Free Republic

Engineer Paul Green wheels his company's new fully armored combat vehicle over the clay roads and muddy streambeds of the South Carolina backcountry, guns the engine and races over one hill and then the next. "This is designed to be what we thought would be a step up from the Humvee," he shouts as he shifts gears. "This vehicle was never designed to be a direct replacement for the current armored Humvee." But the prototype -- christened the MUV-R (Mine-protected Utility Vehicle/Rapid Deployable) by its manufacturer, Charleston, S.C.-based Force Protection, Inc. -- may well be.

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version December 21, 2005, 8:05 a.m. The “Ultimate Betrayal”? Humvee realities. By W. Thomas Smith Jr. Why is it taking so long to design, develop, produce, and deploy — in adequate numbers — a troop-transporting armored vehicle that would replace the up-armored Humvee in Iraq? I've been asked that question time and again, not by soldiers and Marines who ride in Humvees daily, but by fellow journalists, many of whom have logged time in Iraq or Afghanistan. One reporter said to me it was "criminal negligence" on the part of the...

Why is it taking so long to design, develop, produce, and deploy — in adequate numbers — a troop-transporting armored vehicle that would replace the up-armored Humvee in Iraq? I've been asked that question time and again, not by soldiers and Marines who ride in Humvees daily, but by fellow journalists, many of whom have logged time in Iraq or Afghanistan. One reporter said to me it was "criminal negligence" on the part of the White House and the Defense Department. Another referred to it as "the ultimate betrayal" of our soldiers. Despite their time in country, both reporters are...

Berman was supposed to be part of the Blackwater team that was in Fallujah on that ill-fated day. But a last minute schedule change placed him in the south of Iraq at Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr. On the highway to Baghdad the following day, Berman received the phone call: A Blackwater detail had been hit. Four men were dead.

LANCASTER - By his junior year in high school, Jasen Watts already knew he wanted to become a soldier. He joined the National Guard on early enlistment and went straight to basic training. That was 2001. The Highland High graduate fulfilled his ambition and took one of the toughest soldier paths. The Army military job code is "Eleven Bravo" - an infantry grunt, a foot soldier. On Sept. 29, 2005, the foot soldier's legs were shattered in Baghdad when an IED (improvised explosive device) exploded under the Humvee he was driving on a patrol out of Camp Falcon. "It was...

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. (Nov. 3, 2005) -- The Marine Corps is searching for a larger, more capable combat transport to replace the Humvee. The Fires and Maneuver Integration Division of Marine Corps Combat Development Command is outlining the requirements for its future vehicle, dubbed the Combat Tactical Vehicle, with the goal of fielding the first CTVs in 2011. Kevin M. McConnell, deputy director of the Fires and Maneuver Integration Division, said the Humvee, while a battle-proven tactical vehicle, is beginning to show its limitations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The Humvee A2 is a great vehicle, [but] it has...

Although the M1114, armored, version of the hummer gets a lot of publicity because of its popularity among troops in Iraq, the 5.5 ton vehicle has been around for some ten years. Originally intended for peacekeeping operations, it was successfully used in the Balkans during the 1990s. The M1114 was based on a earlier version, that had served in the 1991 campaign in Kuwait. The M1114 is basically an armored car, with a crew of four and a payload of one ton (plus two tons that can be towed.) A 190 horsepower engine gives it a top speed of 80...

Improving Survivability and Mobility: Concept Vehicle Illustrating New Options for Military Combat Vehicles to be Unveiled A concept vehicle designed to illustrate potential technology options for improving survivability and mobility in future military combat vehicles will be shown publicly for the first time Sept. 13-15 at a military technology meeting in Virginia. The ULTRA armored patrol vehicle is a research project funded by the Office of Naval Research and conducted by the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The project's goal was to develop a concept vehicle that illustrates design and technology options for increased survivablity and mobility for future vehicles....

By W. Thomas Smith Jr. SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published August 29, 2005 COLUMBIA, S.C. -- When U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Keith Kempke returns to Iraq to find and destroy land mines and improvised explosive devices, he'll be supported by a growing fleet of new armored vehicles such as the Buffalo and the Cougar. He's already seen them in action.

AFTER CRISSCROSSING Fallujah by foot and Humvee in May, I reported on tremendous progress being made to restore "the city we had to destroy to save." Actually, fighting left most of the town unscathed; most damage was from three decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein. And rebuilding began almost immediately. Good news from Iraq rarely gets a single story compared to the Texas stake-out that generates many thousands on a war protesters. Yet it occurs nonetheless.

