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HMMWV, IEDed(click to view full) Senator Biden [D-DE] took some deserved heat the other day for saying something really stupid, not exactly an uncommon occurrence for a politician. What is uncommon is an effort by a politician that actually makes a difference on the ground, and fulfills a moral calling. Which Senator Biden has also done recently... and so I'd like to cover that road less traveled, instead. What he has done is going to save a number of lives, on the front lines, in both of CENTCOM's theaters of war. It's late, the reasons why it's late have shocked...

Marines to trade in vulnerable Humvees By David Wood The Baltimore Sun WASHINGTON — Marines in heavily armored Humvees are being killed by powerful roadside bombs at such a rate that the Marine Corps intends to replace all its Humvees in Iraq with specialized, blast-resistant armored vehicles, according to senior Marine officers. The Army will continue to rely primarily on armored Humvees, senior Army officers said Wednesday. The decision to scrap the Marines' Humvees in Iraq, after years of trying to protect crews by adding armor plate, was made by Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commander of Marines forces in the...

Sgt. Rene Knox Jr. of New Orleans was driving a heavily armored Humvee on a blackened dirt road near Balad, Iraq, when the vehicle rolled down an embankment and into a canal — killing Knox, two other soldiers and a serviceman trying to rescue them. Three days later, Sgt. Timothy R. Osbey and Spc. Joseph A. Rahaim, National Guardsmen from Magnolia, Miss., drowned under nearly identical circumstances when their Humvee rolled over into a canal. Twelve days later, Sgt. Julio E. Negron and Spc. Lizbeth Robles of Fort Carson, Colo., were killed and two others were injured after their armored...

Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees in Iraq have made the vehicles more likely to roll over and kill or injure soldiers, a newspaper reported. "I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert, told the Dayton Daily News for its Sunday editions. 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 about 70 percent -- were killed when the vehicle rolled,...

Reactions mixed to gunner’s safety suit Cooling system iffy, but face shield gets an A+ By Monte Morin, Stars and StripesMideast edition, Monday, May 8, 2006 Monte Morin / S&S Military police in Mosul, Iraq, have been testing the new Cupola Protective Ensemble since January. The modified bomb disposal suit has already saved three soldiers’ lives, commanders said. Monte Morin / S&S A soldier dons his Cupola Protective Ensemble recently in Mosul, Iraq. Soldiers said they thought the suits looked “goofy” although they provided added  protection against roadside bombs. Monte Morin / S&S A vest soldiers wear beneath their bomb...

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq — Spc. David Norris swivels like a ball-turret gunner in an old bomber as he moves the internal turret of his Armored Security Vehicle to check for prowling insurgents on a main Iraqi road. With a turret that allows gunners to fire while inside the vehicle, three layers of armor and an imposing look, the ASVs also have a distinct psychological effect on those inside and out of the vehicles, soldiers said. The ASV is part of the evolving war-scape of Iraqi roads, which has proven to be a tough battleground for Humvees. Norris, 24, has been...

Set Condition 1 has some info on the contenders: Bushmaster meets the competition in the USAirborne Combat Engineer notes The Army is looking at off-the-shelf vehicles and asks Why not buy an interim replacement for the Humvee?Joe Katzman: Hummer Deathtraps Suck: Take 2UPDATE: I knew I'd seen another good post on the Humvee problem just recently. In an update to his post, Joe K points out Washington Park Prophet's, um, The Humvee Problem.For the record, Murdoc isn't necessarily down on the Humvee. But Murdoc's down on the fact that our military seems to be reacting in slow motion to this...

Over at DID, I note that the US military has just begun fielding a new variant of the HMMWV jeep: the M1151 and M1152. Think of them as Hummer v2.1. The good news is that the new hummers are designed for rapid installation and removal of armor in the field, with minimal tools and support. This greatly simplifies logistics and upgrades, and allows the armor to be removed when it isn't needed so the Hummers will last a little longer (up-armored HMMWV suspensions die quickly due to all the extra weight). The bad news is that despite the armor improvements,...

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.

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...

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...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/20/MNGD8GAJNJ1.DTL

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...

Hurricane Katrina has reduced production of armored vehicles used by troops in Iraq. The plant assembling the ASV (armored security vehicle) is in southern Louisiana, and was flooded by Katrina. About 85 percent of the 1,200 workers are still missing, having been displaced when their homes were destroyed by the hurricane. The Textron plant itself was damaged, but not destroyed. The workers who have returned are cleaning things up and getting ready to resume production by the end of October. The plant has orders for some 900 ASVs. The ASVs, costing about $690,000 each, were originally developed in the 1990s...

  ISHAWAKA, Ind. - Attacks on Humvees in Iraq are reverberating in this small Indiana town, where a production line is gearing up to sate a growing hunger for these vehicles and to save soldiers' lives. The military, though, does not want just any Humvees. Too many soldiers have faced machine-gun or grenade attacks in vehicles clad in fiberglass and aluminum, often with fatal consequences. So the Army, realizing that it had not ordered enough armored vehicles, sent out an urgent call for more. The AM General plant here is doing its best to comply. One recent day, an...

Amid a wave of violence in Iraq, U.S. military commanders there are requesting additional armored vehicles, particularly large ones that can transport a dozen or more passengers, The Army has shipped more than 10,000 armored Humvees to Iraq, but these only can fit four passengers. To move larger numbers of troops, commanders have limited options. One is a gun-truck armor kit that is installed on 5-ton vehicles, with machine guns mounted around the cargo box. The gun-truck kit was dubbed “Hunter Box” after Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who earmarked funds for the project. Researchers at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory...

Commanders have requested to nearly double the number of armored utility vehicles in Iraq to 8,000, in yet another shift in equipment needs to keep pace with an insurgency that continues to strike troops. Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee told of the newest requisition during a recent hourlong interview with The Washington Times. It is the commanders' job in the field to devise the tactics to defeat an enemy made up of foreign terrorists, Saddam Hussein loyalists and criminals freed by the fallen dictator. Back at the Pentagon, it has been Mr. Brownlee's job to make sure they have the...

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...

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 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...