Posted on 12/10/2004 7:04:48 PM PST by Doctor Raoul
See the following articles: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/203200_armor10.html FROM THE SEATTLE TIMES ARTICLE: Here's the phone number 1-800-782-7892 - Intl. Export / Import Services, press "0" to get a person. Is Durbin a hypocrite for saying anything while he protects the pork at home?
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_10.html
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m998.htm
From those articles and webpages, here's some facts:
19,400 Humvees in Iraq
TODAY 77% of Humvees in Iraq are armored
5,900 were shipped from factory with armor
9,000 upgraded with kits in theater
Unarmored Humvees aren't supposeed to go off base.
Unarmored Humvees travel between bases on a flatbed truck.
Of 9,386 armor kits shipped to Iraq, 9,143 have been installed.
That's 97% installed, only 3% to go.
There are at least 16 varients of the Humvee:
M998 cargo/troop carrier without winch
M1038 cargo/troop carrier with winch
M966 TOW missile carrier, basic armor, without winch
M1036 TOW missile carrier, basic armor, with winch
M1045 TOW missile carrier, supplemental armor, without winch
M1046 TOW missile carrier, supplemental armor, with winch
M1025 armament carrier, basic armor, without winch
M1026 armament carrier, basic armor, with winch
M1043 armament carrier, supplemental armor, without winch
M1044 armament carrier, supplemental armor, with winch
M996 mini-ambulance, 2-litter, basic armor
M997 maxi-ambulance, 4-litter, basic armor
M1035 soft-top ambulance, 2-litter
M1037 S-250 shelter carrier, without winch
M1042 S-250 shelter carrier, with winch
M1069 tractor for M119 105-mm light gun
The Humvees to be factory-armored by O'Gara-Hess have some different specifications than the models shipped without armor, Woodward said. So increasing production requires careful planning.
Today on Rush's show, he had a caller that swears she knows people that are buying steel locally there in the Pacific Northwest and sending it by UPS to soldiers in Iraq.
"It's not like making a Big Mac," he said. "There are so many configurations. ... You can't just whip them through like a big grill in a McDonald's."
I called UPS. They will ship to Iraq, but you have to pick up your shippment at their offices in Baghdad or Basra. They don't deliver to anyone's door.
Also, length, width and height can't total more than 165 inches.
The weight limit on packages to Iraq, 150 lbs.
Yeah, ship armor plate by UPS, that'll work.
A caller to Dom Giordano's show last night had three very good observations. The handwringing liberals posture this as "if you only cared enough, people wouldn't die" even in a war.
He also said it depended on believing that people in the Pentagon would put $$$ before a soldier's life.
Last, he noted that the HMMWV replced the jeep and that no one would expect even an armored jeep to do what we have armored HMMWVs doing.
Rock Island Arsenal has a piece of this according to the caller and LTC Scott Rutter USA(Ret) and that Durbin's backyard. Obviously those take more time to reach the soldiers than those modified in theater.
"How many of our troops were killed while riding in regular HumVees?"
The main problem is that people are griping about an amazingly low casualty rate, saying it's too high. It's like your child coming home with all "A"s and one "B", and then kicking your kid out of the house for not getting straight "A"s.
Would you replace Rumsfeld with Ike? Remember D-Day? Would you replace Rumsfeld with Grant? Remember the high casualties there? Would you replace Rumsfeld with George Washington? Remember his bloody battles? I grant, perhaps Weinburger would do a better job, but he wasn't exactly war tested, other than Grenada. I would choose someone with two major campaigns under his belt: both amazing successes.
Just had the county Republican Christmas party at my house yesterday. Congressman Ron Paul was here. It was VERY interesting asking him questions about hot issues. He is just brilliant!
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Boy t ohave Ron Paul represent you. The best we've had was Dr. Campbell (former Stanford professor).
Now we have the hue & cry team of Anna Eshoo and Bab's Boxer.
The Grant and Lee tanks were actually superior! They had 75mm guns, and the germans were fielding 50mm guns.
Any tank can be penetrated. Any gun can cause a casualty.
The key is tactics to use your strengths, and focus your effort on the enemy's weaknesses. A master of armored warfare, LTC (later General, and CoS of the army) C. Abrams briefed the 2nd Bde of the 12th Armored that the US tanks had inferior guns and armor. The key to success was to go fast, and get through weak points, to shoot at the German tanks from the side and rear- because the German tanks had hand cranked turrents, and smaller gas tanks, compared to the US tanks with large gas tanks, long range, and power traversed turrets. Once the US tanks got through, the German supply system was vulnerable, and the tanks stuck forward would run out of fuel.
The US doctrine at that time put the best guns on the Tank Destroyers, which had open tops, light weight, and high speeds. That sought to destroy the enemy using assymetrical means (like a game of rock-scissors-paper).