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Aug. 18, 2005) -- To any casual observer visiting the F-11A pistol and battlesight zero range here, 1st Lt. Charles E. Hayter, a 26-year-old native of Billings, Mont., looks like any run-of-the-mill platoon commander… standing, watching over his Marines as they zero their rifles before they deploy to Iraq. A closer examination might reveal otherwise, but it would have to be a real close observation. The only telltale sign would be the tightness of one boot over the other and it’s rigid appearance, because inside that boot exists a prosthetic. Hayter, platoon commander for...

Animals go where Humvees don't dare KANDAGAL, Afghanistan—Four-wheel-drive Humvees are so limiting in rugged mountains with few roads that a battalion of U.S. marines has recruited a centuries-old Afghan village transport alternative — donkeys. About 30 have been rented from local farmers to haul food and bottled water to hundreds of Afghan and American troops on a two-week operation to battle militants deep in remote mountains in eastern Kunar province. "This is the best way for us to resupply our troops there," said Lt.-Col. Jim Donnellan, commander of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, based in Hawaii. "It's also much cheaper...

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...

Local Iraqi citizens came to the aid of a Task Force Baghdad unit whose humvee got mired down in a ditch June 27. Soldiers with Headquarters and Headquarters Company 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was traveling at a low rate of speed along a road when the passenger front tire violently lurched to the right and dropped as the crumbling highway gave way to the weight of the humvee. Since the vehicle was moving slowly, there were no injuries. An Iraqi citizen stopped to give a helping hand to the stuck Soldiers. At the same time, a boom...

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee blasted Marine Corps brass Tuesday for long delays in providing makeshift armor for the undercarriages of Humvees used by Marines in Iraq. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said he is frustrated and furious that the underarmor was not made available until this month, even though the committee has been demanding it since February and the threat of roadside bombs has been apparent since last year. “While you were waiting for the fancier stuff to arrive … they could have been putting this steel on and saving some lives,” he told Marine...

Washington, DC, May. 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. military needs a new class of tactical vehicles specifically designed to withstand large roadside and car bombs, military officials told Congress Thursday. As the insurgency has matured in Iraq, so has its ability to piece together extremely powerful bombs that no amount of additional armor plating can stop without overtaxing the standard chassis, officials told the House Armed Services Committee. Humvees have been loaded with as much armor as they can carry. "We are at the 98-percent point. We can't put any more armor on these things," said Marine Brig. Gen. William...

A USA Today Pentagon correspondent, Tom Squitieri, resigned under pressure today after the paper learned he had lifted quotes from another newspaper for a front-page story and used several other quotes, without attribution, that were cut during the editing process. In a March 28 piece on the Army falling behind in ordering armored Humvees for Iraq, Squitieri quoted Brian Hart of Bedford, Mass., whose son was killed in the war. The same quote appeared, word for word, in the Indianapolis Star in May 2004: "My son called me the week before he was killed. He said they were getting shot...

The U.S. Navy has directed roughly $28 million to support a "Manhattan-like" project to defend military personnel against improvised explosive devices (IED), including realigning 10% of the baseline budget, and 75 scientists, from the Office of Naval Research, the chief of naval research said March 24.Rear Adm. Jay Cohen told the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space 2005 exposition in Washington that $15 million in fiscal 2005 ONR resources have been devoted to counter-IED research and development, along with another $12 million elsewhere in the Navy going to fund grants to universities and laboratories.Specific focus areas include robots, IED electronic countermeasures, X-ray systems...

The Army is baffled by a recent spate of vehicle accidents in Iraq - many of them rollovers involving armored Humvees - that have claimed more than a dozen lives this year. One key concern: Soldiers lack the skills to handle the heavier Humvees and are losing control as they speed through ambush areas before insurgents detonate roadside bombs. "An individual feels that if he goes faster he can avoid that threat," says Lt. Col. Michael Tarutani, an Army official tracking the accidents. "But now he's exceeded, first, maybe his capabilities, and then maybe the speed for those conditions." In...

Current model is out of date for today's warfare. The new transport will be more drivable, efficient. The Humvee is not cutting it. Designed for a different era and a different kind of war, the military's beleaguered flagship truck is starting to look like the Edsel of Iraq. Much of the problem was lack of foresight. The Humvee comes in an armored version, but military leaders initially saw little need for it, and the Bush administration did not bet on a prolonged insurgency in Iraq.Now that roadside bombs have become a weapon of choice, every Humvee rolling off the line...