Colorado Springs Gazette December 11, 2004
Regiment fortifies armor
By TOM ROEDER
The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment will be even more armored when it goes to war in Iraq early next year.
The regiment is undergoing a crash program to add armor to 500 wheeled vehicles now at Fort Carson designed for use away from battle lines. Prefabricated kits that include steel plating and bulletproof glass will be bolted to the rigs, making them less vulnerable to guerrilla attacks - especially the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed scores of American troops.
When the 5,200-soldier regiment gets to Iraq, it will meet additional armored trucks and Humvees under a Pentagon program to ensure soldiers travel the roads of Iraq only in armored vehicles. The number of new vehicles it will get in Iraq was not available.
Other units at the post, including the 43rd Area Support Group that began sending soldiers back to Iraq in October, are getting more armor, too, but exact figures weren't available from Fort Carson officials Friday.
The lack of armor on light military vehicles regained attention this week when National Guard troops complained about their trucks during a town hall meeting in Kuwait with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. During the presidential campaign, Democratic opponent John Kerry blasted war planners over the armor issue and again Friday called the issue "an outrage."
Colorado's Rep. Joel Hefley and Sen. Wayne Allard, both Republicans, on Friday expressed confidence that the armor issue is getting fixed.
"We're doing everything we can in Congress and (Army leaders) are, too," Hefley said.
Lt. Col. David Johnson, a Fort Carson spokesman, said in addition to adding armor plate to vehicles, units at the post are training troops to avoid roadside bombs and guerrilla attacks while on Iraq convoy duty.
"It's like avoiding a traffic accident," he said.
Armored Humvees and trucks aren't intended to replace the regiment's 72-ton tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which are armored troop carriers. Instead, adding armor to wheeled vehicles provides a degree of safety for soldiers who haul supplies to the regiment and use the fourwheel-drive Humvee to negotiate narrow city streets.
No one anticipated the Army's need for large quantities of armored trucks and Humvees before the invasion of Iraq, said John Pike, executive director of the Virginia-based think tank GlobalSecurity.org.
The Army planned to win wars by using heavy tanks to destroy the enemy while lighter supply trucks and Humvees safely brought up the rear.
"You can't prepare for everything," Pike said.
Starting a little more than a year ago, Iraqi guerrillas began wholesale attacks on supply convoys, whose thinskinned vehicles proved especially vulnerable to bombs and land mines.
Army units in Iraq adapted, building homemade armor for many trucks and Humvees from plywood and plate steel. Congress later pledged nearly $200 million to add better armor to military rigs.
While shipping hundreds of armored vehicles to Iraq, the Pentagon has emphasized armor alone won't protect soldiers.
"Armor is just one part of a much larger challenge," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman.
In recent weeks, attacks on convoys in Iraq have slowed while guerrillas have increasingly used gunfire to kill American troops as they patrol on foot. Friday, the Pentagon announced the deaths of three soldiers, all killed on foot patrols.
"We have a constantly evolving enemy," Carpenter said.
It's an issue retired Army Lt. Col. John Swensson has seen before, in Vietnam.
"We have always over-relied on technology to win wars," said Swensson, now a college professor in Cupertino, Calif.
"We came in with helicopters and they defeated us with wooden sticks."
Fort Carson's training has changed drastically to combat guerrilla threats. All soldiers bound for Iraq get days of training on how to respond to an attack while in an Army truck, culminating in a livefire exercise.
Other training has focused on foot patrols.
Hefley and Allard said the Pentagon, meanwhile, is making good on its promise to get more armor to troops in Iraq. Last year, fewer than 2,000 armored Humvees were in Iraq. Now there are 8,000.
By early next year, every Humvee in Iraq will be armored, the Pentagon said Friday.
Allard said Congress will keep pressure on the Pentagon to ensure troops get all the gear they need.
"These are questions we need to keep asking," he said.
Hefley said no equipment, however, is likely to halt American deaths.
"It's a war and bullets are flying," he said. "It's not safe, but it's safer."
Copyright © 2004 The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information.
