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<p>June 17, 2008 (Computerworld) An aerospace company has built a prototype of a driverless aircraft designed to shuttle hundreds of pounds of supplies to soldiers in war zones.</p> <p>Dubbed a flying Humvee by Ryan Wood, CEO of Broomfield Colo.-based Frontline Aerospace, Inc., the robotic vehicle can fly 600 to 1,000 miles carrying a full cargo of 400 pounds. Code named V-STAR, the autonomous aircraft, which can execute vertical take-offs and landings, is about the size of a large SUV, weighing in at 2,400 pounds and measuring 21 feet long and up to 26 feet wide.</p>

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., address employees as she stands in front of a a HMMWV or Humvee during a campaign stop at an AM General Assembly Plant, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, April 12, 2008. Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is shown the inside of a Humvee by Carter Hamilton, Vice President of Vehicle Assembly, in the blue shirt to the left, as she tours the AM General assembly plant, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, April 12, 2008. Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., look inside a HMMWV or Humvee as she tours...

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes. ADVERTISEMENT The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.....cont below

TAJI, Iraq, Jan. 17, 2008 – A ceremony here today marked the beginning of a program to refurbish and transfer more than 4,200 up-armored Humvees over the next 13 months. Some 627 vehicles now are staged in the holding yard ready to undergo a maintenance overhaul of brakes, belts and fluids before the appropriate paint scheme is applied. Once this process is completed, including quality assurance checks, the vehicles will be transferred to the government of Iraq for further distribution to the Iraqi security forces, U.S. officials said. “These vehicles are very important to the Iraqi National Police as well...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2007 – Production of mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles continues ahead of schedule, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said here today. “For the month of October, we had hoped to produce 431 vehicles,” Morrell said during a news conference. “We have produced 452. That's 21 more than we had anticipated, which puts us overall, year-to-date, program-to-date, 34 ahead of schedule.” The vehicles are state-of-the-art defenses against the leading killers of American troops in Iraq – improvised explosive devices and explosively formed penetrators. The V-shaped armored hull deflects explosive blasts from mines, IEDs and EFPs away from the crew...

HMMWV, IEDed(click to view full) Senator Biden [D-DE] took some deserved heat the other day for saying something really stupid, not exactly an uncommon occurrence for a politician. What is uncommon is an effort by a politician that actually makes a difference on the ground, and fulfills a moral calling. Which Senator Biden has also done recently... and so I'd like to cover that road less traveled, instead. What he has done is going to save a number of lives, on the front lines, in both of CENTCOM's theaters of war. It's late, the reasons why it's late have shocked...

Excerpt - TOPEKA, Kan. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is calling for a deal to get striking workers at Goodyear's Topeka plant back on the job. The plant makes tires for Humvees, the military's workhorse vehicle in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 12-thousand Goodyear workers in the United States and Canada have been on strike since October, including those at the Topeka plant. Congressman Duncan Hunter of California says production is down about 35 percent, creating a shortage of tires for Humvees. ~ snip ~

I was fortunate. I had both a pack of cigarettes AND a tasty beverage on my person to enjoy during the upcoming hour and a half stuck in the bunker as various high ranking folks combed the FOB to see if anybody had been hapless enough to get vaporized. Oh, and to make sure there were no unexploded surprises sputtering away in the middle of darkened roadways to disturb any late night treks to the loo. Actually, we were only in the 'sandbag sauna' for about 20 minutes--a new record in speedy Bomb Damage Assessment. So we were sitting in...

Soldier Hit by Anti-Tank Mine Praises Up-Armor Up-armored humvee saves the lives of soldiers hit by anti-tank mine. U.S. Army Pfc. Durwood Blackmon 25th Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs TIKRIT, IRAQ, Sept. 18, 2006 -- U.S. soldiers are issued cumbersome protective gear that they have to lug, carry and drag everywhere they go. With heavy steel doors and blast shields, vehicles in the Army are no exception either. For one soldier of the 25th Infantry Division, Combat Aviation Brigade, however, both of these security defenses helped to save his life and the life of his fellow comrades when their...

BALAD, Iraq — The U.S. military has begun sending thousands of battered Humvees and other war-torn equipment home as more Iraqi units join the fight against insurgents and American units scheduled for Iraq duty have their orders canceled. In the last four months, the Army has tagged 7,000 Humvees and 17,000 other pieces of equipment to be shipped to the United States to be rebuilt. They then will be distributed among active and reserve units at home, or possibly returned to equip Iraqi security forces. The military said the shipments will result in a reduction in the amount of U.S....

