Army boosts up-armored vehicle production
By Sgt. 1st Class Tammy M. Jarrett
December 16, 2004
WASHINGTON (Army News Service Dec. 16, 2004) - The Army is continuing to accelerate the production of up-armored tactical wheeled vehicles, officials said during a Pentagon press conference Dec. 15.
Factory deliveries of humvees will increase from 450 vehicles to 550 by March in an effort to meet the changing battlefield threats, said Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, deputy for Acquisition and System Management for the Assistant Secretary of the Army.
"Right now we're postured to project 35,000 vehicles to be up-armored," Sorenson said. "Of that, we've got 29,000 that are currently funded." Talks for funding 38,000 vehicles are in the works, he added.
The Army plans to spend $4.1 billion in the next year to fund the up-armoring of the vehicles-about $2 billion for the add-on armor kits and another two for the up-armored vehicles themselves, said Sorenson.
Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes admitted that this was a very expensive proposition, but "when it involves a Soldier's life, we're not in the money business," he said.
"The fundamental point I would like to communicate is that at this point," said Speakes, the director of Force Development for the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, "is once the theater commander establishes a requirement, money is not an issue. We are going to protect American Soldiers lives anyway we can, and we got an enormous effort underway to make sure that it happens."
Levels of armor protection
The wheeled vehicles are being armored at three different levels-I, II, and III.
Level I armor is integrated during production or retrofit and is designed to remain on the vehicle over its lifetime.
"It means from the start, that vehicle was designed to operate with many more pounds of armor than the original vehicle," Speakes said. "So it's essentially an all-encompassing armored solution and it's our very, very effective solution."
Level II armor is add-on armor available in kits that are installed on existing vehicles. Each kit takes about 30 or 40 hours of labor to install on a humvee, Speakes said.
"This is not a trivial process," he said. "We can't automatically or magically swap out all the equipment that we have out in theater, but what we can do is develop programs where we take kits and put them onto existing pieces of equipment."
Level III armor is locally fabricated (Iraq) and is considered a temporary solution until Level I or II armor can be applied. This level of armor is usually made and attached by Army maintenance companies.
Ongoing testing to meet changing threats
Col. John Rooney, chief of staff of the Army Development Test Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., said his command has been conducting ongoing ballistic and automotive testing to find the best material to protect Soldiers in combat, testing 12 different kits for humvees alone.
"In our automotive testing, we want to look at, first of all, safety-make sure it does not cause a safety hazard to the Soldiers," Rooney said. "Then we want to understand what's going to break on the vehicles to get ahead of that bow wave." Rooney said they also conduct an extensive endurance test, driving the vehicle for 3,000 miles.
"We did this over the last 14-plus months to be able to ensure that these kits will indeed save lives," he said, " as well as allow them to perform their mission automotivally within the vehicles."
"None of us want to give the Soldiers something that isn't good," Speakes said. "Over 20,000 pieces have been up-armored over the course of the last 14 months in an enormous effort, which has been very, very successful."
Sorenson said about 61 percent of the vehicles in Iraq have been taken care of.
"I would point out here, though, that with respect to the light tactical vehicles, and that's the vehicles that have been suffering the majority of casualties and the majority of incidents, we're now at 80 percent," he said. By March, 98 percent of the humvees and the heavy truck fleet will be armored, he added.
"If you are a Soldier going to a combat zone and will be operating in the combat zone, you're going to operate on an up-armored solution," Speakes said. "It's going to be either add-on armor or a solution that was built in a factory and comes forward like up-armored humvee designed from the factory to be that way."
Up-armoring only part of the strategy
Speakes said the solution to protecting Soldiers is not just in re-enforcing the armor on vehicles. It involves other technologies like laser activation of remote-controlled bombs to help prevent the bombings from affecting Army vehicles.
"It's surveillance overhead; it's jamming devices to try to stop IEDS from going off; it's increased lethality," he said.
"Soldiers have gotten many more weapons systems they can use. Much better optics to target acquisition, so when you put it all together, we are confident they can fight and win on the battlefield."
Also, an up-armoring task force, made up of senior Army staff and representatives from major Army major commands, was established last week by the secretary of the Army.
"The effort here is to increase the protection that we are providing Soldiers," said Speakes. "That's better technology, that's better and improved integration of defense industries, so we get more kits and capabilities faster, and that we have a seamless link with the theater commanders-- the goal to be faster, more agile and more responsive than what has already been a very, very successful program."
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
