Armor shell games & body bags

Corruption and /or incompetence in government contracting goes as far back as records are kept and if history tells us anything of these situations, it is that eternal vigilance is simply an integral part of the cost of purchasing goods and services.

The subject is modern armor for our troops – something that has been in short supply for a while now and has become increasingly valuable in tactical, political and financial terms. For decades, there has been an increasing trend in the military to provide protection to people on the pointy end of our spear via body armor and vehicle armor.

With the advent of a guerrilla-style campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military purchasing planners once again have been overcome with an excess of reality as the number of people they envisioned having the tactical need for armor has undergone an exponential upward shift – kind of like today's pressing need for ammunition – as five years ago when today's ammo and armor acquisitions were laid out under Clinton's watch, the possibility of a war was simply not factored in. How silly, they thought – “We” don't “do” wars.

So, today, the movers and shooters in the military have to husband what protective materials they get most carefully and, in fact, they are doing as good a job as could possibly be expected, given what they have work with. However, the unstated cost of this has been the stripping of armor and armor products from the rest of the Army. What this does is place any Army units deployed to a new combat area in the near term to be at risk for significantly higher casualty rates because of the lack of armor.

But this is not true at the industrial, testing and acquisition part of the military logistics chain. A brief examination of what we use in the field, and why, is in order here.

A number of years ago, we adopted an armored version of the HUMVEE, the M-1114 and thought to provide them to units we thought could make good use of them – mostly military police units. But, as happens in war, we found that some gear is far more useful due to the changes in enemy tactics we have adapted to. There is also the fact that the M-1114 is one very expensive item, having had to be redesigned, mechanically upgraded and strengthened almost from the ground up because its armor is so heavy.

Overloading a vehicle causes it to break down much more frequently, as well as diminish its combat usefulness, as less equipment and troops can be carried in each one. In a recent presentation on an internal analysis of vehicle and equipment morbidity in Iraq, the Army cites overall weight and environmental conditions as the significant factors in a widespread failure to maintain our vehicles in operational condition.

Our always-adaptable troops have taken to putting many different types of field-expedient armor on the composite-framed standard HUMVEE, but at a very substantial weight penalty and with variable effectiveness in preventing casualties. The reason they have done this is because the present armor kits (that don't always fit the tactical needs) in the inventory are prohibitively expensive and in very short supply.

These last two items go hand in hand – price and availability. Because of the price, the military simply cannot afford to buy many of these items – this is just the reality of budgets and it affects the industrial base as fewer potential orders means a lack of business investment in output capacity. But this view assumes the technology and its costs are stable – a very major assumption.

Take for instance the very expensive "SAPI" ceramic body-armor inserts that have been in desperately short supply. The Army will be almost up to supplying the needs in combat areas this month (if suppliers meet their deadlines, but none of them are). But as the Army leadership is most carefully prioritizing who gets them, the flipside is that very few of our units not in an active combat area have them and no protective gear will go back with units as they rotate out of theater. So we are still in a shortage situation overall and therefore can expect an increased casualty rate in any combat-exposed units that are deployed to another hot spot.

But why is this? One answer lies within the community that develops the standards for items that the military buys. In the case of body armor, it has been said in industry circles that the size tolerances for the ceramic plates are "tighter" than currently used production technology can routinely meet. From an engineering standpoint, it is projected that this is the result of trying to conserve expensive component materials, but has created vastly increased expenses from size-rejected inserts coming off the production line.

Companies making them must charge for this, resulting in a far higher per accepted-unit cost. In an effort to mitigate this waste, companies have taken to grinding down the edges to meet the tight specifications, but in doing so, this can create micro-cracking of the ceramic material's matrix that could cause it to fail if hit by a bullet along its periphery ... but at least it is now within the contract size specs. Currently, only one company has achieved a production backlog of just 3,000 units, but that is far better than the performance of its peers.

Nonetheless, one of the hurdles that any product sold to the military must pass is performance testing and, for the ballistic armor sold to the Army, that means the testing center in Aberdeen, Md. There are a number of penetration standards existent within the industry, such as from Underwriters Laboratory, the National Institute of Justice, law enforcement and corrections. But while these are good enough for the CIA and the FBI, the Army requires companies to go through Aberdeen's Test Center so that items may be tested under simulated field conditions and so as to prevent any tampering with test results in aid of a fraud against the government.

