Posted on 12/11/2004 10:14:03 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq — This is a graveyard for Humvees, the final resting place for the hulking vehicles felled by insurgents' roadside bombs.
In a parking lot, the U.S. military's most common personnel carriers lie flattened with noses down in the mud. Their metal carcasses are barely recognizable. Tires have been splayed to the sides or blown away entirely. Shrapnel has burst holes in unprotected parts of the vehicles, as if they were tinfoil.
The nine mangled Humvees here have been destroyed by what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
"Now this one here, you can see the IED tore the whole back end off the vehicle. It's just gone," said Sgt. Patrick Parchment of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which operates south of Baghdad.
"The front is sitting cock-eyed. And that's steel," he said, showing a visitor another severed vehicle.
The blasted remains do not inspire optimism about the fate of the Marines who had been riding in them. Sixteen Marines of the 24th have died since arriving here in July; 259 have been wounded. The majority of the casualties were caused by IEDs, as Marines must daily brave a gantlet of roadside bombs on highways and dirt roads that cut through farms.
The Marines and Army have almost 20,000 Humvees in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. But a quarter of the vehicles do not have proper armor.
The problem came into focus this week when a Tennessee National Guardsman told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that troops had to forage for scrap metal to weld to their vehicles for protection. The confrontation, at a U.S. base in Kuwait, triggered an uproar and raised questions about whether the Pentagon was doing enough to provide safety equipment ..........
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Just my opinion.
The media is playing a game with this armorflap...ie.. if your son is in an armored Humvee then he is safe.
I think they (the media ) have sold that thought pretty well, even here on FreeRepublic....
Your professional (EOD) opinion on my comment in post 3, and any info as response to post 4 would be great!
The Marines and Army have almost 20,000 Humvees in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. But a quarter of the vehicles do not have proper armor.
What is proper armor for a vehicle that was designed as a replacement of a WW II light vehicle?
Oh highly valued and esteemed, truth-saying Mister Professional JOURNALIST (not Reporter)....
.....there is nothing "Crude" about a 155mm artillery shell.
Just try making one yourself....then we'll talk.
Hello...Hello.....?!!!
Figured.
The 155mm shells being used are not crude. That was my whole point in post #3. They are sophisticated weapons, particularly when they are fashioned as Phase II IED's with more than one explosive deviced wire to the 155mm shell.
The entire point is that I believe you are not going to uparmor HummVees to withstand a direct 155mm hit.
"Now this one here, you can see the IED tore the whole back end off the vehicle. It's just gone"
Great I asked my son where he sits and he said in the back! Unfortunately they don't even stay in the Humvees but often go out on foot patrol. I pray a lot.
I am not sure even a Bradley could take a direct 155. Even some Abrams have been disabled by them. That is one heck of a whallop.
it's not possible for every piece of rolling stock to be a tank, is it?
Exactly. Up armoring helps when the detonation is far enough away to protect from shrapnel and reduced blast. But is the 155mm explodes close enough...a Hummer is going to be hosed IMHO.
So you feel that there should be a properly armored vehicle of some type for our soldiers ( and your son) to ride in that would protect them from these ?crude improvised bombs
and but for Rumsfeld ...who did not anticipate properly that these weapons would be used.....????
You and I know that and many here on FR know that,....but the Media is playing a GAME with this and doing well doing so....
Many people seem to thing it is possible.....the Media , very slyly is telling them it is....
Your correct Jeff the armored Hummers are not gonna keep ya whole if the IED is bigger that a grenade ie a low velocity projo. Albeit it will keep ya alive if your 50 meters spaced from the hummer the large arty IED targeted.
When the vehicles bunch up the command detonated IED is very effective . Lots of posts recently on the false sense of security the armored hummer gives that is replacing age old tactical SOP for MOUT .
Stay safe
The problem isn't armor.
The problem isn't the HumVees. Which were never meant to be armored, anyway.
The problem is the wong vehicle!
Ship all of those M-113 Armored Personnel Carriers (That were thought to be obsolete and outdated during Vietnam, yet used in Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom) BACK to Iraq!
To take over riding herd on convoys!
Jack.
We need a picture....
As noted above, many of the so-called IEDs are 155 mm (US/NATO) or 152 mm (Soviet/Russian) artillery shells and are only "improvised" because they are being used in a manner for which they were not intended, that is, to be fired out of the barrel of an artillery piece. The most vulnerable point on any vehicle - tanks included - is the belly. Detonate a 155 mm HE (high-explosive round) under an M113 (an armored - but not much - personnel carrier) and it is going to be destroyed. Combat - whether "low" or "high intensity" - is dangerous, even in armored vehicles. It is much more so dismounted (on foot) in an urban environment; such is the nature of so-called Fourth Generation Warfare.
