Posted on 12/13/2004 7:03:15 AM PST by OXENinFLA
S.2401
Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005
Words fail me!
So much for Congressional micro-management.
Sure they would, Eagle Eye:
The 113s only have to travel as fast as the slowest truck.
Already up-armored and up-gunned. With a .50 in the cupola
and two other firing points for M-60s or M-249s. Lots of room for ammo too.
Jack.
Bump
Having many miles of convoy time in 113s and dozens of convoys in Iraq, I say it is not a good idea.
Too slow. Too hard to keep them running.
Armored cars, yes. And there are many varieties already in our inventory and available world wide.
Nov 15, 2004 - [Acting Army Secretary] Mr. [Les] Brownlee convened a summit at the Pentagon of defense contractors who design and build armor. In February, he traveled to AM General, which makes the ubiquitous Humvee, and to O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, which makes armor. He got the chief executives in one room. "I told them to show me the fastest rate at which they can build these things," Mr. Brownlee recalled. AM General responded by increasing production of "up-armored" Humvees (as opposed to "thin skin" Humvees) from 150 to 450 a month.
Also, the Warner/Brownlee connection is detailed in that article, Brownlee served as Warner's staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Uh, not necessarily.
Do we know how many the Pentagon even requested? Because if the Pentagon said it only wanted 450/month, then its not quite accurate to say that's all that Congress would allow. Congress may very well have "allowed" more if the Pentagon had asked for them.
And along the same lines, was there ever any effort to request a supplemental appropriation for this?
Don't get me wrong -- I think the MSM spin on this is b.s. A story that got only a little press a few days ago had the company that made the armor admitting that it couldn't increase production until February or March, even if the military requested that they ramp up. I'm guessing the 450 figure came from the manufacturer, so that's why its the number in the bill. That's as fast as they could make them.
We've got good arguments to counter this. I hate to see good arguments weakened by a bad one.
** [Becasue it was law, that's why]&&
I haven't read the article -- but my first reaction was -- got to be a dimwit passed law.
Does FR have another "scoop" here?
Who said that we need more than 450/month? What is the actual number, 10,000/month (one per U.S. person in Iraq over a one year time span)? Maybe we should make a special one for each serviceman as a bonus when he gets home?
I bow to your vast experience and knowlege, Eagle Eye.
Nice tagline too.
Jack.
Dec 10, 2004 - Armor Holdings Inc. said in a news release it can produce another 100 Humvees per month by next March and is currently 330 vehicles ahead of schedule.
CNN also learned that the U.S. Army Arsenal in Rock Island, Illinois, has been ordered to resume an around the clock schedule to make cab armor kits for 5-ton trucks and fuel tankers.
Republican John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his panel would hold more hearings on armoring vehicles and that Congress has provided more than $1 billion to correct the problem.
"Since the first day that the Defense Department identified a shortage of vehicle armor, Congress not only has provided the full armor funding requested by the [Defense] Department, it has gone beyond that, by providing $1.3 billion more for additional armor and armored vehicles in 2003-2004," Warner said in a news release.
Matt Salmon, president of ArmorWorks of Tempe, Arizona, told CNN his company, which designs and manufactures high-tech vehicle armor, could double its production from 300 to 600 [add-on armor] kits per month.
The Army, however, said that it already has a backlog of kits.
LOL....let's have a beer in the Atlanta airport next April.
Doesn't Hilliary sit on some Senate committee that has jurisdiction over this? Oh, Hilliary....
I was thinking about that on my way to lunch. Is there any where to find out?
Yeah, I was think the same on that point too.
It takes so long to get these appropriations bills through congress that from the time someone in the DoD contacted the manufacturer to the time this became law they may have made improvements and could do a higher number per month.
The thing that gets me is the "at a rate up to" wording.
It's almost like saying "not to exceed" 450 per month.
And since that wording is in the law, the way I look at it, the DoD is binded to that # in the contract unless Congress comes out and says otherwise.
May 7, 2004
Army could have bought more armored Humvees
Military understated how many can be made; Senate panel approves $1.2 billion for vehicles, armor
By Ted Evanoff
While U.S. troops facing ambush in Iraq for months demanded more armored Humvees, top Army officials insisted they were ordering as many of the trucks as could be made in Indiana and armored in Ohio.
They turned out to be wrong. Last fall, Army officials insisted that 80 armored Humvees could be produced a month, then raised that estimate to 220. In reality, AM General Corp. of South Bend and Armor Holdings of Fairfield, Ohio, are capable of turning out hundreds more a month, according to company officials.
On Thursday, a Senate panel came up with $1.2 billion for up to 6,000 more of the armored Humvees.
The Senate Armed Services Committee appropriated $618 million for the reinforced trucks and $610 million more to be spent on truck armor. The measure, an amendment sponsored by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., still must pass the full Senate.
The secretary of the Army said in November that the military was buying every armored Humvee that could be made.
