Best Equipped Army In The World?

[NATO AIR]

is it true? i'm not sure, you tell me... it doesn't sound good though

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9249-2004Dec17.html
Our 'Best Equipped' Army? Baloney!

By Mark Shields
Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A27

In the three years immediately after Pearl Harbor, the United States, a nation of 132 million people with a gross domestic product of less than $100 billion, produced the following to win World War II:

• 296,429 aircraft.

• 102,351 tanks.

• 87,620 warships.

• 372,431 artillery pieces.

• 2,455,694 trucks.

Compare those heroic achievements with the current dismal supply record as the U.S. war in Iraq is fast approaching its third year and the United States, now a nation of nearly 300 million with defense spending in excess of half a trillion dollars:

• Only 5,910 of the 19,584 Humvees that U.S. troops in Iraq depend on are protected with factory-installed armor.

• More than 8,000 of the 9,128 medium and heavyweight trucks transporting soldiers and supplies in that war zone are without armor.

Because of the incompetence or indifference of this nation's civilian leadership of the war, Americans in Iraq are living with an increased risk of death.

All the official transcripts of White House signing ceremonies for every defense spending bill, all the presidential proclamations for Veterans Day and every prepared statement by the secretary of defense before a congressional committee include the same stock phrase. U.S. troops are invariably referred to as "the best trained, best equipped" ever. Best equipped? To call today's American troops in Iraq the "best equipped" is more than an exaggeration; it is bilge, baloney and cruel.

An America coming out of the Great Depression somehow found the leadership and the will to build and deploy around the globe 2.5 million trucks in the same period of time that the incumbent U.S. government has failed to get 30,000 fully armored vehicles to Iraq.

The Bush administration has appropriated $34.3 billion on a theoretical missile defense system -- which proved again this week to be an expensive dud in its first test in two years, when the "kill vehicle" never got off the ground to intercept the target missile carrying a mock warhead -- but has been able up to now, according to congressional budget authorities, to spend just $2 billion to armor the vehicles of Americans under fire.

Nobody has been more persistent in holding the Pentagon and the White House accountable than maverick Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. "When I visit Iraq," says Taylor, "I ride around in an armored vehicle, and I am sure the secretary [of defense] does as well. That should be the single standard: If it is good enough for the big shots, it is good enough for every American soldier."

The armor is truly a matter of life and death, as the Mississippi congressman explains: "Half of all our casualties, half of all our deaths and half of all our wounded are the direct result of improvised explosive devices [IEDs, or homemade bombs]." But when Washington officials visit Iraq, their traveling security includes not only heavily armored vehicles but also radio-signal jammers, which can disable the IEDs.

What makes Taylor authentically angry is the inexcusable failure of the U.S. brass -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he names -- to provide radio jammers (which cost $10,000 each) to the fewer than 30,000 U.S. military vehicles in Iraq.

How many U.S. vehicles are now equipped with jammers? The Pentagon insists the figure is classified. According to Taylor, the number is "minuscule." But because he is offended by visiting corporate chief executives and deputy assistant secretaries of weights and measures getting better protection than Marine lance corporals and Army privates, Taylor would not appreciate the fact that funds for the jammers have probably already been dedicated to underwriting the next failed missile defense test.

"A jammer costs about $10,000, and it probably costs about $10,000 to bury a dead GI. I believe Americans would rather spend the $10,000 to prevent the GI's funeral being held." Gene Taylor is right. Every American has a moral obligation to make certain that the nation's troops truly are the world's "best equipped."

 

[dmp]

what a crock of horseshit.

 

[freeandfun1]

You know, I am really sick of hearing how the hummers don't have armour and should. They never had (other than a few scout hummers that had KEVLAR) armour. They weren't designed to have armour. They replaced the old willies jeep. I remember when my unit, in 1986, received some of the first hummers put into service when I was stationed at Camp Greaves in Korea. They were much better than the jeep and we never expected them to have armour as they were not designed that way. I am sick of hearing this, as -=d=- so aptly puts it, "HORSESHIT".

There was no armoured hummers in Kosovo, Panama, Gulf War I, etc., etc.

 

[NATO AIR]

There was no armoured hummers in Kosovo, Panama, Gulf War I, etc., etc.

there were no insurgents/IEDS in kosovo, panama, gulf war I....

