For all the focus on up armored humvees, it is a pity that there is no thought as to whether it is the vehicle we need or not...because it is not.
What they aren't saying: uparmored humvees are a bad vehicle. From the individual soldier perspective, they don't care. Its something that they can ask for. The military brass knows it is a bad vehicle...that is the source of whatever slowness there is in procurement. The army doesn't really want them. Well, they half want them. They want them because it is what they can get. They don't want them because they know it is not the vehicle they need. It comes down, like many things, to politics.
First, let me explain why the M1114 (uparmored humvee) is a bad vehicle. The M998 (the basic humvee) is a very good utility vehicle. It is good for what it was designed for...as a replacement for the Jeep. It is not, and never will be a good armored vehicle. It was never meant to be.
Putting a whole bunch of steel and ballistic glass on a souped up Jeep causes all sorts of problems. The vehicle is far heavier than designed...it causes excessive stress on the engine, transmission and suspension leading to frequent breakdown. The M1114 is far less reliable than the M998. And when driving through Sadr City, the last thing you want is a breakdown.
Putting all the armor on has other effects. It dramatically reduces the vehicles cross country capabilities the Humvee was expressly designed for. The M998 has very few terrain restrictions, the M1114 has a lot. It is pretty much restricted to roads. It can't go anywhere wet...it will quickly sink to the axles. It can't go through most sand...it will sink. It can't go over rougher terrain...the suspension will fail. It can't climb steep hills. A farmfield that is a racetrack to an M998 is a sinkhole to an M1114. It can't go all the places it may need to. The M998 can go wherever a farm tractor can go, and then some. The M1114 can go where a midsize passenger car can go...except it is likely to breakdown on the way.
The vehicle has other problems. It uses much more fuel and has a far lower range. And the army doesn't just pull into a gas station. It cannot turn as tightly(the wheel traverse had to be reduced because it would fail at the extremes due to the weight). It is tough to drive in tight conditions...like urban back streets. Three point turns are less than ideal for avoiding ambushes. It is not as fast...it can't give chase. An M998 could, if necessary, hang with civilian cars (which is what they are facing). An M1114 doesn't have a chance...it can't keep up. The M1114 cannot carry or tow much of anything. Troops, especially on patrol have a lot of specialized equipment that they can bring or leave behind depending on the mission. In an unarmored M998 the vehicles' cargo weight capacity was the limiting factor for scouts...all that armor means other equipment and extra ammunition that they can't carry.
While the armor may protect the driver and the vehicle commander...someone is usually exposed from the wasit up in the hatch. That is necessary to see what is going on around them as well as be able to fire back. It is far from the right vehicle.
The humvees limit the ability of our troops to do their job both with their operational limitations and their maintenance problems. It means more mechanics and less troops on patrol. It means more drivers delivering parts, and less on patrol. It is a step backwards. We have a nine to one tail to tooth ratio...for every shooter there are nine guys making him food, delivering his ammo and fixing his trucks. Now all those support people (who have always been in unarmored vehicles) are going to need to spend even more time supporting themselves.
(Adding armor to the heavier cargo trucks has a slightly different effect. They can carry the weight, but at the cost of their cargo load. That means that either more drivers have to make the trip or that the same drivers have to make the trip more times to deliver the same material. Statistically...armoring them may very well make them feel more safe, but actually be at greater risk due to more missions)
The bottom line is that the up armored humvees are not good vehicles. It is a poor stop gap measure. Strapping a whole bunch of steel onto a vehicle that was never designed to be armored does not an armored vehicle make. A few months ago there was a story about a guy who turned his bulldozer into a tank and ran over the police station and the mayors office. Note: he didn't try to turn his SUV into a tank. It wouldn't work.
You may have come to the (correct) conclusion that I don't think we should be cranking out up armored humvees. The humvee is a good utility vehicle. It is not and never will be a good armored vehicle. Most people at this point will scream that I am sacrificing our troops blood or that I should talk to a casualties' family or something.
A lot of the people pushing for the up armored humvees use the line 'our troops deserve the best' or 'whatever it takes' without realizing how far from the best the vehicle they are advocating is. The fact that I don't think we should be armoring humvees does not mean that I don't recognize that we have a need for an armored vehicle. Those that answer 'but we need it NOW!' don't realize what the impediment to getting the right vehicle now is.
This is a new issue. No where in all the reporting from WWII did I hear the press complaining that the Jeeps were not armored. That is essentially what is happening now. The US army has never used armored cargo trucks. The redball express wasn't behind ballistic glass. Even in Vietnam, where there were not 'front lines' and supply lines were frequent targets, the solution was not armoring cargo vehicles (although that certainly was common with the field expedients that the question was complaining about having to do)...the solution was escorting them.
