June 12, 2006
Armor A Net Negative?
One of the local radio stations ran a fundraising drive to supply parts to armor Humvees in Iraq. Well guess what --
the armor may have done as much (if not more) harm as good.
Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees, intended to protect U.S. troops, have made the vehicles more likely to roll over, killing and injuring soldiers in Iraq, a newspaper reported.
"I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.
Since the start of the war, Congress and the Army have spent tens of millions of dollars on armor for the Humvee fleet in Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.
That armor -- much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati, Ohio -- has shielded soldiers from harm.
But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.
Do we need to replace this workhorse of the US military with a more stable platform?
Posted by: Greg at
01:03 PM
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Greg, The HMMWV is an extremely stable platform when equipped and used for it's intended purpose. It is so much superior to the vehicle it replaced, the M151 series Jeep, that it has been used for missions never intended. The basic problem is trying to save money by armoring a utility vehicle which was never meant to be an armored personnel carrier. That's what the Bradley, and to a lesser extent the M113 and M114 of past days accomplished. But the cost of an actual APC is so much higher than the Humvee plus armor that the Army has, in my opinion, scrimped where it should have spent. Any time you add the weight of armor to a fairly high centered vehicle, you're going to have problems. Add to that the top speed capability of the Humvee, and it's maneuverability, to young drivers operating on adrenalin you're going to have a high accident rate. "Proper vehicle for the job". Get some more armor over there, and quit trying to turn the Humvee into what it's not.
Posted by: John at Tue Jun 13 03:20:18 2006 (fqLE6)
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