The Kansas City Star August 03, 2007
U.S. military tries to correct weaknesses in armor found by Iraqi insurgents
By Darryl Levings
Iraqi insurgents have managed to do what Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard tank divisions couldn’t — maul U.S. armor and their crews.
Using improvised bombs, often hidden under roads, the Iraqi enemy has hit the heavily armored M1/A2 tanks at least 17 times, inflicting at least one casualty each time.
The 70-ton tanks losing the game of road roulette are just a tiny minority of the U.S. equipment blasted by this war’s signature weapon, the IED — improvised explosive device. The buried or hidden artillery shells have wreaked havoc on thinner-skinned Humvees and trucks for four years.
Now a whole new fleet of heavier, more adapted MRAP vehicles is starting to roll on Iraq’s dangerous byways.
The acronym stands for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. A key feature is a V-shaped bottom that directs blasts away from the crew inside.
But casualty lists show even the new RG-31 Mine Protection Vehicles, known in some configurations as Cougars, are not immune. At least four of the $1 million trucks were hit in 2006, resulting in seven killed.
“The guy who is trying to penetrate the armor always has the advantage over the person designing the armor,” said Christine DeVries, spokeswoman for the Joint IED Defeat Organization in Washington. “It’s very difficult to defeat an enormous amount of explosives.”
Such blasts have been known to flip a Bradley fighting vehicle into the air and break it in two. The M2/M3 Bradleys, smaller and less armored than the Abrams, have suffered more, with at least 34 hit in attacks that caused as many as 56 fatalities.
These tallies do not include wounded. That category is given only as a running total by the Pentagon, with no identities or details released. The effects of buried munitions erupting beneath a tank can be horrific, however, and many crew members undoubtedly were seriously hurt.
Nor are the totals by The Kansas City Star complete. The casualty lists released by the Pentagon in recent months are often vague about what kind of vehicle is involved and list the attacks only if a fatality is involved.
In the case of the tanks, 20 soldiers are listed as killed in IED attacks, and Maj. Tom McCuin, an Army headquarters spokesman, suggested some were loaders or commanders exposed above the turrets. Four others are noted as victims of snipers.
In both the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when tanks actually slugged it out, Abrams tanks were hit by enemy shells, but no crew members were killed.
“A tank is really hard to kill. These are big bombs,” said John Pike at Globalsecurity. com, a defense-related think tank. “Culvert bombs are the big threat, the only place to pile up enough explosive.
“I believe it is the blunt-force trauma of getting knocked around inside that is killing the crew. They don’t release that info, because that tells the enemy whether the bomb is big enough.”
The armored forces also face the enhanced “explosively formed penetrators,” or EFPs, allegedly manufactured in Iran.
Grim as the IED toll is, said DeVries, “only one in five actually causes casualties. Most are ineffective.”
Still, Pike noted that “several thousand Humvees have been written off due to all causes. It was never intended to be a tactical field vehicle. It was always intended to be in the rear with the gear. But the problem in Iraq is that there is no rear.”
Most of the 14,000 Humvees in Iraq are on their way out. All services have ordered 7,700 of the MRAPs, about half of which are to be in war zones by the end of the year.
Pike does not join with some critics in Congress who say the Pentagon was too slow to develop and field more blast-resistant equipment, a push led by the Marines, who have few tanks. The Marines are scrapping the Humvees in favor of the much larger Cougars.
“They had to convince themselves that it would be a long enough war,” Pike said. “It’s going to cost us a boatload of money, and it’s going to take a year or more to get them in the field.”
Marine Gen. James Conway has sought to blunt congressional criticism over the slow delivery of the mine-resistant vehicles, as well as laser warning devices and aerial surveillance systems, in letters to Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, who is on the Appropriations Committee.
The senators suggested that “delays and refusals” by military leaders in response to urgent requests for equipment are probably due to “a combination of bureaucratic inertia and vested interests in established programs.”
In the case of the MRAPs, Conway wrote that the industrial capability to manufacture them did not exist in early 2005 when a senior Marine officer in Iraq filed an “urgent” request for nearly 1,200. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
In May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made MRAPs the military’s highest priority acquisition program. Now, even the trucks are getting additional armor, reports say.
One weakness is that machine gunners are still partly exposed in open turrets, much like those on Humvees.
A closed turret on top is a greatly appreciated feature of another new player in the high-stakes game on the highways, the M1117 armored security vehicle. It has not been deployed in large numbers yet.
The Army says about 400 Abrams tanks are in Iraq, 900 Bradleys and usually 600 Strykers.
A 2005 report in USA Today indicated as many as 80 Abrams tanks had been wrecked badly enough to be hauled back to the United States for rebuilding.
Because it was designed to slug it out with other tanks from long-distance, the Abrams has its heavy armor up front. It was designed to go around cities and not engage in urban warfare.
Now tanks are getting TUSK refits. The Tank Urban Survival Kit includes several enhancements for close-up and dirty fighting, including a rear-view camera to spot insurgents coming after the engine compartment. The machine gun outside the hull is remote-controlled. A grille helps guard against anti-tank rockets into the engines. It has enhanced thermal sights.
The Bradleys are getting upgrades as well, including better vision systems and better armor, McCuin said.
© Copyright 2007, The Kansas City Star
