[Excerpts]
It comes down to understanding how
the human eye and brain work
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New Zealand to replace M113s with LAVIIIs
The NZLAV is the New Zealand version of the Canadian LAVIII, produced by General Dynamics Land Systems of Canada (which bought GM Defense of Canada).
The NZ Army web pages devoted to the NZLAV provide 3 pages of Q&A and a photo gallery.
New Zealand plans to buy 105 LAVIIIs to replace 78 M113 APCs and 26 Scorpion fire support vehicles. The first NZLAV was received in August for acceptance testing to end in Nov '04. NZ says 105 LAVIIIs can do the work of 144 M113s.
This image shows the M113 and LAVIII side by side.
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Aussies upgrade M113s
In a 500 million AU$ (about 385 million US$) program, 350 of the Austrailian Army's APCs (which date back to VN) will be upgraded, with a more powerful engine, extended capacity (for 259 of them), increased armor, and a new turret & gun.
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Saturday, January 10, 2004
$1500 upgrade kits up-armor Humvees
Improvised armor kits are being assembled for four-passenger Humvees at FOB Ironhorse in Tikrit.
This sounds similar to a kit developed by Capt. Butler:
It's nothing like the much more expensive up-armoring contracted in the US, but it's better than nothing.
A number of up-armored Humvees have been transported to Iraq from the Balkans since November.
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27 DEC 03 update on up-armored Humvees
Up-armored Humvees provide far superior protection from small-arms fire and mines/bombs than regular ones, as this example illustrates. This story shows getting hit in an armored Humvee is no picnic, but you are more likely to walk away.
At the end of 2003, the Army said it had 1,500 armored Humvees in Iraq, and more than 12,500 unarmored ones.
As reported here, the Army increased its order for armored Humvees ten-fold in August, from 235 to 2957.
Now, the pressure is on to get more on the road in Iraq sooner.
Both AM General and O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt of Fairfield, Ohio, which mounts the armor, are quickly shifting production and reconfiguring their factories to meet the demand. The AM General factory (which can make more than 50 different versions of the Humvee) now produces 30 vehicles a day, including about 10 of the M1114s, destined to be up-armored. Mac Nab said that by February the factory, which can turn out more than 50 Humvees a day and could go to overtime or double shifts if necessary, could be making "little else than M1114s."
As for O'Gara-Hess, it has taken significant steps to increase its armor-equipping production to 220 vehicles a month from 80 by early in 2004, said John H. Mayles, vice president for military programs at the aerospace and defense group of Armor Holdings, the parent company of O'Gara-Hess.
Meanwhile, units continue to install field-expedient armor kits.
Armored Humvees are certainly better than unarmored ones, and the faster we get them in service, the better. But, in my opinion, we be better off buying vehicles such as the DINGO (a vehicle made in New Orleans for the German Army at about $500K per), which are designed from the ground up to be armored.
Compare this image of the DINGO to this image of the up-armored Humvee and you'll see the difference in the undercarraige, where the DINGO has a slanted mine deflector design while the Humvee is flat on the bottom. Like one of the engineers who designed the Humveee up-armor said, there's only so much you can do to armor a vehicle not originally designed to be an armored vehicle.
To my knowledge, no 4WD armored vehicle is in the development pipeline for the US military. For the foreseeable future, when it comes to armored wheeled vehicles for transporting troops, its either the up-armored Humvee or a multi-wheeled vehicle like the Marine LAV or the new Styrker.
As we saw earlier today, no armored vehicle, even the Bradley, is road bomb proof.
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Tuesday, December 23, 2003
First Stryker lost to enemy attack
Photo by Alan Lessig / Military Times staff - Published in Army Times
Soldiers on Saturday investigate the burned hulk of a Stryker destroyed by an improvised explosive device during an attack at Forward Operating Base Pacesetter. Guerilla forces ambushed a Stryker patrol near Samarra, destroying one vehicle — the first Stryker to be lost to hostile fire. The four-soldier crew escaped, but one soldier was injured in the attack.
As posted here Saturday (without a photo at the time), the driver suffered a broken right ankle and foot, and was flown to an Army hospital in Balad, according to The News Tribune of Tacoma, which has a reporter embedded with the brigade. Three other crew members escaped unharmed. Read the details here.
It appears the protective "fencing" around the outside has been removed for some reason. Here's an earlier photo from TribNet:
Here's how the vehicle looked in better days:
Here's some info on the Stryker if you are not familiar with it.