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This is always a good reminder to show how vulnerable our troops are on the roads.

I take issue with the part of the original post that mentions the M113 as a suitable replacement for uparmored humvees.

There is no way they can do 300 mile days at 70-75 mph. Also as far as damaging the road surface, yes they would because a lot of the road surfaces were asphalt, and any heavy vehicle damaged them quickly, wheeled or tracked.

The unit that replaced us received the ASV, one of our platoons in Baghdad also received the ASV, but that was one toy that my platoon wanted but never saw in our motor pool.

When I left in June 04, Buffalo's were in theater along with the MERKAT support vehicles. It would make sense to buy a bunch of the Cougars or ANYTHING that can survive better than the M1114 series Humvees.

Our M1114s sustained several hits with nothing more than marked up windshields and flattened tires.

The serious weak link to the Humvee that I HOPE has been resolved is tire wear! They didn't have a tire that was designed to carry the weight of the M1114 series Humvee that is twice the weight of the standard M1025/M1026 series Humvee, yet use the same tires. Those tires could wear out in as little as a week!

Also there is one thing that is mis-quoted more than anything else. The M-1114 is a built from the ground up armored vehicle. The M1025 was not. The M1025 is the one that had suspension problems with additional armor added to it. The M1114's suspension and engine were designed for the weight (if the tires werent), and the vehicle actually handled pretty well.

The M1025 with armor bolted on was a pig that couldn't get out of its own way.