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
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.