Sgt. Rene Knox Jr. of New Orleans was driving a heavily armored Humvee on a blackened dirt road near Balad, Iraq, when the vehicle rolled down an embankment and into a canal — killing Knox, two other soldiers and a serviceman trying to rescue them. Three days later, Sgt. Timothy R. Osbey and Spc. Joseph A. Rahaim, National Guardsmen from Magnolia, Miss., drowned under nearly identical circumstances when their Humvee rolled over into a canal. Twelve days later, Sgt. Julio E. Negron and Spc. Lizbeth Robles of Fort Carson, Colo., were killed and two others were injured after their armored...

Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees in Iraq have made the vehicles more likely to roll over and kill or injure soldiers, a newspaper reported. "I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert, told the Dayton Daily News for its Sunday editions. An analysis of the Army's ground-accident database, which includes records from March 2003 through November 2005, found that 60 of the 85 soldiers who died in Humvee accidents in Iraq -- or about 70 percent -- were killed when the vehicle rolled,...

The charred pile of twisted metal outside the military Humvee manufacturing plant north of Cincinnati once carried five American soldiers through the mountains of Afghanistan. An exploding land mine lifted the 10,000-pound armored Humvee off the ground, ripped a chunk of metal off of the frame and caved in half of its front end. But the soldiers inside walked away, and that's why the wreckage sits on the grounds of the Ohio company that puts armor between America's enemies and America's soldiers. "The armor on that Humvee performed just as we would have hoped," said George Stringer, a vice president...

Set Condition 1 has some info on the contenders: Bushmaster meets the competition in the USAirborne Combat Engineer notes The Army is looking at off-the-shelf vehicles and asks Why not buy an interim replacement for the Humvee?Joe Katzman: Hummer Deathtraps Suck: Take 2UPDATE: I knew I'd seen another good post on the Humvee problem just recently. In an update to his post, Joe K points out Washington Park Prophet's, um, The Humvee Problem.For the record, Murdoc isn't necessarily down on the Humvee. But Murdoc's down on the fact that our military seems to be reacting in slow motion to this...

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq (March 22, 2006) -- Marines are making knuckle-busting, wrench-turners out of Iraqi soldiers. Marine from 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment working with Regimental Combat Team 5, are teaching Iraqis the in’s and out’s of humvee maintenance. Mechanics from the battalion’s Headquarters and Support Company are training Iraqi Army soldiers on maintenance and operations for humvees. The Iraqi soldiers received their new humvees less than a week ago. “We are teaching the Iraqis the basics,” said Sgt. Laurice Kelly, a 36-year-old motor transport operations chief from Copperscove, Texas. “We are teaching basic maintenance and functions of the humvee.”...

Over at DID, I note that the US military has just begun fielding a new variant of the HMMWV jeep: the M1151 and M1152. Think of them as Hummer v2.1. The good news is that the new hummers are designed for rapid installation and removal of armor in the field, with minimal tools and support. This greatly simplifies logistics and upgrades, and allows the armor to be removed when it isn't needed so the Hummers will last a little longer (up-armored HMMWV suspensions die quickly due to all the extra weight). The bad news is that despite the armor improvements,...

CAMP AL ASAD, Iraq (March 21, 2006) -- Iraqi soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division received 24 High Mobility, Multi-wheeled Vehicles (Humvees) March 20, 2006, after graduating from a three-week Humvee licensing and preventive maintenance course. More than 20 enlisted soldiers were recognized in a formal graduation ceremony, where they received certificates of completion from the commanding general of the 2nd Brigade and the commanding officer of Regimental Combat Team 7, Col. W. Blake Crowe. The ceremony marked another milestone in the 2nd Brigade’s progress toward eventually relieving Coalition Forces in western Al Anbar Province of all...

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. (Jan. 26, 2006) -- The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory hosted an Office of Naval Research presentation of the Ultra Armored Patrol “Concept” Vehicle to senior Army acquisition officials Jan. 18. Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Yakovac Jr., military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, attended the hour-long briefing, as did program officers from MCWL and Marine Corps Combat Development Command. A viewing of the vehicle, which features innovative systems and components which potentially could enhance survivability and performance, followed the presentation....

CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait (Army News Service, Jan. 26, 2006) – A new training device is being developed by Coalition Forces Land Component Command in Kuwait to reduce or eliminate injury or death suffered by troops involved in Humvee rollovers in theater. The device evolved from a comment by then-commander of U.S. Forces Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, following the deaths of three Soldiers Dec. 8, 2003, when their Stryker overturned into a canal, said Chief Warrant Officer Rik Cox, FORSCOM safety officer. HEAT based on `Dunker’ “The aviators train on the Dilbert Dunker, why can’t we do something like that for...