Funding is always a key issue in discussions of this type and this is no exception within the zero-sum scenario. Even callously withholding the human costs from consideration, casualties still cost a lot of money. If you can reduce the number of casualties, it follows that you can spend that money elsewhere to good effect.

Since Sept. 11, suppliers of military-related products and services have enjoyed resurgence of demand, and established armor suppliers have reaped the financial benefits. Because of the increased level of demand there have been new companies entering the marketplace with innovative products that are more cost effective than those already in the inventory. The situation becomes even more fluid when you consider that the present suppliers do not have the manufacturing capacity to supply all the potential orders even if the improvements in technology and new cost efficiencies were not present.

Given the high level of overall expenditures generated by a war, it would seem that simultaneously being able to economize while significantly improving the overall fighting effectiveness of our forces and reduce casualties (and their attendant high costs) would be win-win-win situation that the Pentagon would embrace, but this is not the case when it comes to armor for the Army.

Here are but two examples of the inexplicable problems concerning armor acquisitions that have surfaced.

Deploying units had contacted U.S. Global Nanospace, based in Nevada, to develop an effective, but lighter weight product than those already approved, but not readily available. A newcomer to military armor contracts, USGN had seemingly passed all of the hurdles posed by the acquisitions system by early December and publicly announced that they had an approved effective, lower-cost /weight armor. But USGN had limited success getting its products through the purchasing hoops and into the supply stream, despite its clear superiority to its armored steel equivalent.

From Jan. 5-10, Aberdeen was slated to conduct additional testing specifically to satisfy the urgent armor requirements, yet the results are being withheld despite repeated inquiries. Aberdeen has met these reasonable requests with silence and has now failed to return any calls made to them. In a normally routine and transparent process, the sudden shut down of all communication and their arbitrary actions are becoming alarming.

In this case, the low-cost USGN HUMVEE applique kits weigh a mere 300 pounds compared to the 2,200-pound steel product presently approved. This significant weight reduction and cost savings would solve a number of important vehicle reliability issues, including those noted above. Why would a product such as this be withheld?

Army units getting ready to deploy to Iraq are in a quandary because even though they have pre-deployment orders, they can't acquire armor kits, such as for the HUMVEE, except through a nearly year-long acquisitions process. Because a year's advance warning is not given to units chosen to deploy, additional body and vehicle armor is therefore not available to it before it deploys.

The acquisition rules presently in place preclude it from using many of the services of the "Rapid Equipping Taskforce" until it is actually deployed in a combat area, so the system essentially has placed a "Catch-22" situation between the unit getting the armor it needs before it starts taking casualties. Nobody in the acquisitions portion of the logistics bureaucracy seems to have questioned the monetary, human and political costs of retaining peacetime rules in a wartime scenario.

While all of this is going on, the Army's 1st Cavalry division has also been preparing to deploy and looked at the high-cost kits long approved by the Army for its standard HUMVEEs before it goes into the combat zone of Iraq. So the 1st Cavalry turned to Global Technologies, a small Texas company – run by a veteran of that unit – to get at least some of its "soft" vehicles hardened with armor, specifying that the armor has to stop a bullet from an AK-47, the ubiquitous small arm of the Middle East, as the basic Army standard for such armor requires.

What happened next in this situation is both a small miracle and a nightmare. The armor product developed by Ballistic Solutions – a subsidiary of this Texas upstart – not only worked in independent UL standard tests, but is 20 percent lighter than the presently approved vendor’s composite offerings. And, it was offered to be sold to the 1st Cavalry – at an acceptable profit – for about 80 percent less money than what the presently approved vendor charged for its products, although without the ballistic glass with fittings that the 1st Cavalry specifically did not want.

Additionally, it is field-repairable, though it is kind of homely-looking when compared to the "pretty" stuff currently approved. Now five times as many of the "soft" HUMVEEs the division has could have been protected, the troops could safely carry more gear and the unit could be more effective – and their leaders also knew this would equal fewer casualties.

At the end of last October, when the division's commander went through the paperwork to actually buy the product, the Army soon said "No," it needed to be tested at Aberdeen first. So Bill Frazier, the company's president, immediately next-day-air freighted the samples to the lab and, being brand new to military contracts, neglected to send the written pro-forma proprietary declaration with the materials since he was verbally assured by Aberdeen that it will be treated as such and the testing will be expedited. After all, his old unit needed this product to protect their young soldiers.

