Underarmored in Iraq Posted by Michael Signer

From Judd Legum at ThinkProgress, an upsetting disclosure:  the Marines killed on Wednesday were traveling in "lightly armored" Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAAV's).  While AAAV's are more heavily armored than the notoriously underarmed Humvee's, they're still not secure enough.

The Marines are doing the best with what they have.  But it's not clear why the upper echelons of our military command -- beginning with Donald Rumsfeld (he of the deathless phrase, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," and, of course, the President -- haven't done a better job of equipping all of our fighting force in Iraq with superior vehicles for the threat of roadside bombs.

The problem is systemic, not episodic.  The Marine Corps Inspector General recently concluded that the Marines' preparation is in desperate straits.  As the Boston Globe reported:

Marine Corps units fighting in some of the most dangerous terrain in Iraq don't have enough weapons, communications gear, or properly outfitted vehicles, according to an investigation by the Marine Corps' inspector general provided to Congress yesterday.

The report . . . says the estimated 30,000 Marines in Iraq need twice as many heavy machine guns, more fully protected armored vehicles, and more communications equipment to operate in a region the size of Utah.

I hope that the President ponders this during his 5-week vacation in Crawford.  I hope he thinks about armor on the Humvee undercarriages when he's clearing brush for the cameras.  I hope when he throws a bone to Barnie, he considers how a bomb rips through the side panels.  When he's grilling by the pool, I hope he wonders about how the torn flesh and broken limbs stems directly from his failure to plan the war's aftermath, and to equip our troops for the mission he sent them on.

Comments

[Lane Brody]

Mr Signer the problem with citing newspaper articles as primary source information on the US Military is that very few reporters have the slightest idea what they are talking about in this regard. The entire lack of armored vehicles "story" has never been prefaced by the little bit of reality that abscent a few hundred armored humvees all the US Army soft skinned trucks were exactly that- non armored trucks. One can of course monday morning quarterback that the Army could have created the tens of thousands or armored vehicles it now has a bit faster but frankly what's the point? Another little detail that is missed is that shortly after one adds a ton of armor to a humvee said humvee is destroyed as the suspension just dies. Moreover, outside of a combat zone having an armored truck is far more expensive than a non armored truck for a whole host of reasons. Long term the Army is looking at new purpose built trucks with a beefy enough suspension to handle an armor kit in war but otherwise not have the armor installed to save wear and tear.

The USMC's primary job is to sieze an area near the coast to later be exploited by the Army. Hence they have amphibious assault vehicles that can swim in the ocean and then operate ashore. Doing both requires design compromises. You can't put all the armor one might wish on such a vehicle. The current AAV's the USMC operates are old and currently being replaced by a new vehicle that is much superior but it too might have survived the IED in question.

The reason you go to war with the army you have is due to the years it takes to get major procurement programs throught both the Pentagon and Congress. The above mentioned new USMC AAV program has been around for a very long time. Replacing the Army's current fleet of trucks is going to to take decades- literally. The average age of combat aircraft in the US Military is approaching 30 years. Replacing planes, trucks, ships, etc. takes a very long time.

The USMC by design is a medium weight expeditionary force. They are doing a superb job at a difficult mission in Iraq they are really not supposed to be doing. They have bought some South African designed mine resistant armored vehicles but those things are not a panacea and are extremely vulnerable to other things.

Frankly the whole US Military has done such a good job at dealing with the primary percieved weapons such as the RPG that IED are just about the only effective weapon the insurgent/thug/terrorists have. It's 100% impossible to stop all IED's. Even the most heavily armored main battle tank in the world is toast to a command detonated 500lb bomb.

To blame the President for lack of armored humvees is to fundamentally misunderstand the entire US Military structure. One can blame him for the war and ultimately for all the failures that have happened since. One can oppose the war and blame the President for every death. But blaming the President for lack of armored trucks is obscene as the Army has never had a policy of using many armored trucks since the invention of the truck.

