LAT: Soldiers Get Extra Layer of Defense ( Iraq vehicle armor)

[DeepModem Mom]

Soldiers Get Extra Layer of Defense
Humvee crews are still not out of danger, but new protective plating provides a little more security on the hostile roadways of Iraq.

By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer


....More than two years into the Iraq conflict, most of the light utility vehicles securing supply routes and escorting convoys are now armored to withstand the kind of roadside blasts that killed at least 400 soldiers in Humvees before the Pentagon ordered the improved protection.

Two-thirds of the nearly 6,000 Humvees deployed across Iraq are factory-armored, coming off an Ohio assembly line with an extra 2,000 pounds of protective plating and bulletproof windows, and the Iraq mission has priority for getting new ones. With some members of Congress complaining that the work has been too slow, about 300 more vehicles are being upgraded each month by private contractors at bases in Iraq and Kuwait.

U.S. troops using Humvees and other vehicles are still not out of danger. On the highways, streets and alleys that are the battlefields of this conflict, soldiers traveling in the vehicles never intended for front-line combat now face suicide drivers and more powerful bombs capable of penetrating new defenses.

This week alone, seven American troops have been killed in roadside bombings in Baghdad and Samarra.

Almost every day, a suicide bomber or insurgents with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have attacked Humvees of the 108th Military Police Company to which Giordano, Michels and about 180 others belong....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-humvees29jul29,0,6158492.story?coll=la-home-world

[Porcupine]

1. You cannot rule from inside a tank, only destroy.

The U.S. cannot expect to get anywhere in Iraq as long as tactics center around driving around unfamiliar roads in armored vehicles.

It's just ends up being a slow motion game of space invaders. There are ways to crack even the heaviest armor you could possibly put on a Humvee. I'm quite sure that the information is being distributed widely in Iraq even now.

[KeepItReal]

2. Operative words: "vehicles never intended for front-line combat"

That sums it up.

Rumsfeld's smaller, lighter Military was not meant for what he and Bush & Co. has it doing now.

[truthisfreedom]

3. what the hell are hum-vees good for besides taking up two lanes?

racing generals across non-combat zones at high speed in style?

[teryang]

4. The guerillas have already reacted to the upgrade by

...planting larger and more effective IEDs. Does it ever occur to anyone the amount of resources necessary to put organized countermeasures like that into effect? We aren't fighting just the Iraqi resistance, we are fighting the pan Islamic resistance to forcible western occupation. Anyone who thinks that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are our allies is living in dreamland. Where do people think the resistance resources come from?

What incompetent thinks this armor will stop the attrition? Does it stop the hemorrhaging of lives and HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars? What could have been done to advance energy research, development and production with these funds? What could have been done to improve our relations with the Islamic world? What could have been to improve our trade position or our declining standard of living? How many lives and limbs could have been saved by avoiding the war? The armaments-energy-financial corporate alliance (The Bush Dynasty) that took over our government by coup d'etat undid the Constitution for the personal gain of power elite shareholders.