Politicians and parents pointed out that the factories could turn out thousands more of the steel-plated trucks.
"They have consistently underestimated the need for this kind of protection for our troops," Bayh said. "Unfortunately, soldiers have been killed because of that."
U.S. casualties mounted through the summer and fall as guerrillas attacked the thin-skinned Humvees. The Pentagon has not said how many of the 776 U.S. deaths or 3,864 wounded through Tuesday occurred in regular Humvees and other work trucks, but unofficial estimates by Newsweek magazine and some soldiers' parents place the number at a quarter to a third.
Thursday's appropriation measure would open the way for production of 450 armored models a month by fall. The current production rate, which has been gradually ratcheted up since November, is 250 a month, with a goal this summer of 300 a month.
About 2,200 armored models are in Iraq now, most of them rounded up from U.S. Army bases worldwide as the insurgency escalated. The Army, which began the war with 235 of the fortified trucks in Iraq, now figures it needs at least 4,454 there.
Only after politicians in Washington prodded the Army did the procurement orders rise last fall above the 80-a-month level.
AM General is the lone producer of Humvees, a medium-duty truck that replaced the jeep in 1984. The company's 700-employee Mishawaka plant can assemble 18,000 Humvees a year. Last year the plant had orders for fewer than 6,000. Nearly a third were for foreign countries.
Basic models intended for armoring are shipped to suburban Cincinnati, where O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt puts steel plates and Kevlar in the roof, floor and sides and adds ballistic windows.
An armored model costs $200,000 to $250,000, compared with $125,000 for a regular Humvee.
Robert Mecredy, a president of Armor Holdings, which owns O'Gara-Hess, said he "started going ballistic" last fall when he realized O'Gara-Hess was considered the bottleneck. "I put on a full-court press to address the notion that Armor Holdings was incapable of meeting the requirements."
Urged by Bayh and others on the Armed Services Committee, the Army raised procurement orders to 220 a month in November, Mecredy said.
Troops in Iraq pleaded for more.
"My son called me the week before he was killed," said Brian Hart, of Bedford, Mass. "He said they were getting shot at all the time. They were in unarmored Humvees and were out there exposed to the fire. He was concerned they were going to get hit. He was literally whispering this into the phone to me. He was right. That's how he died."
John Hart, a private first class in the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, was killed in a Humvee on Oct. 18 near Kirkuk.
Brian Hart said he met Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., at his son's funeral Nov. 4 at Arlington National Cemetery. Hart passed on his son's message.
Two weeks later, Kennedy grilled Les Brownlee, the secretary of the Army, in a routine Armed Services Committee hearing. Asked whether the Pentagon was obtaining enough armored Humvees, Brownlee responded, "I've been assured we're buying everything they can produce," according to a Nov. 19 transcript.
Hart said he phoned O'Gara-Hess officials and learned the armorer could expand production. In December, Hart alerted several politicians' staff members. The information reached Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., an Armed Services Committee member.
Reed toured the Ohio plant and confirmed Hart's information. "For the longest time they were willing to produce many more vehicles than the Army was ordering," Reed said. Pressed by Bayh, Kennedy, Reed and others, Brownlee toured AM General and O'Gara-Hess in February. Orders for the armored vehicles soon escalated to 300 a month. The Ohio plant is ramping up for that now .
Bayh said he thinks the Army stuck to its order for 220 Humvees a month to try to keep the cost of the war down.
"People in the Pentagon were aware these vehicles could be produced in larger numbers."
Maj. Gary Tallman of the Army procurement and technology office said Wednesday: "You had to take into consideration how much we had. We have competing priorities for resources."
------------------------------------
Humvee production The rise in insurgent attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq during recent months has highlighted the need for additional armored Humvee troop transports. Here are some statistics about the increased pace of their production:
Armored Humvees produced
Long regarded as a vehicle for military police, armored Humvees, which can withstand rifle fire and land mines, are being built in greater numbers as front-line fighting vehicles to face the insurgency in Iraq.
2000: 500 Humvees
2001: 540 Humvees
2002: 650 Humvees
2003: 847 Humvees
2004: (estimated) 2,000
2005: (estimated) 5,400
Details on the modified vehicles
A soldier's safety is dramatically increased if the vehicle has been fortified.
Heavily modified Humvees
Of the nearly 12,000 Humvees in Iraq, about 1,500 to 2,000 are armored.
They are capable of stopping AK-47 bullets, rocket-propelled grenades, most roadside bombs and mines.
Armored vehicles cost $200,000 to $250,000 apiece, compared with about half that for a "soft-skin."
M1114 armored Humvee specifications
Length: 196.5 inches Width: 74 inches Curb weight: 9,800 pounds Accelerates: 0-50 in 17.84 seconds Tires: 30-mile run-flat range Range: 275 miles
Sources: Armor Holdings, Senate Armed Services Committee, AM General Corp., The Associated Press and Globalsecurity.org
No.
Ping to post #58.
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