GENERAL’S UP-​​ARMOR PLEA IGNORED

For more than a year, Maj. Gen. William Webster, the head of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, had been ask­ing his bosses for the money to toughen up his armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers. And for more than a year, his requests went nowhere.
Then, in December, Tennessee National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson scorched Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not armor­ing up American vehi­cles. Within days, Inside the Pentagon notes, Gen. Webster’s long-​​ignored plea was finally answered.

Websters request for addi­tional armor for his M113 [per­son­nel car­ri­ers] had lan­guished at Army head­quar­ters since October 2003, a month after he took com­mand of the 3rd ID, as it is called… The require­ment for up-​​armored M113s was just one of more than 50 oper­a­tional needs state­ments Webster sub­mit­ted at the time…
Initially, the 3rd ID flagged other require­ments as more crit­i­cal than the M113 up-​​armor effort, sources said. The divi­sion was request­ing hun­dreds more radios, machine guns and trucks with the first pri­or­ity being to shoot, move and com­mu­ni­cate when they returned to Iraq, said one Army insider.
But field com­man­ders became increas­ingly uneasy last sum­mer as casu­al­ties mounted in Iraq from ever more sophis­ti­cated insur­gent tac­tics. M113s in Iraq were becom­ing vul­ner­a­ble to road­side bombs and mines, Army offi­cials say. Its light armor can stop pis­tol and rifle fire and shrap­nel, but thats it, said one.
The 3rd ID com­man­der began push­ing in earnest last August to up-​​armor his per­son­nel car­ri­ers, accord­ing to sources and doc­u­ments. His quest met con­sid­er­able oppo­si­tion at Army head­quar­ters and at the ser­vices Forces Command, where senior deputies argued the M113s exist­ing light armor allowed it agility in urban ter­rain, and said it should be suf­fi­cient against an insur­gency that lacks tra­di­tional armor of its own, sources said.
The three-​​quarter-​​ton armor that gets plated onto the humvees, for exam­ple, lim­its its car­ry­ing abil­ity and puts addi­tional strain on the trans­mis­sion, accord­ing to ser­vice offi­cials…
In mid-​​October, Webster offi­cially requested that Army head­quar­ters in Washington approve a $20 mil­lion armor upgrade for about 450 M113 troop car­ri­ers… In view of the esti­mated $1 bil­lion being spent for Iraq oper­a­tions each month, pro­po­nents of the up-​​armoring view it as a rel­a­tive bar­gain. The M113 — essen­tially a box on top of its tracked chas­sis — is eas­ier to armor-​​plate than the humvee and can be done at one-​​fifth the cost…
At this time, the divi­sion does not have a viable mix of active and pas­sive add-​​on armor sys­tems for its com­bat and com­bat sup­port vehi­cles that will help pre­vent casu­al­ties and losses, [Webster] wrote, cit­ing an increas­ing sniper, road­side bomb, impro­vised explo­sive device, mor­tar, rocket pro­pelled grenade, anti-​​tank mis­sile, machine gun and small arms threat in the­ater…
Webster sought deliv­ery of all add-​​on armor sys­tems [no later than] 15 January 2005, [a] let­ter states, [when the 3rd ID would be return­ing to Iraq]…
It was not until a late-​​December meet­ing at the Pentagon that the 3rd ID was assured Army sup­port for get­ting up-​​armored M113s, sources said. The can do atti­tude of a new head of force devel­op­ment at the Armys G-​​8 pro­grams office, Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes, may have played a role in the shift, accord­ing to some offi­cials.
This crazy non­sense is because there was an unwill­ing­ness to admit three things: the Iraqi insur­gency is a rebel­lion against the U.S. mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, it was steadily wors­en­ing, and U.S. sol­diers were at seri­ous risk in wheeled vehi­cles, says retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, a for­mer armored cav­alry offi­cer who led troops in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

THERE’S MORE: The num­ber of troops on the ground mat­ters more than what kind of vehi­cle they ride around in, argues this Knight-​​Ridder story (via Steve Gilliard). Take the Iraqi city of Mosul, for exam­ple, where 5,000 Stryker Brigade troops replaced 20,000 from the 101st Airborne.

The men of the 101st moved around Mosul in Humvees but sus­tained few casu­al­ties, even though some of their Humvees lacked armor.
Conditions in Mosul, how­ever, have got­ten worse since the [more heavily-​​armored] Strykers arrived.
Visiting the town of Hammam al Alil, south of the city, Lt. Col. Todd McCaffrey said the area had become a “plan­ning, bed­room com­mu­nity for ter­ror­ist cells “that coor­di­nate attacks in Mosul…“
“We spend a lot of time try­ing to sep­a­rate the pop­u­lace from the insur­gency,” said McCaffrey, who’s with a unit of the 25th Infantry Division that deployed to Iraq in late September. “Obviously, when you go from the 20,000 that the 101st had to 5,000, there’s a clear change.“
A steady stream of Army units has been sent to rein­force the troops in Mosul dur­ing the past two months, increas­ing the American pres­ence to some 12,000 sol­diers, accord­ing to Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the com­man­der of the Stryker brigade.
“You win this thing with boots on the ground, not by throw­ing more vehi­cles at the place,” said 1st Lt. Ed Mikkelsen of the Stryker Brigade.

January 21st, 2005 | Armor | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.