[Qatar-6]

Armored Humvees in my opinion are not the answer.

Look, you can only put so much armor on a Hummer frame, even a reinforced one.

Most anti tank rockets can still penetrate one

Give you some protection against a small mine/IED. Something the size of an anti-tank mine will still total one and cause 100% crew casualties.

Restricts your field of vision and your ability to fire from the vehicle terribly (unless you're in the gunners position, in which case you're exposed and out of the armor, some new gunshields too. But nothing as good as the old TC position in an ACAV).

Hummers are loud on the inside, get inside a armored hummer and you cant hear

Just me? I take the opposite approach.

All doors and roofs off of Hummers

Seats rearranged to face out in different directions

Everyone with a sector of observation and a long gun, no more 9mm pistols as a primary weapon.

Reinforce the bottom with Kevlar and sandbag the floor in the passanger compartment to protect agains mines/IEDs but that's it.

No seatbelts, all they do is keep you in the vehicle to take the full blast of a mine/IED and prevent you from exiting in a hurry while you are in contact

Vehicles should be open with troops facing out able to use all their senses

Armored Hummers are a defensive reaction and they have their place.

Giving everyone an armored Hummer isolates you from what's going on. Might as well be in a Bradley

Thems my thoughts

Al the best

Qatar-6

[Voice in your head]

Thank you. I have tried explaining this in the past, but people just thank me for the information and go on griping. What you described is exactly how we did it and it worked.

[SLB]

Your #161 is the best logic I have seen on FR in a long time. The M151's came close to providing that until the Army decided to put ROPS on them. Required everyone to wear a seatbelt. Just try to get untangled from the LBE web gear and un-ass the vehicle in a firefight. Mission impossible, but without the ROPS and no seatbelts, put sandbags on the floors and fenders and there was at least a psychological effect that you might survive a small mine.

[VOA]

Your approach to the situation reminds me of how (IIRC) one of the American generals (Bradley?)
spent a day in a funk over the way American armor was getting creamed trying
to get through the "hedgerows" of France...
until he decided that the current approach of sending the tanks in, with "boots on the ground"
following behind...
things should be tried in the reverse order.

Sometimes what sounds wrong at first blush is just about the best fix (and even
then, that may be just for the short-term, until something better comes along)

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Qatar-6, you raise excellent points that need to be considered. Force protection has become a higher priority than mobility and nontechnical situational awareness. I am concerned that a perception is developing that it is cruel and unusual punishment to mount a soldier in an unarmored vehicle.

Please comment on Unfit for Combat Humvees need armor to give them a fighting chance