Engineer Paul Green wheels his company's new fully armored combat vehicle over the clay roads and muddy streambeds of the South Carolina backcountry, guns the engine and races over one hill and then the next. "This is designed to be what we thought would be a step up from the Humvee," he shouts as he shifts gears. "This vehicle was never designed to be a direct replacement for the current armored Humvee." But the prototype -- christened the MUV-R (Mine-protected Utility Vehicle/Rapid Deployable) by its manufacturer, Charleston, S.C.-based Force Protection, Inc. -- may well be.

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version December 21, 2005, 8:05 a.m. The “Ultimate Betrayal�? Humvee realities. By W. Thomas Smith Jr. Why is it taking so long to design, develop, produce, and deploy — in adequate numbers — a troop-transporting armored vehicle that would replace the up-armored Humvee in Iraq? I've been asked that question time and again, not by soldiers and Marines who ride in Humvees daily, but by fellow journalists, many of whom have logged time in Iraq or Afghanistan. One reporter said to me it was "criminal negligence" on the part of the...

Why is it taking so long to design, develop, produce, and deploy — in adequate numbers — a troop-transporting armored vehicle that would replace the up-armored Humvee in Iraq? I've been asked that question time and again, not by soldiers and Marines who ride in Humvees daily, but by fellow journalists, many of whom have logged time in Iraq or Afghanistan. One reporter said to me it was "criminal negligence" on the part of the White House and the Defense Department. Another referred to it as "the ultimate betrayal" of our soldiers. Despite their time in country, both reporters are...

Berman was supposed to be part of the Blackwater team that was in Fallujah on that ill-fated day. But a last minute schedule change placed him in the south of Iraq at Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr. On the highway to Baghdad the following day, Berman received the phone call: A Blackwater detail had been hit. Four men were dead.

LANCASTER - By his junior year in high school, Jasen Watts already knew he wanted to become a soldier. He joined the National Guard on early enlistment and went straight to basic training. That was 2001. The Highland High graduate fulfilled his ambition and took one of the toughest soldier paths. The Army military job code is "Eleven Bravo" - an infantry grunt, a foot soldier. On Sept. 29, 2005, the foot soldier's legs were shattered in Baghdad when an IED (improvised explosive device) exploded under the Humvee he was driving on a patrol out of Camp Falcon. "It was...

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. (Nov. 3, 2005) -- The Marine Corps is searching for a larger, more capable combat transport to replace the Humvee. The Fires and Maneuver Integration Division of Marine Corps Combat Development Command is outlining the requirements for its future vehicle, dubbed the Combat Tactical Vehicle, with the goal of fielding the first CTVs in 2011. Kevin M. McConnell, deputy director of the Fires and Maneuver Integration Division, said the Humvee, while a battle-proven tactical vehicle, is beginning to show its limitations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The Humvee A2 is a great vehicle, [but] it has...

Although the M1114, armored, version of the hummer gets a lot of publicity because of its popularity among troops in Iraq, the 5.5 ton vehicle has been around for some ten years. Originally intended for peacekeeping operations, it was successfully used in the Balkans during the 1990s. The M1114 was based on a earlier version, that had served in the 1991 campaign in Kuwait. The M1114 is basically an armored car, with a crew of four and a payload of one ton (plus two tons that can be towed.) A 190 horsepower engine gives it a top speed of 80...

Improving Survivability and Mobility: Concept Vehicle Illustrating New Options for Military Combat Vehicles to be Unveiled A concept vehicle designed to illustrate potential technology options for improving survivability and mobility in future military combat vehicles will be shown publicly for the first time Sept. 13-15 at a military technology meeting in Virginia. The ULTRA armored patrol vehicle is a research project funded by the Office of Naval Research and conducted by the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The project's goal was to develop a concept vehicle that illustrates design and technology options for increased survivablity and mobility for future vehicles....

By W. Thomas Smith Jr. SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published August 29, 2005 COLUMBIA, S.C. -- When U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Keith Kempke returns to Iraq to find and destroy land mines and improvised explosive devices, he'll be supported by a growing fleet of new armored vehicles such as the Buffalo and the Cougar. He's already seen them in action.

AFTER CRISSCROSSING Fallujah by foot and Humvee in May, I reported on tremendous progress being made to restore "the city we had to destroy to save." Actually, fighting left most of the town unscathed; most damage was from three decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein. And rebuilding began almost immediately. Good news from Iraq rarely gets a single story compared to the Texas stake-out that generates many thousands on a war protesters. Yet it occurs nonetheless.

