Replies

The point is well made if you are talking about the journalists writing the article.

The 155mm shells being used are not crude. That was my whole point in post #3. They are sophisticated weapons, particularly when they are fashioned as Phase II IED's with more than one explosive deviced wire to the 155mm shell.

The entire point is that I believe you are not going to uparmor HummVees to withstand a direct 155mm hit.

Of course not. But IEDs do not directly hit HMMVs. They are exploded when a convoy passes near them. The nearest vehicle may be 10 yards away, and there are lots of others farther away. A 155 shell inflicts most of its casualties by fragements. Those follows a regular distribution of sizes and energies. The less there is between you and the shell when it goes off, the higher the number of fragments that can hurt you. If you are in an M-1, nothing is going to happen to you (unless you head is out of the hatch). If you are in a Brad, and you don't drive right over the thing, only the nearest vehicle is in any danger and only of damage and concussion, basically. In an armored HMMV, if you aren't right on top of it only the largest fragments are going to do anything and only if they hit someone once inside. In an open backed 6x6 truck, half the guys riding are going to take shrapnel.

There are 8,000 unarmored non-HMMV vehicles in - and 4,500 non-HMMV trucks with ad hoc uparmoring. It isn't just HMMVs. And armor helps, more armor helps more. IEDs were identified as the main threat in Iraq in August of 2003. This is not remotely a deployability issue, 15 months later. We've spent hundreds of billions on the war, and blood is much more expensive than steel. This is not remotely an expense issue. People on FR who have talked to men in the field have been talking about this for over a year - it is not remotely some MSM smear issue. We can simply do better, adapting to overcome the threat from IEDs.