By I fail to see what the shocking revelation is with this latest article about Humvee armor:
Army and Marine Corps officials knew nearly a decade before the invasion of Iraq that its workhorse Humvee vehicle was a “deathtrap” even with armor added to protect it against roadside bombs, USA Today reported Wednesday.
The Pentagon’s inspector general wrote that reports distributed throughout the Army and Marine Corps after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the Somalia conflict in 1994 urged the development of armored vehicles to avoid the devastating effects of roadside bombs and land mines, but the Pentagon failed to act, according to USA Today.
The conclusions of the 1991 and 1994 reports were not included in the one-page summary of the inspector general’s findings released in December, the paper wrote, noting that the inspector general’s full report was later posted on a Web site by the Center for Public Integrity, a government watchdog group.
Troops added makeshift armor to their Humvees and the Pentagon rushed kits to retrofit the vehicles with better protections after the threat from roadside bombs escalated in 2003 and 2004, according to the report. Even so, retrofitted Humvees remained vulnerable to improvised explosive devices, because of the vehicle’s “flat bottom, low weight, low ground clearance and aluminum body,” the inspector general found.
The report distributed throughout the Army and Marine Corps in 1994 found that a Humvee “even with a mine-protection retrofit kit developed for Somalia remained a deathtrap in the event of an anti-tank mine detonation,” USA Today reported. [Stars & Stripes]
Just a word of advice for USA Today, anti-tank mines are used to take out tanks, what chance would a Humvee have against one? Of course a Humvee would be a “deathtrap” no matter how much armor you put on it.
Plus the post-Gulf War time frame is when the Pentagon faced massive budget cuts and was in no position to equip the entire force with mine resistant vehicles without the justification for them. Remember the Cold War was over and all the talk of a “Peace Dividend“?
So who is this Center for Public Integrity that published the Pentagon report on their webpage trying to create some kind of scandle? Well as I have posted before, the CPI is one of the many left wing groups that have received millions of dollars in funding from radical leftist billionaire George Soros.
2:50 am on February 5th, 2009 1
I’d like to add that the Humvee offers zero nuclear blast protection. This is a huge scandal. That is why we need to embrace the one soldier Army concept and put him/her into a Bolo. Of course once the Army has one, the Marines will cry for one and the Air Force will demand control of its anti-aircraft/interstellar spaceship weapon systems.
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7:20 am on February 5th, 2009 2
Hamilton funny, don’t give CPI or the USA Today any ideas or they will be publishing that bit of information as their next big expose’.
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8:16 am on February 5th, 2009 3
If you look at Cold War doctrine, to include even light cavalry scout manuals, the HMMWV was never meant to be used in the armored car role as it is today.
Can you imagine an up-armored Jeep, CUCV, or Gamma Goat?
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3:47 pm on February 5th, 2009 4
Why is this news? I couldn’t care any less about something like this and I’m sure I’m not alone.
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3:49 pm on February 5th, 2009 5
It is a sign of the times that people write Humvee. Sad, just sad.
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4:59 pm on February 5th, 2009 6
I am just rewriting the way it is written in the article. Also the point I am trying to make is this is not news, but a leftist group receiving money from George Soros is trying to make this an issue to bash the Pentagon with.
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