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See the following articles: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_10.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/203200_armor10.html http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m998.htm From those articles and webpages, here's some facts: 19,400 Humvees in Iraq 5,900 were shipped from factory with armor 9,000 upgraded with kits in theater TODAY 77% of Humvees in Iraq are armored Unarmored Humvees aren't supposeed to go off base. Unarmored Humvees travel between bases on a flatbed truck. Of 9,386 armor kits shipped to Iraq, 9,143 have been installed. That's 97% installed, only 3% to go. There are at least 16 varients of the Humvee: M998 cargo/troop carrier without winch M1038 cargo/troop carrier with winch M966 TOW missile carrier, basic armor,...

Up-Armored Vehicle Effort Progressing Full Steam Ahead By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2004 — The assembly lines are moving 24/7 to keep up with the demand for up-armored vehicles in Iraq and for conversion kits to add extra protection to vehicles already there. Gary Motsek, director of support operations for the U.S. Army Materiel Command, said the effort to provide increased vehicle protection against grenades, improvised explosive devices and small-arms fire is progressing fast and furiously as demand continues to increase. Nearly 5,100 up-armored Humvees have been delivered to Army and Marine Corps units in...

Add-on armor provides added protection to 2nd BCT Soldiers Staff Sgt. Leonard Bergantzel, a track mechanic for the 286th Ordnance Company, uses a blow torch to fabricate a piece of side armor inside the maintenance support team's workshop on Kirkuk Air Base Aug. 18. The side armor will be used to protect Soldiers situated in the rear of cargo HMMWVs. (Photo by Spc. Sean Kimmons, 25th ID (L) PAO) KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq – In order to prevent injuries or deaths due to small arms fire and improvised explosive devices, add-on armor kits are being installed onto many 2nd...

Friday, August 20, 2004 2nd ID vehicles are upgraded to survive rough traveling in Iraq By Seth Robson, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Friday, August 20, 2004 Seth Robson / S&S A 2nd Infantry Division Humvee from South Korea has new armored doors and windows and an air conditioner unit installed at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. Seth Robson / S&S Pfc. Mark Greene of the 699th Maintenance Company, 21, of North Carolina works on an armored door at the Camp Buehring "Mad Max" shop. CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait — Soft-shelled 2nd Infantry Division vehicles are getting a Middle East makeover that includes armor,...

NORRISTOWN - Earlier this month, a doctor at Wills Eye Hospital, in Philadelphia, picked tiny bits of shrapnel out of Sgt. Matthew Crawford's left eye with a needle and tweezers. Four pieces were removed the first day; three more a few days later.For now, the 24-year-old Marine reservist, who was wounded in an explosion in Iraq, can't focus his injured eye to read even the largest "E" on an eye chart. As the Humvee carrying Crawford and four other Marines passed a roadside fruit stand in Baghdad on June 29, an improvised bomb blew up. Crawford was sitting in the...

Standing on a high bridge over a railroad track northwest of Baghdad at dusk, cavalry scout Capt. Will Hickok VI scans the horizon, looking for insurgents planting bombs or preparing mortar and rocket attacks. "This is what I like, just scouting," said Hickok, of Dillsburg, Pa. "Sitting out here, spying, watching out, it's relaxing ... it's almost like cowboys and Indians." A distant descendant of Wild Bill Hickok, the 33-year-old Army officer commands an elite unit that also traces its ancestors to the 19th century, using traditions of speed and stealth to seek out the enemy and ambush them. Instead...

CAMP HURRICANE POINT, Iraq(June 29, 2004) -- Gunnery Sgt. Paul L. Jones knows firsthand the damage improvised explosive devices can cause to personnel and vehicles alike. Jones, motor transportation chief with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, said the battalion has already lost too many Marines and quite a few vehicles because of the homemade explosives set up by anti-Iraqi fighters. Razor-sharp shrapnel and other debris from IEDs can slice through the bodies of standard humvees, killing or maiming passengers and causing severe damage to the vehicles' working parts. The battalion recently received two variants of "uparmored humvees" to reduce the...

June 28, 2004: The Israeli answer to armored hummers is the German Dingo. This vehicle is actually a standard commercial Mercedes-Benz UNIMOG 4 x 4 truck with an armored body. The vehicle weighs 4.4 tons and normally carries a driver and four passengers (although as many as seven people can squeeze in). It's roughly similar in size and capability to an armored hummer. Israel is buying a hundred of the Dingos. The vehicles will be used for patrolling hostile areas, where small arms fire and roadside bombs may be encountered. The German army has also bought 56 Dingos.

The U.S. Army fielded the HMMWV (or “Humvee,” as we call it) in 1983. At that time, the Humvee represented the pinnacle of automotive technology. Over the last 21 years however, the Humvee has begun to grow long in the tooth. In 1991 the Army began fielding the M998A2 model, which addressed some of the concerns voiced by units after Operation Desert Storm. The A2 version of the M998 accounts for less than half of the Humvee fleet however, and despite efforts in the mid 1990’s to rebuild the aging fleet, cost ultimately precluded the proposals execution (see a related...

