Posted on 03/19/2004 7:04:36 AM PST by SJackson
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:51:20 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We ran tanks ahead of them. Those in recon teams that used jeeps ahead of or away from main forces sometimes added light armor here or there, but their real addition was two, three, sometimes as many as five machineguns. And not one or two vehicles of a group, but every one...with a few fitted with flamethrowers, 20mm aircraft cannon, or other novelties.
--Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Good Lord, I don't think we could continue the war without the jeep. It does everything. It goes everywhere. It's as faithful as a dog, strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for, and keeps on going. It doesn't even ride so badly after you get used to it.
- U.S. WWII War Correspondent Ernie Pyle, killed in his jeep by a Jap machinegunner on Okinawa.
(On a side note, we're thinking of wrapping some old shopping carts around the outside of our humvees and calling them Strykers.)
Since we don't have to do long slow patrols, our security is speed. Rather than strap on a bunch of unwieldy scrap metal that won't stop jack anyway, we're stripped down and sprinting from point A to point B. Our defense consists of kevlar blankets, sandbags, and size 12s boots stomping on the pedal. These guys are lousy shots, even at stationary targets, and they are also pretty bad at timing their IEDs. So far, so good for us, I guess.
Many guys don't have the luxury of driving like bats out of hell everywher they go, and they're scavenging anything that might at least slow down 7.62 and IED shrapnel. I don't know how effective the home made jobs are, but I wouldn't trust anything besides a real up armor kit. I sure wouldn't want to do a slow patrol through some of these neighborhoods in anything less.
If I get a chance later, I'll get some pictures of our rides to post. That's all for now.
If run over, soviet land mines killed or maimed everybody inside of a 113.
If they were inside. If you rode outside on top, you were okay if it was anything less than a 500-pound aircraft bomb rigged for command detonation that went of under the vehicle, unless it rolled over on top of you.
And that was what most everyone did.
Just don't call them Stynkers. That'll cost you an Article 15 at Knox.
Next questions: There are alternatives to the M1114, what keeps us from acquiring and using them? Seems like people are fixated on the M1114.
What use are we making of Saddam's wheeled armored vehicles?
Be careful out there.
A Stryker vehicle rolls through the streets of Mosul on patrol after members of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), B Co. 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, checked on an Iraqi police station that has been attacked twice.
Scarab
Scarab
The problem is that there aren't yet right-side feed mechanisms [top covers] for the M240G and M249 SAW. The M60 was adaptable to such twin-gun configurations based on the work that had been done for use as the M60D helicopter armament applications, though I don't know if any actually fed from the right side or not. But the M73/M219 7.62 coax machineguns used in our tanks could, though they were no more reliable feeding from the right side than from the left.
So did the Air Force base security teams using the XM706E2 Cadillac Gage V-100 that had a pair of M60s mounted. There were also turret versions with twin Browning .30 or 7.62mm MGs.
It's already being done... 2003 gun truck
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