Commanders plead for armor

Commanders have requested to nearly double the number of armored utility vehicles in Iraq to 8,000, in yet another shift in equipment needs to keep pace with an insurgency that continues to strike troops.

Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee told of the newest requisition during a recent hourlong interview with The Washington Times.

It is the commanders’ job in the field to devise the tactics to defeat an enemy made up of foreign terrorists, Saddam Hussein loyalists and criminals freed by the fallen dictator.

Back at the Pentagon, it has been Mr. Brownlee’s job to make sure they have the guns, ammunition and equipment.

Perhaps in Army history there has never been a war whose character changed so quickly and required a whole new set of tactics and equipment — within weeks.

“Suddenly, a different ballgame,” Mr. Brownlee said.

U.S. war planners never foresaw that the fall of Baghdad would spawn a new enemy able to attack soldiers and Marines no matter their battlefield position. Rear-line support troops became just as vulnerable as front-line ones.

That meant the Army suddenly had a need for armored Humvee utility vehicles, armored trucks, more body armor and huge shipments of spare parts.

The problem became so acute by December that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the top commander in Iraq, sent an urgent letter to the Army saying, “I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with [readiness] rates this low.” Soldiers were being killed by the score by roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devises (IEDs), that ripped through a Humvee’s thin plating.

Within weeks, Mr. Brownlee convened a summit at the Pentagon of defense contractors who design and build armor.

In February, he traveled to AM General, which makes the ubiquitous Humvee, and to O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, which makes armor. He got the chief executives in one room.

“I told them to show me the fastest rate at which they can build these things,” Mr. Brownlee recalled.

AM General responded by increasing production of “up-armored” Humvees (as opposed to “thin skin” Humvees) from 150 to 450 a month.

By this fall, the Army had put 5,000 in Iraq, only to learn a few weeks ago that commanders had upped the need to 8,000.

“We had soldiers killed by IEDs in up-armored vehicles,” the acting secretary said. “If they make them powerful enough they can blow up just about anything. But they clearly have a better chance” in an armored one.

Story Continues →