PITTSFIELD -- Employees of a firm that produces body armor for American soldiers are doing important work in defense of the country, U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said during a visit to the company yesterday. Kennedy, a leading Democratic critic of the war in Iraq, visited Protech Armored Products, which in the last year has grown substantially to fill $40 million in orders from the Pentagon for protective armor plates used by soldiers as inserts. He stayed for more than an hour, meeting privately with company officials, touring the plant and then addressing employees. "It's an honor to be here,...

MAIN SUPPLY ROUTE TAMPA, Iraq — The radio inside Sgt. Jim Tomlinson’s armored Humvee chatters out details of a firefight along the road up ahead. The infantryman calls to Spc. Stephen Lord, the machine gunner up top, to be alert. “A unit is taking small arms fire, engaging the enemy on both sides,” Tomlinson yells. “51 Alpha.” Lord knows what that means. Tomlinson’s words, 51 Alpha, refer to an overpass along the highway just inside Baghdad’s North End. A roadside bomb that insurgents planted there recently earned Lord a Purple Heart when it exploded above the 19-year-old generator mechanic from...

In Iraq, a Humvee – the modern military's jeep – is involved in an enemy action or a serious fender bender or rollover almost daily. Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz's command has experienced 13 Humvee rollovers, resulting in 17 of his soldiers dying. "Nine of the deaths occurred in the last 90 days," he says. Gen. Metz says that most rollovers occur when "the driver has lost control of the vehicle." In a letter to his unit, he summed up other causes, such as "aggressive driving, lack of situational awareness, rough terrain, poor /limited visibility, adverse traffic conditions, improvised configurations...

BAGHDAD — The ideal, soldiers say, is that no one in Iraq should have to go outside the wire in anything less than M-1114 factory up-armored Humvee. The reality is, little more than 20 percent of Humvees in Iraq are armored, and some soldiers trust their survival to a few sandbags and steel sheets. Until the ideal is attainable, Master Sgt. Dennis P. Lichtenberg is striving to create the best-protected Humvees short of an M-1114. Lichtenberg has invented a system he calls “The Lick Kit,” a play on his nickname “Lick,” pinned on by fellow reservists from the Pensacola, Fla.-based...

<p>The U.S. Central Command may request ``several thousand'' more heavily armored Humvee transports for Iraq operations to help minimize growing casualties from snipers and roadside bombs, according to Army and Pentagon officials.</p> <p>The extra vehicles would be in addition to the roughly 4,400 so-called ``Up-Armored'' Humvees the Army already deemed necessary, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told the House Armed Services Committee May 21.</p>

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq — When Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Summers arrived last fall, the Army knew he’d be able save lives. The 7th Transportation Battalion asked the ship hull technician to attach makeshift steel plates to trucks and Humvees. Poorly protected vehicles had been coming under fire every time they left this central logisitics hub for points all over Iraq. Many of the vehicles did not have the extra protection of “armor-up” kits. And the Army didn’t have enough to go around. “I’m a welder by trade,” said Summers, a 33-year-old Naval reservist from Frisco, Calif. “When I got...

A Vancouver, Wash.-based company is supplying Humvee armor kits for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Army Humvees will be the first military vehicles outfitted with a peel-and-stick armoring system manufactured by Armor Systems International. ASI representatives are now at a U.S. military base, where they will load 15 Aztik 100 armor kits onto a cargo plane bound for troops in Kandahar early next week. The Army's Rapid Equipping Force ordered the Aztik armor kits in December for use in Iraq but determined a greater need for these resources in Afghanistan. "We're excited to demonstrate the effectiveness and uniqueness of our...

May 22, 2004: The U.S. Department of Defense is going through a rather extreme reorganization at the moment. It’s much more extensive than most people realize. A side effect of this is increased hostility towards current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But not because of disagreements over Iraq or the war on terror, but because these reforms threaten defense spending in many Congressional districts, and if that money goes away, it could mean lost elections for the incumbents. Rumsfeld wants to speed up the procurement (which can now take well over a decade) process and make be more responsive to...

. . there are about 1,400 vehicles that still need armor plating in Iraq, and although production is ramping up, the military can turn out only enough armor kits for about 220 to 225 vehicles a month. At that rate it will take six months to meet the military's combat needs. "It's not a matter of resources; it's a matter of how fast can we build these things and get them over here," he said. You wouldn't know this from the news coverage following Thursday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The hearing was convened to discuss the administration's request for...

Something about Sadr City was not quite right. An hour earlier, there had been the usual throngs of children running out to wave at American soldiers. But as the four Humvees and two Bradley fighting vehicles of the Iron Deuce Platoon of Warrior Company drove out from Camp Eagle the main streets were empty apart from a tethered donkey and a few wandering goats. Small knots of men peered from alleyways. A lone figure appeared from a rooftop and then vanished. "It's kind of quiet around here," said Specialist Daniel Brown, 21, driving Humvee Alpha Three Six. The Americans and...

WAR COMPLAINT: Lack of preparation, protection may have cost life and limb, Portage soldier says.BY JERRY DAVICHTimes Staff WriterU.S. military leaders failed their soldiers with inadequate combat equipment, vehicles, leadership and training during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a local soldier believes. Poor planning from day one may have cost American lives and limbs, wrote Army Spc. Christopher Heldt, 24, from his position at the Baghdad International Airport. "Many soldiers have been riding in unprotected HUMMVs for over a year, all the while roadside explosive devices have been the biggest threat we face... on the most dangerous streets in the world," e-mailed...