Up Your Armor III

Joe Galloway (of "We Were Soldiers" fame) gives a great overview of the realities behind the recurring "armor shortage" story. Galloway (disclaimer: we've never met) is a reporter whose views I disagree with frequently and respect tremendously, but his report on the background reinforces several of the concepts introduced here and here last week. Excerpts follow, but as always, read the whole thing.

...the guerrilla war quickly escalated. U.S. forces in Iraq quickly discovered that the humvee - a light transport vehicle designed more than 15 years ago to replace the old World War II jeep - worked better than anything else they had on hand in terms of maneuverability and durability.

Unfortunately, it had zero protection built into it for the soldiers riding in it. The requests for humvees built with armor at the factory, and for add-on armor kits, grew from a few for Special Operations forces at the end of summer 2003 to 400 in November 2003 and more in months following. The total request, scheduled to be met in March, is for about 22,000 armored humvees.

Retired Col. Gary Motsek, a senior civilian official for the Army Materiel Command, said that given early shortages of a critical high-tensile steel and continuing shortages of bulletproof glass for windshields and door windows, it's little short of a miracle that the escalating demand has been met within about a year.

"The frustration I have is people asking: 'Why wasn't this on the shelf?' This involves a change of tactics, a change of the fight," Motsek said. "When the mission changed and the war changed, the armoring of the humvee became priority number one."

Motsek said that the design for an armor add-on kit was sketched out over a weekend, and the metal was cut and attached to a humvee within 10 days. That humvee was tested immediately for protection not only against small-arms fire but also heavier weapons. It took only four months from the first request in August 2003 to the beginning of production of the armor kits - a process, Motsek contended, that normally takes years.

A year ago, the steel needed for the armor kits wasn't manufactured anywhere in the United States, and the output of the single plant making bulletproof glass was 15 windshields a month.

Today there are several American sources for the special steel, and the plant making ballistic glass has ramped up production to 500 windshields a month. It will be joined in February by a second plant also capable of making 500 windshields a month.

The Armor Holdings plant that turns out new humvees with full armor protection has, in that same year, boosted production from 50 a month to 450 a month. Army Materiel Command officials said there were discussions about Armor Holdings' offer Thursday to increase production of the armored humvee from 450 to 550 per month. They expressed surprise that such an increase might be possible.

The "we can increase production" quote has been parroted repeatedly in the mainstream media with little background or additional information provided. It's good to see someone willing to put a more complete story out for the tax-paying public; it's no surprise that Galloway is the man that did so.