so money is put first where it can protect people...
In terms of fixing the way we spend our money and protecting people, our first focus should be on getting rid of that rolling death trap, the armored Humvee. The Humvee is just a glorified jeep. Armored or not, it was never designed for combat.
The Humvee is the primary reason we have 27,000 wounded, a large portion of whom have been wounded by unarmored Humvees rolling over IEDs. (Our excellent medical corps is the main reason those 27,000 wounded are still alive.)
The armored Humvee has the armor in the wrong place: up top, while the undercarriage still acts like a cup over a firecracker when they hit an IED -- focusing the blast up into the Humvee to blow up our people. The armored Humvee is also top heavy and soldiers say they roll over. Great. Worse yet, the armored version is too heavy for its transmission to hold up. Wonderful.
We have tons of M-113 armored personnel carriers right there, in Kuwait, right now, in storage from the Gulf war. They are designed for transporting troops during combat and would save lives, limbs -- and we wouldn't be wasting money forcing Humvees to be what they aren't.
And they're right there. We don't even have to ship them.
A Lt. General in Iraq says that there are also plenty of Iraqi armored personnel carriers that we could use. Armored personnel carriers could roll over these IEDs and not even look back.
I'll get you the links in the moment (wildernessguru closed them). Anyone who cares about our soldiers needs to stop the purchase of armored Humvees and lobby for the use of armored personnel carriers.
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branchandroot
Re: Broken military?
Date: 2007-10-07 10:41 pm (UTC)In terms of fixing the way we spend our money and protecting people, our first focus should be on getting rid of that rolling death trap, the armored Humvee. The Humvee is just a glorified jeep. Armored or not, it was never designed for combat.
The Humvee is the primary reason we have 27,000 wounded, a large portion of whom have been wounded by unarmored Humvees rolling over IEDs. (Our excellent medical corps is the main reason those 27,000 wounded are still alive.)
The armored Humvee has the armor in the wrong place: up top, while the undercarriage still acts like a cup over a firecracker when they hit an IED -- focusing the blast up into the Humvee to blow up our people. The armored Humvee is also top heavy and soldiers say they roll over. Great. Worse yet, the armored version is too heavy for its transmission to hold up. Wonderful.
We have tons of M-113 armored personnel carriers right there, in Kuwait, right now, in storage from the Gulf war. They are designed for transporting troops during combat and would save lives, limbs -- and we wouldn't be wasting money forcing Humvees to be what they aren't.
And they're right there. We don't even have to ship them.
A Lt. General in Iraq says that there are also plenty of Iraqi armored personnel carriers that we could use. Armored personnel carriers could roll over these IEDs and not even look back.
I'll get you the links in the moment (