Frankly, it was and is a far more significant problem that the US Army replaced it's M3 Bradley's with humvees in the first place. The entire long proven notion of fighting for information has gone while paradoxically the Army is creating small brigades even more dependant upon information to even operate in combat. There's a story for you. It will not get written because there are few, if any, reporters that understand modern combined arms warfare and the historical importance of recon units and thus they are not mentally equipped to question policy. Thus all we get are stories about what the Pentagon should have bought more of or what they should have bought faster. Contrast this with the normal press story about the Military which is about "waste".

Frankly the next war might see all the mine resistant armored trucks in the new mini-brigade (UA) US Army being used as actual combat vehicles, which they are not and by definition never can be, and thousands of young men dying because the lesson we drew from this war was we needed armored humvees. What we need is more armor, including big heavy tanks and IFV's. There is no real replacement for our tanks- where's the story about that? Where's the press reporting the US Army replacing tanks with FCS is dangerous?

Lane Brody

[rich]

One other note - the most notable recent death count for the Marines came in a 31 ton truck. Which got blown up and over. The charge used would, perhaps, have destroyed an M1A tank. Not many vehicles on earth would have survived.

Just a thought.

[save_the_rusthbelt]

We have plenty of armor - sitting in Texas.

The concept of an "armored Hum-Vee" is just incredibly dumb. We learned all about Hum-Vees as targets in Somalia (Blackhawk Down).

We are misusing the Marines.

We are misusing the Guard and Reserves.

We have turned the Army infantry in MPs, the engineers into infantrymen, etc.

Time to fire Rumsfeld and bring the troops home - we are just delaying an inevitable civil war.

[VJ]

Some of the comments here are a recapitulation of what I had to say in an earlier post [Peacegaming in CA] of a day or so ago. The DailyKos had plenty of material on the same systemic failures of strategy, supply, equipment, planning and tactics. But make no mistake about it. If we had fought WW11 with just 'the Army we had' on Dec. 7, 1941, we would have lost, and badly. We had no real modern tanks, but inside of 2 years, we built 1000's of moderately effective Shermans. Not the best, not the worst, but good enough to get the job done. The most famous story from that war is that of the need for long range fighter escorts for bombing missions over Europe & Japan. A whole generation of fighters was produced inside of 3 years, and the P-51 Mustang was designed and into production inside of 60 days. It was one of the best fighters of the war, helping the final push into the heart of Germany with bombers that made certain that the production capacity of Germany could never expand and was always 'under fire' and damaged & constrained.

Our Real problem here is that the war has NEVER been a high priority to our Dear Leader. Sure, he likes to use the war and it's nifty rhetorical effects to the distinct advantage of the Repug. party, but other than that, the leadership of the party has always been quite clear about it's real priorities. It's been tax cuts first, and corporate welfare for cronies well before any consideration of troops in the field. You could look it up, Tom Delay said it explictly many times. Ditto for VA funding which has been threatened with cuts every year Bush has been in office. They are still incapable of handling the surge in wounded Vets coming back.

So while the caveats that Lance mentions above are no doubt mostly true, by now they are pretty much besides the point. We invented machinery to get the job done in every war, we have been tragically slow and tardy in this one due to the fact that Bush never really wanted to fight it. From Rummy on down they were in deep denial up until just a year ago on even the existence of an 'insurgency'. They did not want reporters to even dare speak it's name. Silly, right?

Silly has lousy and deadly consequences in war. Fantasy and hope are tested hard on battlefields and often found wanting, as they have now. The very fact that Bush and Rummy et. al. had to be essentially shamed into providing up armored Humvees JUST LAST YEAR when caught out by local scavenging Marines (Still scavenging BTW), is a testament and an object lessson on how they wanted to fight this war: on the cheap, and hidden away from the eyes of the American public. Well they msotly got their wish, and by my count 40% of the casualties of the last years worth of IED's are due to their stubborn refusal to look at the conditions on the ground and Adapt to protect our troops. Ditto for the egregious neglect in NOT providing body armor for EVERY damn soldier over there from word 'go'. That was unconscionable, a crime really. And it barely made a ripple bacause it was not seriously covered by the media. They were encouraged to always think of the war as 'last year's story', 'not serious', as in 'major combat operations ended'.

