 4 small tires do not provide the floation of tracks. And the 113s are better protected. They won't be used because it is too sensible and not "modernizing" enough."

Wha!

"It is a regular cycle. The army solves a problem. REMFs find the solution cumbersome to their own logistical problems, and don't use it."

The Logistical problems aren't too be whisked aside...Logistics is where this Army begins and ends. That aside, I don't think that has anything to do with it.

"They provide substandard equipment instead, that makes their jobs easier but endangers soldiers."

The Humvee is the finest General Purpose vehicle on the planet...it's anything but substandard. The threat evolves exposing weakness' that is the cycle involved here.

"In peacetime nobody cares and they have their way."

Ugh.

"When war comes, their compromises are unacceptable and everyone scrambles to reinvent the wheel."

I don't hear anyone scrambling to reinvent anything...unless it is old timers attempting to reinvent the 113...much the way they did when the Stryker was the topic of discussion by the contrarians.

As for Soldiers dying...sorry Bro, that's what they do...they die. They aren't dying in even moderate numbers...so truth be told...the price required to put the 113 in use in the Iraqi TO isn't worth it.

Cold Hard Reality....another facet of warfare.

Semper Fi

[Cannoneer No. 4]

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Travelling Under Armour

[VaBthang4]

NO!!! It gets bogged down off-road!

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Tracks Not Trucks

[Cannoneer No. 4]

[JasonC]

"it's anything but substandard"

Read the bleeding article. Anyone still want a Humvee with canvas doors? 95% of them aren't armored to stop 30 cal rounds. If all they did was drive beans from A to B in safe areas, no problem. As a fact, they are used to mount regular patrols in combat zones. M113s would do that job about 100 times better and we already have them.

Instead, we have men in the field lining their Hummers with sandbags and tacking on scrap steel themselves. These are not rational actions by the supposedly well prepared military of the greatest industrial power in human history. When Spec-4s are roaming Iraqi junkyards for sheet-metal, something is seriously wrong (TM). Kindly remove the wax from your ears, drop the mere boosterism, and pay attention to what actually happens.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[Cannoneer No. 4]

In November, Mr. Kerry voted against the president's request for $87 billion to fund security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. That measure included $300 million for body armor designed to help GIs in Iraq survive the sort of sniper fire that had claimed dozens of American lives at the time.

An additional $140 million of the president's request was earmarked for "up-armored" Humvees, which can better withstand hits from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Yet on Saturday, Mr. Kerry used the Democratic Party's weekly radio address to accuse the president of shortchanging U.S. forces on armor.

[Darksheare]

Maximum Speed 78 mph/125 kmh

My old unit got an M1098 towing an M119A1 to go 90 on a highway, according to the State Troopers who pulled up next to us to yell over the engine and tire noise to us.
*chuckle*

[Cannoneer No. 4]

In a radio address broadcast on Saturday, the Democrat [Kerry] called for increasing the size of the U.S. Army by 40,000 soldiers and blasted the White House for failing to buy sufficient armoured Humvees and body armour for troops in Iraq.

Yet he voted against the $87-billion (U.S.) in extra spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which included such items.

[Darksheare]

*snort*
Kerry has an interesting way of whining about how screwed up things are that he himself tried to screw up.
He is obviously pathological.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Called to account on the issue during a Feb. 10 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker acknowledged that the Army never envisioned having to armor its Humvees "until this kind of situation that we have today."

"And so this is an area where you cannot fix it overnight," Schoomaker said.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who has hounded the Army about the thin-skinned Humvees since last fall, responded brusquely. "It's a tragedy if we are not ensuring that every young serviceman that goes out in any dangerous area in Iraq" is "adequately protected," he said.

[PsyOp]

It may be a mistake but I'd leave the 113s right where they are. Just beef up the Hummers.

The other thing they could do is pull some of the old 2-1/2 and 5-ton trucks, the old ones with manual transmissions, and turn them into gun-trucks. They can handle the extra weight of armor plate and can be mounted with fifties and grenade launchers for convoy escort. These would deter snipers and ambushes.

It boggles the mind that some in the Army can't figure out that a mix of these vehicles are needed. Armored humvees and trucks for the high-threat urban environment and unarmored ones with high off-road manueverability for the scout and open-country combat missions. Common sense to me.

[R. Scott]

But everybody just knew that the Iraqi People would be so overjoyed when Saddam was gone that they would welcome us with flowers and wine - even those who’s livelihood, power, prestige or ego depended on his (or another dictator) staying in power.

[R. Scott]

If I remember correctly, most of the troops I saw in Viet Nam were riding on top of, not inside, the M113. It seemed safer to be outside the vehicle.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Flanked by his Vietnam boat crew and appearing before dozens of veterans wearing caps designating their American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, the senator also accused the president of "trying to blame everybody, except his own administration," for problems the United States faces at home and abroad.

Kerry said the president -- not he -- was to blame for any lack of preparedness or protection for US soldiers.

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," he said.

"The president made the decision as to when to send our troops to war, no one else. He decided the date. He decided that diplomacy was over. He decided to go forward. And on the date that they went into Iraq, they didn't have the armament on the Humvees, the armored doors, they didn't have the equipment they needed in some regards, and they didn't have the state-of-the-art body armor," the senator said.