Inside the Ring: Bill Gertz
We’ve obtained a letter from acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee to 60 Minutes. It details how the Army reacted to shortages of body and truck armor.
“As major combat operations concluded in Iraq in May 2003, the security environment was changing,” Mr. Brownlee writes. “Commanders on the ground determined that the up armored High Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) was better suited in most of these situations than the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles that had defeated the Iraqi Army.
“In September of 2003, commanders requested increased numbers of these vehicles ranging from less than 300 initially to over 8,000 today. The Army moved aggressively to address these new requirements, accelerating the production of up armored HMMWVs from 15 vehicles per month in May 2003 to the current rate of 450 vehicles per month.
“Over 5,000 up armored HMMWVs have already arrived in the theater with the remainder expected by March 2005. Additionally, by December 2003 the Army accelerated production of add-on armor kits for its wheeled vehicles in the theater of operations and to date has produced almost 9,300 kits.
“By January 2004, the Army provided enough Interceptor Body Armor including Small Arms Protective Inserts (SAPI) to the theater sufficient to equip every soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of September 2004, the Army has purchased more than 400,000 sets of Interceptor Body Armor.”
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1 response so far ↓
1 Anonymous MSgt // Jan 11, 2006 at
Well, its 2006 and HMMWVs still svck.
Hanging armor on a light truck at great cost is absurd when thousands of superb M113 APCs lie in depot storage because the Army is infatuated with inferior wheeled machines. Plenty of M113s serv in Iraq and have an excellent safety and combat record, but are denied publicity.
Hooray for the Stryker and Hummer. Or not.
Let’s try a test or two:
Start on one side of a river or canal and swim all three across…. Ooops! Only M113s swim.
Another:
Let’s play a “Blackhawk Down” scenario and drive all three across street barricades of wreckage.
The vehicles with rubber tires lose here too.
The Israelis figured this out long ago, and use their M113s very effectively in urban combat. They didn’t opt to buy Strykers…