MOST of the troops need 'supplemental' equipment that needs to be shipped from home. Body armor that needed to be bought by mom & dad on their pension money. Shoes and boots to replace the ones that give out prematurely in the desert heat. Dozens of items that the Army never thinks about, let alone the damn missing heavy armor and transport, which is Still totally MIA.

So now that the war is lost, perhaps we might get around to thinking about what needs to be done to protect our sons and daughters, right? Well some folks won't even own up to that. The conditions on the ground dictated a different strategy and new tactics that were needed. The response, at least from the administration is always more denial, evasion, outright lies, and fecklessness and incompetence. Folks this is shaping up to be the greatest foreign policy AND military disaster of our history. We actually DID better in 'Nam. We were more adaptive. (We had more and made much better use of Arty for one). There were actually smarter more experienced Generals who wanted to see it through. Most of the folks there now are thoroughly confused as to why they are there and what the mission is. As well they might be. It changes on a whim.

Make no mistake about it, as ever with this crowd, the brave souls over there are our forgotten step children. They are 'fed' infrequently, seen rarely, cared for intermittently (and mostly only for special occasions), and almost never actually listened to. If they survive they will recall the experience universally as one of wanting. Wanting equipment they had but was unavailable or not working and in insufficient supply. Wanting the protection they never had in ancient vehicles that broke down all too frequently. Wanting better fire support that was over taxed. Wanting better ways of defeating the enemy other than the old 'cowboys and Indians' plan of every occupying force faced with determined opposition.

But no, count me as thinking we need more and better equipment over there now to protect those troops we have. Generational complexity in design need not bar us from coming to grips with the problem either. This is an urgent and serious task, and we should have the President call for Canceling any and all tax cuts to do it. ONLY then would we be able to judge the seriousness of his intent. If we had the will to do it, it could be done. It HAS been done before. At last resort, I'd activate all those damn Soviet era BMD's lying around. They may be in horrible shape, but they'll protect better than a Humvee for most applications.

We need to think hard and fast about this. There needs to be NO excuses for the administration on this front. If we timed the war according to their vaunted WW11 analog, we'd be done and have celebrated VJ day by now. It's time we stopped making silly excuses for rank incompetence. We've done it before, we can do it again. All that's needed is for someone high up in the Bush administration to wake up tomorrow and think 'These lives are truly worthy of our consideration and sacrifice, and are not just for using for our partisan political advantage.' But I won't hold my breath on that one. I'm betting the response we get will be much like the response so far; slow, lacking in seriousness of intent, and completely lacking an understanding of what's needed and required. This is how we lose wars folks, and we're losing this one badly. But on a bright note, the Bush boys think they can milk this debacle for partisan propaganda advantage for the next election cycle. This is obviously only as far as their 'strategic thinking goes'! This way empires end. This way Democracies Die.

Cheers, 'VJ'/JMP

[No that's NOT my real email]

[Gary]

What's criminal though is that we could resupply armor and everything else we would need for this war. We've done it before, we've gone to industry and said we need help, lets make more jobs lets crank this out.

Sure, I know what Rumsfeld means by going to war with the Army you have, but shouldn't we have the best anyway, and shouldn't we be constantly working to make sure it stays that way?

[Arthur]

"The sort of explosives that the insurgents are using today, they'll blow up an amphibious tractor as they did, a 25-ton job. But they would have blown up a Bradley fighting vehicle. They would have done the same thing to our best tank."

-LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR (Ret.)

"You are not ever going to build an armored fighting vehicle that can withstand everything. But can you build armored fighting vehicles for land warfare that can withstand 90 plus percent of the IEDs."

-COL. DOUGLAS MAC GREGOR (RET.)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec05/iraq_8-04.html

[JohnFH]

I'm afraid Michael Signer's comments are more an example of Bush-bashing than fine-grained analysis of Pentagon provisioning of the Armed Forces.

Now perhaps Michael's bashing will win him some Brownie points with the Dem party's powers that be, such that he will be on staff of the next Dem to be elected President. All well and good, but if so, and I hope he learns a lot more about the pitfalls of military planning in general and preparation for the kind of war we are now engaged in than he does now, before that time comes.

