The Long War Journal: Armor Up, Up and Away!

Written by Bill Roggio on December 10, 2004 8:24 AM to The Long War Journal

Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2004/12/armor_up_up_and_1.php

The news of Secretary Rumsfeld’s dressing down during the Secretary’s Call in Kuwait brings much joy to the hearts of the antiwar crowd. The soldier’s brow-beating of Secretary Rumsfeld about the lack of armor on vehicles and accusations of preference given to active over guard/reserve components reinforces all of the stereotypes of the antiwar crowd: an uncaring, incompetent and corrupt administration indifferent to the needs of soldiers; the lack of planning; the inability of the administration to adapt to the situation on the ground. A closer inspection of the facts at hand demonstrates these assumptions are incorrect.

A commander’s call (where soldiers can speak directly to the chain of command) is an event typically inundated with shocking, tactless or seemingly stupid questions. Froggy (the SEAL kind, not the French kind) has some amusing anecdotes from his personal experiences at a Chief of Naval Operations call well worth reading. Soldiers are constantly unhappy with the equipment on hand (rightfully so in many cases), and improvising using local procurement is a time honored procedure in the military. The soldiers that are producing their own armor for their vehicles should be commended for their ingenuity and resourcefulness. Supply and equipment problems are nothing new to armies.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments on an army having to “fight what they have” may seem cynical, but he is correct (albeit tactless, as is his style). Should we have not fought in Iraq until the conditions were understood perfectly and all supply needs were resolved? This is a formula for inaction as perfection is unachievable, and it discounts the constant changing face of warfare and an enemy’s capability to adapt its tactics and weapons to the battlefield conditions.

Interestingly enough, the soldiers were coached to ask these questions by the reporter embedded with the unit, Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. There are questions about the ethical nature of Mr. Pitts coaching these soldiers to ask embarrassing questions they may not have asked on their own. But an even bigger question is what did Mr. Pitts do to investigate the issue of up-armoring military vehicles heading into Iraq? In the email he sent to the staff of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, he gloats about directing a New York Times reporter to the Internet to look for his past article:

The NY Times reporter asked me to email him the stories I had already done on it, but I said he could search for them himself on the Internet and he better not steal any of my lines.

Perhaps Mr. Pitts would have been well served to investigate the status of the program to up-armor combat vehicles en route to Iraq as well as the program providing armor kits to vehicles in theater. He is a reporter, after all, with numerous research tools at his disposal. He could even have used the Internet to do his research. This is what he would have found (I found much more but excerpted these three articles for the sake of brevity).

On May 7, 2004 the Senate allocated over $1.2 billion to fund new armored Humvees as well as kits for preexisting Humvees without armor. On October 29, 2004, the Defense Department reported the development and delivery of new armored Humvees is close to completion. Over 60% of up-armored Humvees have been delivered. There is no special preference given to service branch or unit status (active, reserve or guard).

“Nearly 5,100 up-armored Humvees have been delivered to Army and Marine Corps units in Iraq, with another 724 on ships bound for the theater, Motsek said.

There, the up-armored Humvees are being issued to units based on their missions — regardless whether they're Army or Marine Corps, or active or reserve component, Motsek emphasized. "These factors have no bearing whatsoever on who's getting them," he said. "It's all based on the missions, and who has the greatest need for them," he said.

U.S. Central Command's current requirement for up-armored Humvees, one that has continued to increase, is for 8,105 up-armored Humvees in Iraq.”

The Army is also working to produce add-on kits for Humvees, with over 60% of the add-on armor kits for preexisting Humvees that were not the armored versions. Suppliers are working hard to meet the demand.

“Today, Army employees at four depots, two arsenals and an ammunition plant are working three shifts a day, producing the Army-designed kits to keep up with demand. Motsek said they've produced 8,800 add-on-armor kits, 8,700 of which have already been installed in vehicles in Iraq. O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt has provided 289 more kits, he said. Yet despite the progress, Motsek said employees at production facilities keep their eye on the demand for more kits. The current requirement is for 13,872 kits.”

The Defense Department is not only working to up-armor Humvees, other vehicles are on the list to be upgraded, including the M939 (December 4, 2004).

Like the lighter-weight Humvees, the M939 is not armored, and with insurgents in the war-torn country increasing their attacks on Americans and Iraqis alike, the U.S. Army is trying to better protect its fleet of vehicles.

As a result, the Arsenal will be adding a third shift in its fabrication and machining areas for the first time since spring, when work on armoring Humvees slowed a bit.

“We are expanding the work force and we’ll be working three shifts in all of the areas that are engaged,” said Bill Peiffer, the chief of the business development division at the Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center.

An initial order for 1,150 M939 cab kits has already been placed with the Ground Systems Industrial Enterprise, which is headquartered on Arsenal Island and oversees a half-dozen other arsenals and depots around the country. A total of 660 of the units will be made at the Arsenal. However, that figure is likely to increase. Since placing the initial order, the Army has hiked its request for the cab kits to 6,000, said Fred Smith, the deputy director of the ground systems industrial group. The Arsenal could get half of that work.

The Pentagon has successfully implemented the process to bypass normal ordering process for high priority items (from the Humvee article linked above). It should be noted that when the Pentagon implements these outside of the box solutions, they usually are castigated for the results, as the hyperventilation over Halliburton demonstrates.

Within six weeks of putting pen to paper to come up with a design, Motsek said the Army had the first kits in hand, ready for shipment to Iraq. In contrast, the normal procurement process takes five to seven years.

The soldiers’ concerns about vehicle armor are valid and we should demand that our men and women going into battle have every resource needed to fight, win and survive. But unfortunately, just as the story with the shooting of the Iraqi insurgent in the Fallujah mosque, the concerns about armoring vehicles in the Iraqi theater were not put into the proper context. While there is no doubt that work needs to be done to increase the production side of the supply chain, it is unfair to characterize the Army, Department of Defense, Secretary Rumsfeld or President Bush as blind to the reality on the ground.

Critics are focusing on the wrong problem, but the critics tend to oppose the Iraq war and are using the armor issue as an excuse to question its legitimacy as well as the leadership of the Bush administration. If they were really concerned about the troops, they would push for the Department of Defense to contract out the armor kits, vehicles and any other warfighting material needed to more businesses. But increasing production would increase the role of the Left's greatly feared and widely despised "military-industrial complex", and we certainly can't have any of that.