Soldiers rely on heavy metal (Embedded blogger)

Soldiers rely on heavy metal
By MONI BASU | Wednesday, August 10, 2005, 10:46 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Camp Striker, Iraq — First Sgt. Bobby Barnes pointed to two heaps of mangled, metal contraptions sitting on the far side of a sand berm, behind a maintenance depot affectionately known as “the Alamo.”

Melted magnesium and aluminum. Crushed steel. Burned out seats and radio equipment.

The wreckage used to be Humvees that soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team drove outside Camp Striker for missions in the Baghdad area. The vehicles were torn apart by 155mm artillery shells buried in the ground and detonated as the soldiers passed over them, Barnes said.

He said the factory-manufactured armored Humvees came with the highest class of armor, known as Level I, which includes bulletproof glass in all the windows and heavy steel protection on the top, bottom and sides.

“None of the guys in these two vehicles died,” said Barnes, of Glennville, who runs the vehicle maintenance and repair shop at Camp Striker. “The armor [installed at the factory] is helping save lives.”

But even the top-of-the-line, factory-installed armor can be defeated, as insurgents proved in recent weeks. In separate attacks six days apart, two massive bombs killed eight 48th Brigade soldiers — all from Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment — while they were patrolling in factory-armored Humvees. Officials believe the bombs each had 500 to 600 pounds of explosives. Three other 48th Brigade soldiers died in a car bomb attack days later.

Makeshift bombs — what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs — planted under or alongside roads have become the number one killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Of the 1,310 American combat fatalities reported by the Pentagon since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003, 450 deaths, or about 35 percent, have been caused by IEDs.

This year alone, IEDs have caused just over 53 percent of American combat deaths — 204 of 382.

In addition to the eight 48th Brigade soldiers who died within a week, 14 Marines were killed when an IED exploded under their lightly armored amphibious assault vehicle last week.

The Army promised adequate protection for its soldiers when roadside bombs began killing Americans in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad more than two years ago. Humvee manufacturers began working at what military officials described as “lightning speed” to deliver factory-armored vehicles.

But from the beginning, the insurgency in Iraq has been about one-upmanship. Every time the Army slapped on more armor, the insurgents raised the ante. Bombs became larger and more deadly. Insurgents are now building bombs that are powerful enough to pierce the steel plating on even heavily armored vehicles, sometimes shredding them into small pieces.

Maj. John Conway, who oversees the armoring of personnel carriers just outside Camp Striker, said throughout history combatants have devised ways to outsmart each other.

“Somebody started with a spear and the next guy came up with a shield,” he said. “You can’t build something that will protect against everything.”

Last year, reports surfaced of soldiers refusing to go on convoys because they felt unprotected on Iraq’s menacing roads. The issue became even more controversial after soldiers complained of having to slap on “hillbilly” armor — salvaged pieces of scrap metal and bulletproof glass.

When a Georgia soldier questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the armor issue last December in Kuwait, Rumsfeld responded: “As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They’re not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Yet when Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year, he did not ride in a Humvee. Instead, military officials put him what is known as a Rhino Runner, a bus-like box of steel. Other civilian officials in Iraq ride around in vehicles with V-shaped hulls that deflect IED blasts away from the vehicle.

The general in Kuwait who oversees supplies and logistics in Iraq said the military had already stepped up production of armored vehicles and add-on armor kits before the question of sufficient armor was raised to Rumsfeld.

“Sometimes, I think people back home say that we’re not doing enough,” said Brig. Gen. Kevin Leonard of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command. “We have done all we know to do to keep soldiers alive.”

Leonard said that of the 40,000 vehicles in use in Iraq, more than 85 percent are armored in some fashion.

Gary Jones, a spokesman for 3rd Army in Atlanta, which oversees equipping and supplying units in Kuwait before they head to Iraq, said the number of armored vehicles in Iraq continues to increase.

Jones said there are about 7,700 Level I Humvees in the country plus 18,000 Level II and 7,500 Level III Humvees and trucks.

“We have enough vehicles with Level I or Level II armor to do the job in Iraq,” Leonard said. Ultimately, the goal is to replace the entire fleet with the factory-produced armored Humvees. But that has not happened yet.

The production rate for factory-armored Humvees is 550 a month, according to a House Armed Services Committee fact sheet on military force protection issues. Level I Humvees cost about $250,000 each, about double the price of an unarmored model.

Chief Warrant Officer Robert Tadlock, the 48th Brigade’s maintenance manager, said only factory-armored Humvees leave the gates of Camp Striker, where a majority of the brigade is based.

Still, not all of Georgia’s citizen soldiers feel they have adequate protection to navigate the streets around the Iraqi capital. The sense of vulnerability was heightened after the brigade’s heavy casualties.

“I tell these guys, it’s like a duck shoot at a carnival,” said Staff Sgt. William Taylor, a police officer from Valdosta who serves in Alpha Company. “You have no control.”

The soldiers say the factory-armored vehicles provide excellent protection against small-arms fire, but can’t withstand the kinds of bombs they are encountering. The IEDs have become larger and some are being designed to better focus the force of the blast at the more vulnerable undersides of the vehicles. Soldiers of the 48th say they average six to 10 roadside bomb attacks a week.

The military says about 40 percent of the roadside bombs in Iraq are intercepted before they detonate, either because of more frequent patrols or the use of jamming devices. Bomb-detecting vehicles called “Buffaloes,” which have V-shaped hulls and a robotic arm with a camera that can see into hard-to-reach places, also are being used, but to a limited degree.