Time passed and eventually the company got a phone call back from a staffer at Aberdeen who said "You didn't fail, but you didn't do as well as some other armor we tested." After that, nobody at Aberdeen would return Global Technologies calls, nor was a written report sent. However, a field-grade military staffer at Aberdeen did exchange a few e-mails with the company, then shortly cut them off by stating "This is a very busy office" and referred them to the Public Affairs Office for further non-specific and /or non-responsive answers.

The materials that Global Technologies and U.S. Global Nanospace submitted to Aberdeen have not been selected for field-testing in Iraq either.

And according to a Dec. 24 piece, "Up in Armor" by Bob Cox in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Pentagon's spokesman, Maj. Gary Tallman said: "... that even if Frazier's armor were to prove adequate, the Army would probably opt to buy a superior, albeit heavier and more expensive, armor. That's just the culture here ...”

As for the troopers of the 1st Cavalry division, they’ll just have to make do with whatever they can get.

But it gets still curiouser: Nobody "inside" the acquisitions system is talking to anybody about this issue. Professionals within the armor business for decades are actually getting the "you-don't-want-to-be-asking-about-this-for-your-own-good" kind of responses from colleagues that Hollywood conspiracy films have long favored. Long-time industry insiders have told me they have never seen this kind of a response to a simple matter of testing materials for suitability.

Even if the technical aspects of the test results were to become classified, as sometimes happens, there is still a written report issued that states the test was performed and whether the material passed or failed, as well as the standard that was used.

In discussions with members of the support and procurement community, it has been alleged that about a decade ago, Aberdeen had been suspected of irregularities in testing procedures and of other malfeasance relating to the early development of the Bradley fighting vehicle. After the post-mortem of the Bradley situation, the Army formed the "Joint Live Fire Office" to address some of the issues that had been raised.

Given the items above, there seem to be a number of likely questions for any external investigation to answer.

In light of the circumstances of the long-approved products becoming unexpectedly non-competitive in the military-armor marketplace due to the financial and performance efficiencies achieved by the two independently produced products – why has Aberdeen refused to issue written reports, reversed its own approvals and inexplicably retained some of the submitted test samples that they now say have not been tested?

Has the Army's acquisitions quality watchdog – Aberdeen – and the Pentagon become directly corrupted by commercial influences? If so, why and to what extent?

Why has the Army declined to protect several times as many troops at the same expenditure levels within the same category of already approved funding?

I would hope that the answers to these questions lay in more benign explanations, but there is one thing the troops and I know for certain: Body bags are not in short supply, even if funding and armor is.

This writer provided the information above – along with corroborating evidence – to Republican Congressman Rob Simmons (2nd District, Conn.) who went public on WTIC’s "Connecticut Today Show" on Monday, Feb. 2, and declared that he was taking the membership of the House Armed Services Committee to Aberdeen next week where they will require the armor to be shot at for testing, so they can witness it.

If the materials pass, they will force the Army to get the armor to the troops. Congressman Simmons went on to say that some 60 companies had been stonewalled by Aberdeen and /or were willing to manufacture armor under license in order to provide our troops with the equipment they need and that the situation of single manufacturer, who can not meet our needs, will be ended.

Send him this, from Last Dingo's Convoy TTP's

Chapter 8: Counter-mine preparations and tactics

Tactically, basically two mine categories exist; those that threaten your forward vehicles most and the usually command-detonated, camouflaged mines that can hit any element of the convoy. Sometimes, it won't be possible to leave the road, and two command-detonated heavy mines can block both directions effectively.

The primary improvisation against the mine threat is the use of sandbags and flak vests. Sandbags should be on driver's cab floors (especially under the seats) and on flatbeds that are used by personnel. If there’s not enough space for sandbags, use flak vests or steel or aluminium plates. Occupied flatbeds should also have sidewalls of sandbags to protect against pipe bombs and alike. Tires can be filled with water partially to absorb some mine explosion effects. This is probably not necessary for the rear wheels of heavy and medium trucks. While sandbags are the primary improvised measure against mines, there are also vehicles with built-in mine protection available, usually with light anti-bullet armour. Pray for these and mention your wish to have them as often as acceptable. If every officer did so, your branch would have enough.

Some trucks are better protected than others against mines by their design. Characteristic features are the applicability of sandbag protection and how much the front wheels are in front of the driver's cab. Trucks with wheels below their driver's cab will trigger mines exactly where you don't want them to go off. The better-protected trucks should be in the front section of the main convoy body.