No you missed the point completely. My son started in an Abrams. When they downsized ,a lighter military, they put him in a Bradley. Well you can't patrol the streets of Baghdad in a Bradley so he went into a Humvee. He is a soldier. His job is extremely dangerous. I am not of the mindset that the government must be responsible for protecting us under any and all circumstances. My son is a good soldier, two bronze Stars, and he doesn't pi** and moan about everything. What exactly was your point?
no, a fox is sly. these people rely on brute force.
A lie is believed because of the unconditional and insolent inflexibility with which it is propogated.
-- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
The Media is on a campaign....
See this:
Defining Victory, As Chaos Mounts In Iraq, U.S. Army Rethinks Its Future [adapt, overcome]
There are 8,000 unarmored non-HMMV vehicles in - and 4,500 non-HMMV trucks with ad hoc uparmoring. It isn't just HMMVs. And armor helps, more armor helps more. IEDs were identified as the main threat in Iraq in August of 2003. This is not remotely a deployability issue, 15 months later. We've spent hundreds of billions on the war, and blood is much more expensive than steel. This is not remotely an expense issue. People on FR who have talked to men in the field have been talking about this for over a year - it is not remotely some MSM smear issue. We can simply do better, adapting to overcome the threat from IEDs.
See the link at post #22!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's not an open vehicle like a jeep. But it still seems to have large open windows in the side, which is a vulnerability even for small arms. Bulletproof glass might help. What if the enemy then launches an RPG their way? Would light armour and bulletproof glass make a difference for the men? Would they still be alive? Would they largely escape injury? Would they be dead either way?
Is the Bradley really that invulnerable? If so, that would seem to be the answer, in exchange for humvees.
So you are buying the MEDIA's message?????
It will definitely help HumVees and the other vehicles in the convoy, further from the explosion, who are impacted by higher speed shrapnel. To that point you are spot on IMHO.
What we need is a better way of detecting and defusing the IEDs as we pass along. For those exploded by RF, it would seem easire to do. For those exploded by direcxt line, it is harder but still doable.
For mechanical actuated, it is probably the most difficult.
Anyhow...thanks for the comments.
At the rate of 450/month, they're supplying 5400 armored Humvees per year.
That totals up to 540,000,000. reduce the Raptor build by one airplane...............
He was a long, long time EOD guy.
Agreed. 155's have knocked out passing M1 Abrahms.
There probably isn't any proper armor...but you go to war with the stuff you got.....
Please tell your son I said
Thank You for your service to our country.
I think this is a lot bigger than Rumsfeld...
I saw $150,000 for the armored version.
I believe that an Israeli Merkava Tank [70+ tons]was disabled by an IED last year and that is one of the most heavily armoured Tanks in the world.
The solution is to hunt down the bombers and kill the bad guys.
Everything you've stated is well within the realm of possibility; no doubt about it. However, vehicular patrolling in an urban environment - even in a heavily armored vehicle - is exceedingly dangerous. More heavily armored vehicles, including the M-2 and M-3 Bradleys, M-1 Abrams, etc. are intended for operations in a more open environment where they can engage targets out to 2-plus kilometers. There are certainly methods that could be used to make the HUMVEE more survivable in the event of a close-proximity explosion; however, nothing is going to protect the crew/patrol from a properly planned and coordinated ambush with heavy, crew-served weapons or the detonation of a large explosion near the vehicle; armor plating might protect the crew from shrapnel, but it won't protect them from being tossed about the interior of the vehicle like rag dolls. (For obvious reasons, they don't wear seatbelts.) Like all military operations, there is a fine balance between safety of the personnel, tactical effectiveness, and accomplishment of the mission; every commander agonizes over those decisions and every soldier and marine on the ground understands that balance to some degree.
There was a post a couple of days ago pointing out that most of the IEDs were fired by RF using cell phone, grarage door controls, etc. It strikes me that a simple procedure would be to jam those devices by broadcasting at those frequencies. IMHO Are there any EE out there?
That link is about defeating the RPG....see the documents on the armorflap keyword list, for scattered discussion about defeating the IED RF scheme....
A 155 or 152 will damage ,if not destroy, almost anything in the inventory. Big bullets with lots of filler . A HMMMV is a light truck, ergo, not a tank. An RPG , which is designed to nail a tank ,will detroy any HMMMV. The armor issue is a distraction.
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