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Aug. 18, 2005) -- To any casual observer visiting the F-11A pistol and battlesight zero range here, 1st Lt. Charles E. Hayter, a 26-year-old native of Billings, Mont., looks like any run-of-the-mill platoon commander… standing, watching over his Marines as they zero their rifles before they deploy to Iraq. A closer examination might reveal otherwise, but it would have to be a real close observation. The only telltale sign would be the tightness of one boot over the other and it’s rigid appearance, because inside that boot exists a prosthetic. Hayter, platoon commander for...

Animals go where Humvees don't dare KANDAGAL, Afghanistan—Four-wheel-drive Humvees are so limiting in rugged mountains with few roads that a battalion of U.S. marines has recruited a centuries-old Afghan village transport alternative — donkeys. About 30 have been rented from local farmers to haul food and bottled water to hundreds of Afghan and American troops on a two-week operation to battle militants deep in remote mountains in eastern Kunar province. "This is the best way for us to resupply our troops there," said Lt.-Col. Jim Donnellan, commander of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, based in Hawaii. "It's also much cheaper...

Soldiers rely on heavy metal By MONI BASU | Wednesday, August 10, 2005, 10:46 PM The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Camp Striker, Iraq — First Sgt. Bobby Barnes pointed to two heaps of mangled, metal contraptions sitting on the far side of a sand berm, behind a maintenance depot affectionately known as “the Alamo.” Melted magnesium and aluminum. Crushed steel. Burned out seats and radio equipment. The wreckage used to be Humvees that soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team drove outside Camp Striker for missions in the Baghdad area. The vehicles were torn apart by 155mm artillery...

Local Iraqi citizens came to the aid of a Task Force Baghdad unit whose humvee got mired down in a ditch June 27. Soldiers with Headquarters and Headquarters Company 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was traveling at a low rate of speed along a road when the passenger front tire violently lurched to the right and dropped as the crumbling highway gave way to the weight of the humvee. Since the vehicle was moving slowly, there were no injuries. An Iraqi citizen stopped to give a helping hand to the stuck Soldiers. At the same time, a boom...

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee blasted Marine Corps brass Tuesday for long delays in providing makeshift armor for the undercarriages of Humvees used by Marines in Iraq. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said he is frustrated and furious that the underarmor was not made available until this month, even though the committee has been demanding it since February and the threat of roadside bombs has been apparent since last year. “While you were waiting for the fancier stuff to arrive … they could have been putting this steel on and saving some lives,” he told Marine...

Washington, DC, May. 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. military needs a new class of tactical vehicles specifically designed to withstand large roadside and car bombs, military officials told Congress Thursday. As the insurgency has matured in Iraq, so has its ability to piece together extremely powerful bombs that no amount of additional armor plating can stop without overtaxing the standard chassis, officials told the House Armed Services Committee. Humvees have been loaded with as much armor as they can carry. "We are at the 98-percent point. We can't put any more armor on these things," said Marine Brig. Gen. William...

A USA Today Pentagon correspondent, Tom Squitieri, resigned under pressure today after the paper learned he had lifted quotes from another newspaper for a front-page story and used several other quotes, without attribution, that were cut during the editing process. In a March 28 piece on the Army falling behind in ordering armored Humvees for Iraq, Squitieri quoted Brian Hart of Bedford, Mass., whose son was killed in the war. The same quote appeared, word for word, in the Indianapolis Star in May 2004: "My son called me the week before he was killed. He said they were getting shot...

The U.S. Navy has directed roughly $28 million to support a "Manhattan-like" project to defend military personnel against improvised explosive devices (IED), including realigning 10% of the baseline budget, and 75 scientists, from the Office of Naval Research, the chief of naval research said March 24.Rear Adm. Jay Cohen told the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space 2005 exposition in Washington that $15 million in fiscal 2005 ONR resources have been devoted to counter-IED research and development, along with another $12 million elsewhere in the Navy going to fund grants to universities and laboratories.Specific focus areas include robots, IED electronic countermeasures, X-ray systems...

The Army is baffled by a recent spate of vehicle accidents in Iraq - many of them rollovers involving armored Humvees - that have claimed more than a dozen lives this year. One key concern: Soldiers lack the skills to handle the heavier Humvees and are losing control as they speed through ambush areas before insurgents detonate roadside bombs. "An individual feels that if he goes faster he can avoid that threat," says Lt. Col. Michael Tarutani, an Army official tracking the accidents. "But now he's exceeded, first, maybe his capabilities, and then maybe the speed for those conditions." In...