The drivers can reduce the risk of mines by not driving on the shoulder of the road. It’s probably not possible to follow the tracks of the earlier vehicle, but it’s desirable for small, homogenous convoys (especially for patrols).

The advance guard should include mine-clearance equipment (including MADs and probably a MICLIC). Recently dug in mines leave visible traces on soft ground, and thermal sensors are best at detecting them. Anyway, you need EOD personnel in the advance guard to deal with mines. Ask these experts what they want in that special environment.

Never put many men (including civilians) in or on one single vehicle. I believe that driver, vehicle commander, gunner and a fire team of four to seven men should be the absolute maximum. Exceptions are armoured vehicles like IFV’s.

Your specialized vehicles might be primary targets for command-detonated mines; therefore you should try to let them look as common as possible. Except tarps, there’s another opportunity for this; you could attach long antennas (or something which looks like long antennas) to several vehicles and make the identification of the command vehicle(s) harder by this.

Looking like what they’re not is also good for kerosene-transporting trucks.

Don’t use flags or other tell-tale signs to mark your key personnel! (This was a contradiction to existing doctrine.) Instead, vehicles can be named and a colour code be used for this to make leader vehicles identifiable for loyal convoy personnel. These measures might save your life.

A threat similar to mines is the wire, which can be spread across the road to cut personnel in the point vehicle. As early as WW2, poles were mounted on jeeps to cut such wires, and this improvised protection is still highly advisable today.

One problem of a mine detonation is that it’s impossible to be sure that it’s not the initialisation of an ambush.

Chapter 9: Counter-ambush preparations and tactics

The best you can do against ambushes is to deter the potential ambushers. This can be very well done by adding each one borrowed IFV (Bradleys, for example) to advance guard and rearguard. There's little that the mediocre ambush party can do against them - even RPG-7 will will have only limited effect if the crews are vigilant. An RPG-7 won't have more than a 50% hit chance against a moving tank at 200m, and most users aren't trained enough to achieve such ‘precision’. Altitude differences even complicate aiming. In some terrains, an IFV will effectively eliminate the ambush threat. But remove the reserve TOW missiles from the hull, they're a secondary explosion risk and won't be of much use anyway. The next best thing against an ambush is not to enter the kill zone. If road-bound, you can only avoid this by reconnaissance. Being unpredictable helps, but reconnaissance is the true solution.

The “Rat Patrol” (a jeep with a vigilant, autonomous crew in advance of the convoy) is the most famous solution, but itself very much in danger. Anyway, since the field of vision is more important for Rat patrols than protection (from the officer’s point of view), the vehicle modifications should reflect this. I consider Rat Patrols as the method of choice in total war, while their personnel are too much in danger for limited war conditions. In total war, mission success is regarded more and casualties less critical than in limited war.

For stronger convoy escorts, a true advance guard should be possible – but even this won’t help much if it isn’t vigilant or isn’t scanning with thermal sights.

The third best measure is passive protection coupled with firepower – the usual thing.

To have something strong in the bullet’s trajectory does often help, and weight vs. protection considerations are often difficult.

Some authors see the need for ATGM firepower - this is probably unnecessary for all but those enemies behind walls / in robust buildings. But even such ambushers need to expose themselves to realise their dangerousness.

Ambushes are most effective within assault rifle range because most ambushers won't have longer-ranging weapons. This means that some light anti-tank weapons (M136 for example) will do the job. The probably best weapon in the Western inventory for ATGM substitution in counter-ambush fights is the M3 Carl Gustav (RAAWS) - having an SPH in the convoy is unrealistic since western forces abandoned the 105mm SPH and won't attach a 155mm SPH to a convoy. If the threat includes tanks, TOWs will probably be useless while Javelins might be more useful due to better survivability.

Think about periscopes for your heavy weapons (M2, M240, M60, Mk-19) - perhaps you have or can get reflex/scope sights or even thermal sights for them; they work great with periscopes. Further, machineguns can also be operated by periscope by tracking their tracers.

Thermal sights are a definitive requirement for at least the point vehicle(s) and the forward observer(s).

Indirect fire attacks can be dealt with by taking cover or by movement - most shells will be primitive contact-fused mortar shells while rocket fire (including RPG's), howitzer shells, heavy machine gun and automatic grenade launcher fire is also possible. Shortstop jammers will only reduce the threat of radio proximity fused shells and you will most probably not get enough (several of the larger ones) such jammers for your dispersed convoy anyway. There are no sufficiently mobile counter-mortar radars available, so you'll depend on aggressive counter-attacks, speed and/or air support when you're under indirect fire attack.