We face a new challenge. A big part of it is motivated by the public's aversion to casualties. That is not a bad thing...but it can go to far. Politically, Americans are highly intolerant of anything where 'our boys' shed blood. So in order to do anything, we have to have much much higher 'force protection' than ever before.
So we arrive at the need for an appropriate armored vehicle for the mission we now face. The first question is do we have anything now? We have a whole slew of tracked armored vehicles, but the need is really for a wheeled vehicle...for many reasons I won't get into here. The only real wheeled armored vehicles we have other than the M1114 and a chemical recon vehicle is the 'LAV' or Stryker. It is not appropriate for the mission...it is a full capability combat vehicle designed to replace the tracked Bradley with more strategic (airlift) mobility. It is too big for urban patrol, and much to expensive to replace the tens of thousands of humvees.
So we need a new vehicle. There in lies the problem. Defense procurement. Military beauracracy. Defense Contractors. Worst of all...Congress. Pork. It takes the military years to navigate the dog and pony shows to get new equipment.
We have a need now, but using the 'proper' channels and methods it would take years, if not decades, to meet the need. So why can't we skip the 'proper channels' and get it done now?
That is political question...can Congress keep their pork fat fingers our of the pie? Is the Bush administration willing to give its political enemies an honest to goodness 'unbid contract' to carp about? I answer both those questions no.
The P-51, one of the greatest fighters of WWII went from design to testing to assembly line production in 120 days. The Commanche helicopter was conceived and designed in 1983 to meet the Soviet threat...it was cancelled 20 year later without ever having delivered to the military. The difference is politics.
A big part of the problem is 'military specifications' (MilSpec). Every single piece and part usually goes through extensive and rigorous testing. Almost everything is custom designed and tested to death. Another part of the problem is politics. Big programs produce maps of the US (by congressional district) showing what get made in who's district. For a big program it is not all unusual to get something from at least 85% of districts. Not exactly a model of industrial efficiency, but this is advertised as a selling point...it is how you get the funding.
The answer is rather straightforward. We need to opt out of the procurement nightmare and produce a vehicle with primarily Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components. The armor on an armored vehicle (with the exception of the Abrams) is not the complex part. It is the moving parts: the engine. The transmission. The suspension. Etc.
Take engines for example. Anyone familiar with automotive engine design and manufacturing knows how detailed a process this is. Not only does it take a long time to design, it takes a long time to figure out the best way to manufacture it. That is why the same engine is in a lot of vehicles. They aren't about to design an engine for every model of car or pickup and don't change it every year. But that is exactly what the military procurement leads to.
But more importantly...that is the escape...what we need already exists. We don't actually need to design an engine to MilSpec for this particular vehicle...we need to find a good one that already exists. The Caterpillar or Detroit Deisel engines in the tractors of the tractor trailers is more than capable. They may not be milspec, but they are good reliable proven designs. And they are already set up to manufacture them en masse quickly. The same thing for the transmission and suspension.
This all might sound fanciful and pie in the sky...but it has already been done. Admittedly, not by us, but by the Finns. All of the Scandanavians use an APC called the SISU. It looks a lot like our Stryker, but it is not quite as good. It doesn't have quite the cross country mobility. It doesn't have quite as much armor. As far as an APC/IFV for mechanized infantry to bring into battle, virtually no one would choose the SISU over the Stryker.
The stryker costs $3.1 million. The SISU cost $100,000. The SISU actually costs less than the M1114 despite its much greater size and capabilities. In fact much less. There are several different contracts involved, and several different armor packages added...so there is no one sticker price. But all M1114's come to at least $130k and $160k to $180k is the norm.
How did they do it so cheap? COTS. It is a Volvo engine...same one they use in their biggest trucks. Same transmission. The drivetrain was slightly modified (shortened). Its differentials are almost the only part designed from scratch. All of the complex moving parts are COTS. The frame was modified bus frame. Their spare parts are not special ordered...they are the same ones used by the trucking industry. Then they welded a steel box onto it. Steel is cheap.
We are struggling to put out a few hundred M1114's a month. They are, in essence, hand made rather than a factory assembly line. All the complex COTS are available from efficient pre-existing large scale production sources. Putting them together might be no more efficient than the M1114, but the availablity of the parts we are putting together would be much greater. We could crank out vehicles designed for what we need quickly. In fact, more quickly than the M1114.
