Force protection is not the mission in Iraq or Afghanistan. We have an enemy who must be closed with and destroyed. We have a Three Block War to fight on Urban Terrain. Our soldiers and Marines have to be able to transition from passing out candy to kids and smiling at their mothers to reacting to an IED explosion and engaging insurgents in a millisecond. . . . urban warfare is like a knife fight-chaotic, close range, and extremely bloody.
I don't think the troops can accomplish all their missions mounted in armored vehicles. I don't think we are doing the troops any favors if we encourage any of them to think they are entitled to an armored vehicle. Only 19K's and 1812's ought to be entitled to armored vehicles, and a lot of them are patrolling in humvees now. It is not above and beyond the call of duty to ride in an unarmored vehicle, and if we let that notion take hold we can't fight wars anymore. I think that is what some people have in mind.
You may be missing the point with this statement. The problem as I see it is that our Army was (and still largely is), designed to fight a manuever war, not an urban war. Our unit TOE's reflect this.
Under the old doctrine, un-armored vehicles would not be sent into the high-threat kind of environment they are being used for now. Also under the old doctrine, any built up area that was posing this kind of threat would be reduce by fire and bombardment to allow un-fettered access by un-armored convoys and support troops.
In Iraq, we are having to develop a new warfighting doctrine on the fly. Un-armored vehicles are being sent into high-threat environment they were never meant for, and we do not have the proper equipment.
Just look at the large number of armored car type vehicles that are being produced around the world. Why? Because other countries that have had to fight the kind of conflict we are in now have already learned what we are just figuring out. In built up areas infested by guerilla fighters, sending troops around in unarmored vehicles is putting them in shooting gallery.
Doing so, when there are alternatives that can increase (not garantee), their chances of survival is wrong. That is the point.
Would up-armored humvees have prevented all the casualties suffered? No. But it would have prevented some and mitigated others. Someone now dead might have simply lost a limb and kept their life. Someone who lost a limb might have walked away with lesser injuries.
If it's available, and the troops want them, we should damn well do everything to supply them.
Even if they are not as effective as some say and others would wish, it is worth it if the only protection is peace of mind.
But's that's just my humble opinion. And that of a soldier I know who's attended one too many brigade memorial services in Bhagdad.