GUARD’S ARMOR STILL SHORTCHANGED

It’s been nearly two years since the build-​​up to the Iraq war began. And still, the U.S. national guards­men and reservists serv­ing in Iraq don’t have the armor they need to pro­tect their trucks, the Times reports.

When the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois National Guard was prepar­ing to leave for Iraq in February, rel­a­tives of the sol­diers offered to pay to weld steel plates on the unit’s trucks to pro­tect against road­side bombs. The Army told them not to, because it would pro­vide bet­ter pro­tec­tion in Iraq, rel­a­tives said.
Seven months later, many of the company’s trucks still have no armor, sol­diers and rel­a­tives said, despite run­ning some of the most dan­ger­ous mis­sions in Iraq…
There are plans to pro­duce armor kits for at least 2,806 medium-​​weight trucks, but as of Sept. 17, only 385 of the kits had been pro­duced and sent to Iraq. Armor kits were also planned for at least 1,600 heavy­weight trucks, but as of mid-​​September just 446 of these kits were in Iraq. The Army is also look­ing into devel­op­ing ways to armor truck cabs quickly, and has ordered 700 armored Humvees with spe­cial weapons plat­forms to pro­tect convoys.

Right here, these are the costs of Don Rumsfeld’s shenani­gans with the defense bud­get. By putting off fund­ing for the basics our sol­diers need to stay alive into a “sup­ple­men­tal” bud­get request, Rumsfeld is indi­rectly con­tribut­ing to the deaths of American troops. It’s wrong. And, what’s more, it’s the type of fis­cal sleight-​​of-​​hand that Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, promised Congress wouldn’t be done.

This years bud­get seeks to apply the prin­ci­ple of hon­est assess­ments of what it will take to do the job, or what we call real­is­tic cost­ing. One of the unfor­tu­nate con­se­quences of ask­ing the mil­i­tary to do more than they really have the funds for is not only things like defer­ring real prop­erty main­te­nance, but under­es­ti­mat­ing the cost of fly­ing hours in the hope that you will get a sup­ple­men­tal
We have tried in this bud­get, though, to get hon­est esti­mates of costs, and a sig­nif­i­cant part of that $18 bil­lion increase is sim­ply to get us to hon­est bud­get­ing and a bud­get that does not require a sup­ple­men­tal in the year 2002. Indeed, we hope with this 2001 sup­ple­men­tal, which I hope is on the verge of being passed, that we will put behind us the kind of sup­ple­men­tal bud­get­ing that became a process that was not based on true antic­i­pated needs.

THERE’S MORE: “It will be a year or more, before new plants pro­duc­ing Kevlar, Twaron, Spectra, Boron Carbide, Silicon Carbide and other body and vehi­cle armor mate­ri­als can meet the vital need for pro­tec­tion under fire. Men are dying wait­ing for sup­ply to catch up with demand,” Russell Seitz notes in a Tech Central Station arti­cle. So let’s get our friends in Europe and Asia to pick up the slack.

Few of our erst­while allies have sent troops to Iraq, but all of them have inven­to­ries of bul­let­proof vests, hel­mets, and armor pan­els. Some of it will be ugly, and some ill fit­ting, but it is not wanted for its looks. Turning tough raw mate­ri­als into armor takes a long time. But if the armor that sits unused by their forces were sent to Iraq today, it could be pro­tect­ing the lives of tens of thou­sands of Americans — and Iraqi’s serv­ing in harm’s way tomor­row.
Much of the pro­duc­tion of these advanced mate­ri­als by non-​​combatant nations is presently going into sport­ing goods-​​from biker’s hel­mets to surf­boards and skis. NATO and for­mer SEATO nations rep­re­sent most of this pro­duc­tion, and offer­ing to pro­vide it on a pri­or­ity basis to pro­duc­ers of mil­i­tary pro­tec­tive gear would be more than a wel­come ges­ture, it would be a lit­eral life­saver. The abun­dance of less crit­i­cal mod­ern mate­ri­als would assure that civil­ian goods man­u­fac­ture would continue.

November 1st, 2004 | Armor | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.