NEWSWEEK: 1/​4 OF G.I. DEATHS FROM ARMOR LACK

Almost a quar­ter of the coali­tion com­bat deaths in Iraq could have been pre­vented — if the Pentagon had both­ered to invest in fully armor­ing its vehi­cles. That’s the damn­ing con­clu­sion of a story in Monday’s Newsweek.

As Iraq’s lib­er­a­tion has turned into a daily grind of low-​​intensity com­bat and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grudg­ingly raises troop lev­els many sol­diers who are there say the Pentagon is fail­ing to pro­tect them with the best tech­nol­ogy America has to offer…
A break­down of the casu­alty fig­ures sug­gests that many U.S. deaths and wounds in Iraq sim­ply did not need to occur. According to an unof­fi­cial study by a defense con­sul­tant that is now cir­cu­lat­ing through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or impro­vised explo­sive devices, while 48 oth­ers died in rocket-​​propelled-​​grenade attacks. Almost all those sol­diers were killed while in unpro­tected vehi­cles, which means that per­haps one in four of those killed in com­bat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study sug­gested. Thousands more who were unpro­tected have suf­fered griev­ous wounds, such as the loss of limbs.
The mil­i­tary is 1,800 armored Humvees short of its own stated require­ment for Iraq. Despite des­per­ate attempts to sup­ply bolt-​​on armor, many sol­diers still ride around in light-​​skinned Humvees. This is a latter-​​day jeep that, as Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assis­tant divi­sion com­man­der of the 1st Armored Division, con­ceded in an inter­view, “was never designed to do this … It was never antic­i­pated that we would have things like road­side bombs in the vast num­ber that we’ve had here.” One newly arrived offi­cer, Lt. Col. Timothy Meredith, says his bat­tal­ion had just under­gone months of train­ing to rid itself of “tank habits” and get used to the Humvees. “We arrived here expect­ing to do a lot of civil works,” says Meredith.
According to inter­nal Pentagon e-​​mails, the Humvee sit­u­a­tion is so bad that the head of the U.S. Army Forces Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, has urged that more of the new Stryker com­bat vehi­cles be put into the field. Sources say that the Army brass back in Washington have not yet con­curred with that. The prob­lem: the rubber-​​tire Strykers are thin-​​skinned and don’t maneu­ver through dan­ger­ous streets as well as the fast-​​pivoting, treaded Bradley. According to a well-​​placed Defense Department source, the Army is so wor­ried about the Stryker’s vul­ner­a­bil­ity that most of the 300-​​vehicle brigade cur­rently in Iraq has been deployed up in the safer Kurdish region around Mosul. “Any fur­ther south, and the Army was afraid the Arabs would light them up,” he said.

THERE’S MORE: Phil Carter has a dyna­mite story in Slate on how impos­si­bly far the American mil­i­tary is being stretched. Key point:

Even if the order [to send an extra 30,000 sol­diers to Iraq] were cut right now, fresh divi­sions of troops would take months to get to over­seas, mean­ing today’s stretched force will have to put down the Iraqi revolt, restore secu­rity, and con­duct the June 30 power han­dover with­out rein­force­ments. The U.S. mil­i­tary remains the most lethal fight­ing force ever fielded, but one year in Iraq has chewed it up, cre­at­ing global short­ages of man­power, equip­ment, and spare parts that are not eas­ily relieved. (all emphases mine)

AND MORE: Gen. Ellis’ memo, ask­ing for more Strykers to be hur­ried into Iraq and Afghanistan is here. “Commanders in the field are report­ing to me that the Up-​​Armored [Humvee] is not pro­vid­ing the solu­tion the Army hoped to achieve,” he says.

April 26th, 2004 | Armor | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.