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Armored Humvees

Mar-19-2004 » Filed Under: General Military

The Wall Street Journal has a front-page article today examining the the lack of armored Humvees in the Army today. The Stryker vehicle is briefly mentioned. The link below will expire in seven days, so if you want to read the article, do it soon.

[Link to Full Article]
"Cold-War Thinking Prevented Vital Vehicle From Reaching Iraq"
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, the Army began producing an armored Humvee capable of providing protection from many roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

Like most soldiers in Iraq, Capt. Cameron Birge hasn't set foot in one of those vehicles. Instead, he leads convoys through one of the country's most violent regions in a Humvee -- the modern successor to the Jeep -- with a sheet-metal skin that can't even stop bullets from a small-caliber handgun. To shield himself, Capt. Birge removed his Humvee's canvas doors and welded on slabs of scrap metal. He spread Kevlar blankets over the seats and stacked sandbags on the floor.

On the eve of the war in Iraq, just 2% of the Army's world-wide fleet of 110,000 Humvees were armored, and the Army was planning to cut back its purchases. As late as last May, the Army saw little need for the armored Humvee, saying it needed only 235 of them in Iraq. Only in October, with its soldiers under daily attack, did the Army decide it needed 3,100 armored Humvees. Today, the requirement stands at 4,500 and climbing -- a number the Army doesn't expect to hit in Iraq until late this summer or early fall.

The Army's failure to produce more of the vehicles, a hot topic among soldiers in Iraq, is slowly becoming an issue among lawmakers. A look at why the armored-Humvee program has struggled to gain acceptance shows flaws in the Army's vision over the past decade of how future wars would be fought. Even as the armored Humvee proved itself in small conflicts around the globe, the Army failed to buy more because it was focused on preparing for major wars with other large armies -- rather than low-end guerilla conflicts.

(via Phil Carter, who has more analysis of the problem at his site)


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