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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...

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...

Thursday, Lieutenant General R. Steven Whitcomb,Commander, Third Army "Patton's Own," and Coalition Forces Land Component Command, answered some questions, regarding the armoring of vehicles in Iraq, including humvess. These are some of the facts the three star General shared with the press: "Congress has provided in the neighborhood of about $1.2 billion since last year strictly to armor our vehicles" "Up-armored humvees... is a vehicle that is produced in a factory back in the United States and it essentially gives you protection, both glass and on the armament on the side, front, rear, sides, top and bottom. If you'll think...

One reason for the Iraq armor shortage: The military is too thorough Source: OpinionJournal, 12/14/2004 Hunter's Gun Truck BY BRENDAN MINITER Tuesday, December 14, 2004 12:01 a.m. A few weeks ago Rep. Duncan Hunter handed me a reason that has largely escaped media attention on why our troops in Iraq don't have all the armor protection they need. It was a piece of ballistic glass, roughly the size of a small dinner plate. But as it was four sheets of glass glued together, it was also very thick and extremely heavy. But I peered through it, and it was...

S.2401 Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 SEC. 112. UP-ARMORED HIGH MOBILITY MULTI-PURPOSE WHEELED VEHICLES OR WHEELED VEHICLE BALLISTIC ADD-ON ARMOR PROTECTION. (a) AMOUNT- Of the amount authorized to be appropriated for the Army for fiscal year 2005 for other procurement under section 101(5), $610,000,000 shall be available for both of the purposes described in subsection (b) and may be used for either or both of such purposes. (b) PURPOSES- The purposes referred to in subsection (a) are as follows: (1) The procurement of up-armored high mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicles at a rate up to 450 such...

See the following articles: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_10.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/203200_armor10.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 5,900 were shipped from factory with armor 9,000 upgraded with kits in theater TODAY 77% of Humvees in Iraq are armored 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,...