Artillery support was underestimated in its importance by American authors in the past; the ability to call in artillery fire was a cornerstone of Russian anti-ambush procedures in their Afghan War and light/medium mortars would fail as fire support if the enemies were firing from inside a high wood or village because of premature fusing. They're also too weak to knock out well-prepared fighting positions. Such fighting positions are described in all famous Guerrilla Warfare manuals that I have read, so don't underestimate the preparations of ambushing guerrillas. BTW, artillery has the same problem like air support; they cannot engage anything that's very close to friendly troops without a fratricide problem.

Using tracers is a good idea for intimidating the enemy in combat, but those with the best sensors/eyes should use a special tracer colour because otherwise the whole element might be lead to shoot into a wrong direction.

This tracer colour could also be used for the "communication by tracers" technique (which will probably also be your best method to control attack helicopters).

Sunglasses will be valuable especially when the ambushers try to exploit the dazzling effect of the sun to their advantage.

Broken vehicles pose a great problem to the convoy commander, and he or his battalion headquarters needs to decide how to act in such situations. Recovery is one option, leaving the quickly stripped vehicle behind is another. The threat of an ambush is important for this decision, and any vehicle that was immobilized by enemy action (or by its local driver) was probably immobilized to stop the convoy in preparation of an ambush.

Again: Nr. 1 priority is to deter ambushes. This requires time and resources that are probably not available. Maybe you're allowed to do some live-fire testing in sight of civilians; if it's impressing, it'll help. In general, the soldiers should appear as vigilant, professional, ready and competent as possible but should never provoke the civilians or show signs of weakness.

Nr. 2 priority is to detect ambushes before it's too late. Your point vehicle needs to dismount (as much unpredictable as possible) two to four men at every bridge, crossing, road bend and other suspicious sites. Some infantrymen on motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles could parallel the point vehicle and search next to the road for problems. Air surveillance won't detect all ambushes - especially not mines below bridges and ambushes in forest or built-up areas.

Nr. 3 priority is to react with effective counter fire as quickly as possible to any ambush - once the fire superiority is won, the worst is over (don't run out of ammo!).

Nr. 4 priority is to use forward observers to direct effective air and artillery strikes and to use the mortar section that should be in the main body of the convoy.

Forward controllers should be spread approx. every 10-15 vehicles in the convoy (maybe each one in advance guard and rearguard or one per command vehicle).

Nr. 5 priority is to counter-attack. While this is often considered to be the best action against an ambush, mines, artificial obstacles, enemy reserves and difficult terrain can make a counter-attack bloody or even impossible.

Pursuit should end when contact is broken – the mission is escort, not pursuit. A quick reaction force should take over.

At least when a deployment into a crisis region becomes probable, every logistics unit should make up for earlier training (especially basic combat training) deficiencies. Train the shooting skills, create intensity and stress in training and enforce discipline. Things will get serious.

Maybe the enemy coordinates his actions with simple cell phones. It's possible to detect and jam them. With two receivers, you could even find out their position by direction finding. The maths can be done with an Excel table (written within minutes) and COTS equipment (including laptop and table calculation software). Even if you haven't good radio operators in your company, there are surely some in the next local FM radio community that can help you with this. The hardware (two scanners, two directional antennas, one high-power emitter) should cost only few thousand dollars, but could reduce the C3 efficacy of your opponents to 19th century levels.

One big question is whether the convoy should stop, only the trucks should continue movement or whether all vehicles should maintain movement. This cannot be decided for all situations with one rule, I believe. The problem is that the road is probably not wide enough to let only some vehicles continue movement. Any immobilized vehicles could stop others even when continued movement is ordered. This would result in a disadvantageous concentration of stopped vehicles behind the immobilized one or even crashes. Civilian (and uniformed) drivers might react different than ordered. Moving vehicles cannot employ their heavy weapons effectively over significant ranges due to lack of stabilisation (except IFVs). The Russians in Afghanistan and the U.S. troops in Vietnam seemed to have preferred to let the armed, armoured vehicles stop and return fire while the soft-skinned trucks fled. That's probably best when there's a safe escape route for the trucks. It’s probably worst if there’s a minefield ahead…

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