 

[freeandfun1]

there were no insurgents/IEDS in kosovo, panama, gulf war I....

insurgents, armies, combatants, whatever you want to call them, they pose the same threat. The point is, the Hummer NEVER was designed to be armoured. period.

 

[NATO AIR]

insurgents, armies, combatants, whatever you want to call them, they pose the same threat. The point is, the Hummer NEVER was designed to be armoured. period.

they pose different threats. the iraqi insurgents do not fight likle the panama army or the iraqi army... then among them you have those who are terrorists, and among them, those who are suicide bombers. new challenges for the world's premier fighting force.

if the hummer was never designed to be armored then, i guess a whole lot of guys have died needlessly because somebody didn't think quick enough on their feet to realize in the first six months of the insurgency that something was necessary to protect guys from IEDS...????

 

[Doc Holiday]

So we armor all of our vehicles, it only takes a little more explosive to blow something with armor up. The military needs to change its mindset and start fighting the way it should be fighting. They need to gather intel from the community, make quick strikes to take out enemy leadership based on that intel, and start pysch warfare on the insurgents. Quit letting them name the dance tune and have them dance to ours. Just goes to show that the military still hasn't learned its counterinsurgency lessons that we should have learned from Vietnam.

 

[freeandfun1]

they pose different threats. the iraqi insurgents do not fight likle the panama army or the iraqi army... then among them you have those who are terrorists, and among them, those who are suicide bombers. new challenges for the world's premier fighting force.

if the hummer was never designed to be armored then, i guess a whole lot of guys have died needlessly because somebody didn't think quick enough on their feet to realize in the first six months of the insurgency that something was necessary to protect guys from IEDS...????

I keep in contact with many guys from my old unit that are now in the Ramadi area (Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry) and the problem is, since the hummer was - again - never designed to be armored, the extra weight is causing the hummers to break down. So now they have problems with being sitting ducks. Get a clue nato.

As pointed out, and IED is only one type of explosive. Anti-tank mines have been around forever and armour is not going to stop that. You can't just keep trying to make things more bullet proof and you have to work with what you have. My point was and still is, too much emphasis is being put on this armour issue when the damn vehicles were never designed that way to begin with. What do you want them to do, put larger engines in them and totally redeign the vehicles and then when the enemy starts using bigger IEDs, mines, etc., we start the process all over again?

 

[NATO AIR]

I keep in contact with many guys from my old unit that are now in the Ramadi area (Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry) and the problem is, since the hummer was - again - never designed to be armored, the extra weight is causing the hummers to break down. So now they have problems with being sitting ducks. Get a clue nato.

As pointed out, and IED is only one type of explosive. Anti-tank mines have been around forever and armour is not going to stop that. You can't just keep trying to make things more bullet proof and you have to work with what you have. My point was and still is, too much emphasis is being put on this armour issue when the damn vehicles were never designed that way to begin with. What do you want them to do, put larger engines in them and totally redeign the vehicles and then when the enemy starts using bigger IEDs, mines, etc., we start the process all over again?

that's the nature of warfare... we advance, then the enemy counteradvances, etc etc

i see your point about weighing it down and them becoming sitting ducks. the whole situation is just a fucked up no win deal. i wonder maybe if clinton and congress hadn't pissed away so much of our R&D in the 90's we couldn't have developed a lighter weight, tougher armor....

but that's just a thought.

:cof: thanks to you and doc holliday for taking the time to explain to a thickheaded squid like myself without calling names or getting irate.

 

[dmp]

Free - give it up. It's a case of arm-chair 'generals' spouting ideas which 'brief well' but have little practical value.

 

[NATO AIR]

Free - give it up. It's a case of arm-chair 'generals' spouting ideas which 'brief well' but have little practical value.

i understand the weight factor now. lame duck vs. no armor.

 

[Gem]

As a military spouse, I can attest to what these guys are saying. All of these articles ranting about un-armored jeeps are just another example of people complaining when they don't know what they are talking about. You hear, "soliders driving around in jeeps without armor" and you think, "thats TERRIBLE!!!" But there are reasons behind it...and while I agree with you, its time for the next evolution of equiptment to come out to deal with this new type of warfare...some people would like to turn it into either another unintentional mistake made by the Bush Administration...or a deliberate choice made by the Bush Administration...and both assessments are wrong, and don't take into consideration all the facts around the issue.