The alternative- to demand that our armor must always be better than enemy guns, that our guns must always be better than enemy armor- that assures that we will not have what it takes to win. The better is the enemy of the good enough.
Our magnificant soldiers win because of their courage and skill. If we traded weapons with the Iraqi forces, our boys would still win.
No Humvee armor is proof against the RPG, or against a close detonation of mortar or IED.
Our enemy prefers to use IEDs and RPGs. It is a non-issue.
The shermans could kill tigers, but could only do it from up close. If you were dumb, and went right at the tigers, you got to lose a lot before you got the Tiger. If you went around, attacking to the spongy ground where the 60 ton Tiger couldn't go, you got to live. Shermans had a fast power traverse. Panthers, Tigers, and Pz4Js had manual traverse turrets- slow slow slow.
The Germans only made 1500 or so Tigers during WWII. The US made around 50,000 Shermans, and 1600 Pershings. The Soviets made about 10,000 T-34s, and rather fewer JS-1s.
Doesn't pay to be dumb in combat, no matter what your equipment.
The point that a tank can be blown up is not senseless, it is concise and to the point.
Distance is the best armor. "Give me a fast ship, for I mean to go in harm's way." JP Jones.
Armor detracts from fast. Yes, you can supercharge the engine, but that leads to overheating. There is no free lunch.
Oh just rubbing it in....ops, that a Clinton phrase, I mean rubbing Dan's nose in his hatred of Nixon. I'm not the first to make the Nixon jab at Danno.
After Claudia Kennedy and her "COO", you'd think that you'd see "Plays Well With Others" as an addition to the evaluation form.
I like your thinking. Believe you're the first to propose that. I'd love to see Sean put that in front of Colmes who would then blast off for Mars.
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I don't think it really matters how mobile you are in combat.
I think what really matters is how quickly you can target your enemy and kill him.
If you can move at 80 MPH but cannot target your enemy; your enemy will eventually kill you.
But if you can only move 8 MPH but can locate and kill your enemy in .08 seconds; then your enemy must react quicker than you to even survive.
Thanks for the post.
My daughter is with the 1st Cav currently engaged in Falluja.
When her unit deployed in January, they had been authorized funds to purchase armor kits from a local TX supplyer. Aberdeen wouldn't take the time to approve them before deployment, and without approval they could not be purchased (politics? Pork protection?).
To date, she is still driving the same vehicle (which left TX with a bad tranny), and it has not been upgraded. In anyway. I sent her excerpts from the appropriate FMs on field improvised armoring, but the design of the humvee is not condusive to the use of sandbags and the like.
Her driving has not been restricted to base.
Unlike the traitor journalist, though, I do not blame President Bush. I blame Clinton and Shittake who felt that having black berets was more important than up-armored vehicles. I also blame whatever pencil-necked geek at Aberdeen denied the 1st Cav's bid to armor their vehicles before leaving for Iraq. If I had my way, he'd be making daily supply runs from Falluja to Sadr City in the piece of crap vehicle my dauughter has been nursing for the last year, alone, with no one to ride shotgun.
But that's just me.
As for the journalists, send everyone that does not have a solid military background home.
Good info on the Sherman, with over 50,000 produced but your numbers are off on the Russian production, which was far greater than 10,000 T-34s...
Russian Tank Production:
The point that a tank can be blown up is not senseless, it is concise and to the point. Distance is the best armor. "Give me a fast ship, for I mean to go in harm's way." JP Jones.
Or as my brother (Maj. US Army) puts it, speed is life.
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Armor detracts from fast. Yes, you can supercharge the engine, but that leads to overheating. There is no free lunch.
EVERYTHING'S a trade-off, there is no do-it-all vehicle, plane, ship or weapon.
If these knuckleheads were around in 1942, they would be telling us the F4F Wildcat needs to LOSE its armor so it can maneuver better with the Zero. Problem is that though the Zero could out-turn and out-climb the Wildcat, you only had to breathe on it to knock it out of the sky, and it couldn't dive worth a crap. It also did not have self-sealing fuel tanks so it would burn like a comet from a dirty look. In fact if it got in a dive much over 360 mph, the stabilizers became useless. Wildcat pilots could often just go into a steep dive to escape.
Say again, everything is a trade-off...
There are other disadvantages the Tiger had. It was also pretty slow. Shermans had an advantage in a wooded environment because the long Tiger gun often meant that a trees would block the turret traverse that the much shorter Sherman gun could easily clear. Maneuver quickly into the woods to the slower Tiger's side or rear and hit him in the thin side or even thinner rear armor. Instant flaming Tiger. The Panther was the better tank of the two -- Big gun, great speed and mobility and well-armored. It and the T34 were the best.
Or at least 'til that brief shining moment when the M26 came along. 90mm gun and designed to be a tank killer...
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