Posted on 06/12/2006 9:01:28 AM PDT by presidio9
Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees, intended to protect U.S. troops, have made the vehicles more likely to roll over, killing and injuring soldiers in Iraq, a newspaper reported.
"I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.
Since the start of the war, Congress and the Army have spent tens of millions of dollars on armor for the Humvee fleet in Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.
That armor much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati has shielded soldiers from harm.
But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.
An analysis of the Army's ground accident database, which includes records from March 2003 through November 2005, found that 60 of the 85 soldiers who died in Humvee accidents in Iraq or 70 percent were killed when the vehicle rolled, the newspaper reported. Of the 337 injuries, 149 occurred in rollovers.
"The whole thing is a formula for disaster," said Badenoch, who is working with the military to design a lighter-armored vehicle to replace the Humvee.
Army spokesman John Boyce Jr. told The Associated Press on Sunday that the military takes the issue seriously and continues to provide soldiers with added training on the armored Humvee.
The Army also made safety upgrades to the vehicle, including improved seat restraint belts and a fire suppression system for the crew, he said.
There are more than 25,300 armored Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.
When Humvees do roll, the most vulnerable passenger is the gunner, the soldier who operates the weapon mounted in the vehicle's top.
Gunners were killed in at least 27 of the 93 fatal Humvee accidents since 2001, according to the newspaper's analysis.
There. Fixed it.
Oh, wait. Darnit, I just said exactly the same thing you did. So sorry!
Ah, the irony.
The humvee was adopted as a jeep replacement (which had
no armor whatsoever), and one of the main jeep problems
was roll-overs.
Up-armoring humvees needs to be scaled down. What the
troops need is a proper APC, like Stryker, for this role.
The problem isnot the armor, the problem is that no one thought to tell these guys, most of whome are driving vehicles for the first time fresh out of high-school, that they have to drive them differently.
It's just like the housewife who trades in here Honda Accord for an SUV and does'nt change her driving style to match the vehicle. Suddenly "SUVs are killing people!"
The problem here is the same, with the added hazard that they are driving the same vehicle, which now has entirely different handling characteristics. This is a failure of the chain of command if drivers have been handed these vehicles without some kind of instruction.
The old jeep used to have a bad roll-over problem, which is one of the many reasons the Army pushed for the switch to a new vehicle. They need to break out those old FMs and training films.
The humvee is designed to be driven hard and fast off-road. It is otherwise a stable vehicle. The extra side and turret armor is needed, but not only changes center of gravity, but causes the springs and shocks to bottom out when cornering if they have not been stiffened. The combination is dangerous if the driver doesn't know what they are doing, especially when they come under fire.
It's the age old trade off. "speed and manueverability" vs. "armored protection".
I've taught many soldiers how to drive military vehicles. The problem is not the vehicle, it's the training. But you can be rest assured that the issue is being addressed and will be soon corrected, if it hasn't been already.
"call me ignorant but aren't Humvees designed to be fast and lightweight?"
For an off-road vehicle using questionable and dirty fuel, yes. For a street vehicle, no.
The streets in Bagdad are OK. The fuel is good.
Get rid of the clunky tires, change the gear ratios, and put the after-market supercharger sold for the HV, and you'd be in business.
All these parts exist to make the HV more useable in the civilian world.
Absolutely.
To all investors out there, check out FRPT.OB (Force Protection). The military is currently looking to replace the HUMVEE and FRPT has a great chance of securing orders. The company also has mine protection vehicles currently in the battlefield that with 0 casualties when struck by IEDs.
www.forceprotection.net
Also, give them nitrous for quick get~away.
Btw ~ Our fuel is bad now, has anyone else noticed the effect of ethanol diluting our gasoline lately.
Yuk, I wish we had the choice to select real actual gasoline.
The only drawback is that it only turns left
...and when they get to a road course they need to switch the drivers out...
It's also an example of a "one-size-fits-all" strategy. A better way to have gone about it would have been to up-armor a certain percentage of Hummers & make them the modern-day equivalent of the Vietnam "Gun Truck". Give those drivers & gunners special training & use them as convoy protection, leaving the rest of the Hummers to operate more-or-less as before. Less wear 'n tear on the overall fleet, and fewer accidents from mishandling the modified "Gun Hummers".
Another solution might have been to ship in a bunch of Marine LAV's (as opposed to Strykers) or still another would be to up-armor some High-mobility trucks. Let them fill the convoy protection role. Guaranteed that the enemy troop with the RPG isn't going to waste a shot or reveal himself shooting at a HumV when he's going to get rundown/gunned-down by a much more serious combat vehicle.
One way to avoid roadside bombs is to AVOID the road!!! Maybe we should be ressurecting the ACAV version of the M113 instead of armoring wheeled vehicles as an after-thought. Seems to me that tracked vehicles are for fighting, wheels are for going to the grocery. The Stryker is another topheavy, easy to roll and miserably easy to penetrate wheeled vehicle. Only wheeled combat vehicle that made sense, and only in a French sort of way, was the Panhard. It had drivers facing both ways so it could retreat as fast as it advanced.............
"One way to avoid roadside bombs is to AVOID the road!!!"
Difficult, if not impossible, in an urban area, unless one plans on knocking down houses all the time.
Kind of incompatible with the "hearts & mind" approach.
Not to mention other tactical problems associated with that wondrous 17+ second 0-50 accelleration...
mark for later read.
Mark to read later.
Thank you...... either that or the M-113 trac.
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