Current model is out of date for today's warfare. The new transport will be more drivable, efficient. The Humvee is not cutting it. Designed for a different era and a different kind of war, the military's beleaguered flagship truck is starting to look like the Edsel of Iraq. Much of the problem was lack of foresight. The Humvee comes in an armored version, but military leaders initially saw little need for it, and the Bush administration did not bet on a prolonged insurgency in Iraq.Now that roadside bombs have become a weapon of choice, every Humvee rolling off the line...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blasted NBC's "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert on Sunday for selectively editing an exchange he had in December with a National Guardsman who complained that his unit's vehicles weren't armored. "That was unfair and it was selectively taking out two sentences from a long exchange," the Pentagon chief complained. "And when you suggested that that's how I answered that question, that is factually wrong." Story Continues Below Russert had just aired a clip of the now infamous exchange between his guest and National Guardsman Specialist Thomas Wilson, where Wilson asked during a town hall...

Embed-Edd: Evening Update, 1/24 Posted By: Edd_Hendee Editor's Note: KSEV morning talkshow host Edd Hendee is spending two weeks embedded with Marine units in Iraq. LoneStarTimes.com will provide immediate coverage of his journey whenever updates drop into our email box. To read earlier segments, click here. Monday Jan 24 The winter weather in Iraq is constantly changing. In 6 days I had seen sunny warm days, cold nights, hard rain, fog, wind, low clouds, and misty rain. So a sandstorm was the next step I guess. The trip from Al Asad to Haditha Dam to link up with the 1/23...

YUMA, Ariz., Jan. 19 - Under a hot desert sun this week near the Mexican border, Col. Robert Groller watched a transport truck with a prototype suspension system speed across an off-road course. Colonel Groller, one of the Army officers who oversees Humvees and larger transport trucks, was in the middle of the Army's Yuma Proving Ground, a sprawling expanse of desert larger than Rhode Island. He got right to the point. Turning to a group of civilians and officers, he asked them why this truck would be worth spending more money on. "I get bombarded by contractors all the...

Providing armor plating to the military is a highly competitive business, officials said. The lack of protection on many vehicles has been an important issue for the forces in Iraq, and became front-page news in recent months, after a soldier in Kuwait asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why US troops had to look through landfills to salvage armor for Humvees heading to Baghdad. His response, that the Defense Department was adding the plating as quickly as it could be produced, was disputed by several manufacturers.

Humvee history There has been much made about the controversy regarding the HMMWV (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle - or Humvee) and its supposed lack of armor. The HMMWV was introduced into the Army in 1985 and was designed to be a light tactical vehicle and replace several outdated Army vehicles. Among these were the quarter-ton Jeep, M718A1 ambulance and other such vehicles. There were about 11 variants to the vehicle, but none was designed to be an armored "tank." Later, soldiers used them in ways that the original design didn't take into consideration. The always adaptable soldiers then made...

With all the talk about not enough armor for the HUMVEE's and the lethality of the IED's against our vehicles, I think that maybe the DoD should examine what we currently use against what would be the best equipment for us to have. It is very easy for myself, or any of us to play armchair general and debate the merits of the vehicles used by our armed forces. The HUMVEE has become a household word for most Americans, and more and more people are learning about the Stryker, M1-A2, and Bradley Fighting Vehicle due to the coverage from Iraq....

Rightwingnews.com asks was the un-armored Humvee story a hoax?

About Those Un-Armored Humvees This press conference by Major General Stephen Speakes and several other officers, which took place on Wednesday, is worth reading in its entirety. The purpose of the press conference was to address the issue of "un-armored" vehicles that was raised by a National Guardsman in a question directed to Donald Rumsfeld a week or so ago. The overall impression I get is that the Army is responding appropriately to the risks posed by improvised explosive devices, and there is basically no story here. The facts regarding the Guardsman's own unit also appear to be quite different...

Wheeled vehicle ballistic armor protection (sec. 112) The committee recommends a provision that would add $610.0 million in Other Procurement, Army (OPA), for the procurement of up-armored high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWV) in sufficient quantities to acquire such vehicles up to a rate of 450 vehicles per month and for the procurement of add-on ballisticarmor protection for medium and heavy wheeled vehicles. The $610.0 million would be in addition to the $315.0 million increase in OPA for up-armored HMMWVs (UAH) the committee recommended elsewhere in this report. The provision will provide the Secretary of the Army with the flexibility...

December 15, 2004 - The battle over armor. After the televised bitch slap of Don Rumsfeld last week over the lack of armor for Humvees, I have been thinking about what that soldier said. Lets face it, the Army, like all government agencies is a bureaucracy. This is not to say the everyone at the DoD isn't taking their job seriously, but change is not made on the fly, and the Army thoroughly studies, tests, re-tests and summarized before doing anything. We cannot expect new armor that will protect against the variety of roadside bombs to be finalized in a...