Sgt. Peter Satele, the gunner on Barnes’ Humvee and who routinely goes out on vehicle recovery missions, said the Level I, factory-armored vehicles are very much a necessity but they are by no means totally safe.

“It all depends on the ammunition they use,” said Satele, who works full-time at the vehicle maintenance facility at Fort Stewart. “I just don’t think the military was ready for what we’re dealing with.”

Since the brigade’s arrival in Iraq in early June, five Humvees have been declared a total loss, including the two that were carrying the Alpha Company soldiers who were killed, said Tadlock, the maintenance manager.

The brigade is starting to use the 88 armored personnel carriers it has for routine patrols. But many of Iraq’s roads are narrow with canals or ditches on both sides. The personnel carriers and the tougher Bradley fighting vehicles are too large to negotiate those roads.

Conway said there are limits on how much armor can be added to Humvees or the slightly larger armored personnel carriers because too much weight affects mobility and maneuverability and shortens the life span of the vehicle.

“If you build a 200,000-pound box, you can’t move in it,” Conway said. “There is an evil enemy out there determined to kill people. You build something, they’ll build something to defeat it.”

Military officials have said the heavy armor protection on Level I and Level II Humvees may have been responsible for fatalities from some rollover accidents and vehicles being driven into ditches.

Satele said some soldiers find the factory-armored vehicles restricting and unfamiliar, especially since the 48th Brigade did most of its training in Humvees without armor.

“It can be hard to get in it,” Satele said. “It can be even harder to get out.”

Doors on the factory-armored Humvees can weigh up to 500 pounds, he said, making it difficult to get out from a ditch or on an incline.

Barnes, however, said he’d take that chance any day. He looked at the “Cadillac” of Humvees and shook his head. “Boy, I’d hate to know I was out there in anything but one of these.”

Staff writer Ron Martz, news researcher Sharon Gaus and news services contributed to this article.

This is one of the better articles/blogs I have seen describing the true armor situation over there. The military has been doing its part, but the bombs have just been getting bigger. When they can take out an M1 Abhrams, a Humvee, no matter how up-armored it is, doesn't stand a chance. But as soon as a Humvee gets hit, the MSM will gleefully slam the Pentagon and Bush for not providing adequate armor. Well, its the best we've got at the moment. Perhaps one of these self righteous leftists can invent a stonger armor faster than the military can.

> When a Georgia soldier questioned Defense Secretary
> Donald Rumsfeld on the armor issue last December in Kuwait,

Most of the credibility leaked out of that article with
the failure to mention that this soldier had no thought
of asking that question until put up to it by a reporter.

Since the cutthroat cult is now fielding IEDs that can
take out an M1A1, perhaps money would provide more return
on investment if spent on UAVs patrolling the roads, and
IED countermeasures.

I really don't think this is a great article. It seems to say the terrorists are staying one step ahead of U.S. forces, and I don't think that's true.

For a better view, I recommend this article posted at The Belmont Club earlier today: The Unstoppable IED.

...14 Marines were killed when an IED exploded under their lightly armored amphibious assault vehicle last week.

I'm not sure this writer knows what he's talking about. From what I read, the Marine AAV was destroyed by triple-stacked anti-tank mines. That's not a new tactic, and it's not an "IED."

Yet when Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year, he did not ride in a Humvee. Instead, military officials put him what is known as a Rhino Runner

A Rhino Runner is a giant bus, not a fighting vehicle. Plenty of military ride these things in the daily shuttle between BIAP and the Green Zone.

For others who are interested, here's a short excerpt:

IEDs have grown from relatively weak and simple devices into sophisticated demolitions weighing several hundred pounds in response to American countermeasures which began with uparmoring vehicles to monitoring patrol routes for disturbances in the roadway. As American countermeasures have improved, so has the IED, but not to the same degree. Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force said that while the incident rate of IED attacks has gone up, the probability of death per attack has declined from 50% in 2003 to about 18% in early 2005. The Iraqi insurgency may be detonating more IEDs than ever but their yield per attack is not what it used to be. USA Today reported: "While IED attacks have increased, U.S. casualties from them have gone down. From April 2004 to April 2005, task force spokesman Dick Bridges said, the number of casualties from IED attacks had decreased 45%."

Excerpted from The Unstoppable IED.

Well, the IED's are getting more powerful and can defeat our armor. But as the article you linked points out, we are perfecting better technology to detect IED's and interfere with the detonation signals. So this article just didn't explain how we are staying that one step ahead! Thanks again for the link.

This is an interesting topic. Thanks for sharing your thoughts here.

The left wants to imagine that IED's are an unstoppable weapon -- they think the only proper response is surrender and appeasement.

But the U.S. military isn't composed of the morons the left imagines -- the military is flexible and tenacious and has a few tricks up its own sleeve.

Low-intensity conflicts tend to take a long time -- look at our fights in the Philippines. But if we fight hard and smart, we'll win on the battlefield -- we always have.

"While IED attacks have increased, U.S. casualties from them have gone down. From April 2004 to April 2005, task force spokesman Dick Bridges said, the number of casualties from IED attacks had decreased 45%."

Eh?

April 2004 - 16 IED Casualities
April 2005 - 20 IED Casualities

The graphed trend in between was constant

Moreover, the trend to date is definitely on the increase.

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