My point is not that we should buy SISUs. They are not designed for what we need. They are an APC as opposed to an armored car/patrol vehicle. The SISU is not an example of the vehicle we need, but it is an example of the process we need. The point is that we COULD, with the political will, give our troops what they really need. Quickly. Cheaply. But it is not politically expedient. Congressman couldn't tell their constituents how they brought home the bacon. The President would be charged with favoritism with unbid contracts and political favors.
Whatever lack of enthusiasm there is with regard to the armored humvee procurement from the military end is simply explained. They know it isn't what they need. They know it will turn into a maintanence nightmare. They are not enthusiastic about it...but they are willing to take it because they know that they aren't going to get what they really need.
The troops need armored vehicles and the public and press is echoing their call. But that doesn't mean we should be giving them what we happen to have available. Troops going from an M998 to an M1114 are happy to get them...without thinking that the vehicle they really need, and deserve, isn't available because of petty politics.
The conventional wisdom is that we need more armored humvees. Beware the conventional wisdom. It is rarely wise. Do you remember in the weeks after the war when the Brits were walking around in soft caps instead of helmets without body armor and the conventional wisdom was the the US was too armored?
Pitts crossed a journalistic ethics line in arranging what happened. But the issue he advocated for has some merit as evidenced by the soldiers' response to it...our troops need armored vehicles. But the solution at hand is not the right one. The fact that the jury rigging happens in the O'Gara Hess factory in Ohio as opposed to being done by the troops in the field doesn't make the armored humvee the vehicle our troops need. But political BS prevents us from getting the troops what they need in anything like a timely manner. We should use this as an opportunity to cut out the political BS rather than forcing our troops to use something other than the right equipment for the job.
And why were they only making 450 Humvees a month? [Becasue it was law, that's why]
I think you're on to something.
I've personally seen brief glimpses of the milspec process and, while there are some good aspects of it, it is much better suited to peacetime.
During wartime, the process actually serves to stifle American ingenuity, which is one of our greatest assets. We need a process, either temporary or permanent, that is able to "adapt and overcome".
I was discussing the Humvee issue over the weekend with someone after watching a news blurb, and it occured to me that many overlook the importance of logistics (I was speaking of delivery of the new Humvees, but it applies to the procurement process just as well) in wartime.
Yes, war is about killing people and breaking things. Sacrifice, leadership, discipline and political will are key. However war is also a logistical contest. WWII should have taught us that. The Japanese and Germans often demonstrated superior killing ability, sacrifice, discipline and often leadership. In some cases, they had better weapons. We joined the war at a severe disadvantage.
What made the difference is that the U.S. was able to adapt or redesign our weapons, outproduce our enemies, and then deliver those arms to our fighting men with some degree of efficiency. We certainly weren't perfect, but the result was enough to make the difference.
Our own Civil War is another example. Certainly both sides had dedicated and skilled soldiers. Leadership was largely equal. Recall that the South initially was able to push the armies of the North all the way up to Pennsylvania. In the end, the North was able to innovate, and then supply its troops better than the South in both arms and supplies.
Obviously, there are other aspects of both conflicts. However, I think its important to remember that logistics isn't some trivial pursuit unrelated to the outcome of war. In many ways, just as war=killing, war=logistics.
The big question is how to get our representatives to stop playing politics and start doing what's best for our troops. I think W could pull it off, but I'm not sure his advisors are able to think outside the box. Maybe its time for some people in industry to come up with something and present it to some key people in the Pentagon?
It need not be purely for patriotic reasons. The Humvee->Hummer sybiosis could easily be repeated. I'd wager there's potentially a small, but significant market for a civilian version of the military vehicle you describe, depending on what results.
My response to a freepmail question:
The half track and light tank are not what we need. It has to be a wheeled vehicle for a whole slew of reasons. I also don't think a vehicle from another army is quite the right fit...there has never been a vehicle designed as an 'armored peacekeeping vehicle' so whatever requirements there are, it is highly unlikely anything quite right has been fielded. Plus, I'd rather see it made in America.
Of the vehicles that do exist, probably the closest type to what we need is the armored car/scout vehicle. America has never really been big into them, but other countries have them. The soviets used BRDM-2's, the Brits have one (Scarab...I think that is the name) and the Brazilians make a whole slew of wheeled vehicles everything from an almost tank to an IFV to an armored car...I think it is called blindando or something like that. Other countries have them as well. I think it would be worth analyzing armored cars for their various strengths and weaknesses regarding what we need, but I think it would only make sense to design and build what we need, and do it quickly using COTS (commercial off the shelf) components.
Nice write-up.
It seems obvious that if what you want is an armored personnel carrier, you don't start with a marginally-powered 4X4, and start tacking on armore.
