Armoring Up
The Funny Thing Is, Our Colonel Made It Top Pri And They Did Okay As Far As I Know
Jason van Steenwyk complained mightily about uparmored vehicles. As well he should because it was his butt sitting in the unarmored ones.
Secretary Rumsfeld got smacked with a good question–and the Army guys, who seem to be having more problems with this than the Marines as far as I can tell, are unhappy with their lot. Here’s the ground truth of what was said, from the DefenseLink transcript:
Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical. We’ve had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we’ve always staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us? [Applause]
SEC. RUMSFELD: I missed the first part of your question. And could you repeat it for me?
Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.
SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.
As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.
I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on.
And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that?
GEN. WHITCOMB: Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to. That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it. The 699th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles. But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish.
SEC. RUMSFELD: The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.
I know this has been a thorn in the side for a while. My followup question is “why is an item like this, which you know is high priority at the ground level, not seen as being addressed at the ground level?”
I know that a smaller unit made it pri 1 and it worked fairly well. Maybe because it’s smaller, maybe because it’s a different chain of command.
Part of the answer is that logistics is always REMFs first–they get the good stuff first through their pipeline, and have more time to get at it or rationalize redirecting the goods. That’s why the guys in the back in WWII in (where was it? Battle of the Bulge?) the front didn’t have shoes, but all the staffers did in the back…
3 Responses to “Armoring Up”
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December 9th, 2004 at 2:33 pm
Why this issue even exists more than a year after “major combat operations have ended” is the real question. Here we are, one of the greatest industrial powers in the world, we have billions of dollars going to combat operations in Iraq, and we can’t connect the two dots here? I understand that there is the desire to have milspec hardware for these vehicles and our acquisition bureaucracy is deep, but this lack of capability is just unfathomable. Maybe all the requests for retreds and tires for the tanks, infantry vehicles, and trucks are overwhelming the system. I think the reason why some units get the priority while others do not is just pure arbitrary chance. Our logistics system is just broke, maybe we should outsource it to FedEx or DHL or just privatize it.
I don’t know much about the Marine supply chain, but an Army buddy whose unit was attached to I MEF said that they definitely live with a smaller logistics footprint, and that has to help. Downside, he said that everytime he went to get supplies from I MEF, the gunnies stared at him and said “You’re Army, go get your stuff from V Corps.” He had to beg a little. They evidently didn’t understand the term “OPCON.”
December 9th, 2004 at 4:26 pm
J,
My experiences in Marine Green date more than a couple of decades, but I remember a joint op in which we played the the opposition for an airborne unit. It was December, and the Army invited us for their traditional Christmas dinner in the field. Helos flew in enough turkey, dressing and all the fixings (including hot and iced tea) for several hundred doggies and Marines. It was the most amazing thing we Marines had ever seen. We had never eaten anything in the field that wasn’t a C-Rat or bought for personal use. In fact, I was always frustrated that we only got one heat tab and that was enough to either heat up the main meal or enough water for coffee, but never both. That same night the Airborne assaulted our fixed positions. While we were burning through ammo most of them were shouting “bang – bang” because they had only been given 20 rounds apiece. It reminded me of the big war game in Louisiana before World War II that had fake tanks and artillery.
Although my experiences with and exposure to the sister services were limited, I always noted that they had the coolest toys and best amenities. My Marine experience was that we always lacked the toys and amenities but were never without the tools to get the job done.
December 9th, 2004 at 6:19 pm
Maybe this will help clarify why we’re in such a pickle…
“I don’t know what the facts are but somebody’s certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that’s a good thing. I think it’s a very constructive exchange,” Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him on Thursday in India, another stop on a regional tour.