After all, the defeatism beloved by types like save the rust belt will not be a live option when that time comes.

[VJ]

So What's the plan Stan...er John? How are YOU going to fix it? Watch more PBS, right? Get any of the 2 opinions offered on that day on the sitch in Iraq? Does this generate Any real or useful suggestions for you to offer?

We Produced weapons to get the job done in each and every other war, so why not this one? What's keeping them from meeting this very REAL need? What kept them from supplying the essential body armor? The Heavy Armor? Sure, now that the insurgency is out of control, they are matching us on the counter strike side. But why did we not fix it as priority # 1 that ALL the damn ammo dumps in the country be decommissioned, blown up, or consolidated into a few well guarded sites? Why did we waste 1200 troops on a worthless WMD snipe hunt for more than a year when our troops were being blown up daily with stuff they could readily find down the street in almost any city neighborhood? If we had the troops to do this from the beginning, we'd have much less needless death and destruction than currently being experienced. Now we're running behind the curve on force protection Because of our strategic and tactical failures to secure these depot sites. Instead of just small arms fire and RPG's to handle, now we are facing a counter insurgency that grows more expansive and deadly by the day, using those readily available materials and methods. We HAD a chance to squelch it, but hey, our leaders dared not call it by it's proper name until a few months ago. Failure abounds.

So other than rhetorically supporting all the deadly incompetence and rampant idiocy that is the Bush world view here, what the hell are YOU going to do about our soldiers dying over there? Just hang on and wait for what? A voice from above? Capt. America? What? Care to actually dispute any of the Facts here? Perhaps suggest one or more of your favorite fantasies?

This a'int no disco, this a'int no fooling around. If things are going to improve, someone needs to step up to the plate, take responsibility and Demand that they get better. So far I've seen very little indication that anyone down in Crawford or around the Bush camp even recognizes that the situation is indeed dire and that desperate speed is needed to improve the lot of our troops and their position. This is why we are losing the war. Not due to any faint critique of our Fearless Dear Leader. Perish the thought that he be made to take responsibility for Anything he's ever done, at any time and for any reason! We all revere him and know that he's infallible, just like the TV says. Still there has to be a reason we are losing so badly, right guys? Maybe we need more human sacrifices! It is ever thus with despots.

Cheers, 'VJ'/JMP

[JohnFH]

Hey VJ, you love to capitalize, don't you? In brief, here is why you will not be taken seriously, except perhaps by some of your comrades over at the Daily Kos:

1) You smother your readers with flowery language. You make up a splashy bouquet of violent colors where a single wine red rose would do.

2) You substitute fantasy for logic and pessimism for realism. It sounds as if in your book, the sky is always falling as long as the Repubs are in charge. This is a meme, not an argument.

3) You seem to pine for the good old days of WWII and Nam. Those were the days, my friend. Here you misunderestimate the readers of democracyarsenal.org, some of whom have a passing acquaintance with military history.

Cut the nostalgia, VJ, and stop watching Fox TV. Your picking up bad habits.

[Kareneky]

Dear Mr. Signer,
You are attempting to make a valid point so why the sophomoric snarkiness? I delved into this blog because it stated that you were one of the great liberal, small L intended, minds working to bring forward a coherent foreign policy for the sanguin Democrat Party, an antidote for screaming Howard Dean. Oh well, my folly.

Should you have inquired further, or for that matter paid any attention as to where and why the Marine Corps were in that part of Iraq with that type of equipment, you would understand that they are working, that is the term they would use, in the upper Euphrates river. You do know what rivers are, do you not? Therefore it would be entirely appropriate to utilize verhicles that can cross, proceed with the current or against, or to lie in wait in an ambush modality. This does not appear to be a misuse, nor an inappropriate use of such armour.

Your point is lost to those who think, ponder or examine when you attempt to bolster your relevant topic when you KOSily (is that a new word?) harp on the President's personal behavior while on a vacation. Just what does making smug comments regarding a man's dog contribute to a bolstering of Democrat Party doctrine other than diminishing your point to the nation?

I looked into this blog hoping against hope that I would fine somebody home....guess no one is home.
Karensky