MILITARY FAULTED FOR HUMVEE SHORTAGES

By Diane M. Grassi

Well before Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was questioned by an active reservist soldier at a news conference last December concerning the status of armoring battlefield Humvees, the Army had apparently been less than forthcoming to the Pentagon about how many production orders for armor kits and up-armored Humvees were processed with the firms which manufacture them. Whether or not you agree with the way in which Rumsfeld was supposedly put on the spot, it served a purpose in bringing to light a systemic problem which has gravely impacted our soldiers on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan investigative arm of the Congress, released a report this month which is virtually the first independent investigative study on the shortage of armoring Humvees which now can be attributable to the deaths of 400 U.S. soldiers. And directly responsible for those shortages are military planners. When the U.S. entered the land war in Iraq in March of 2003 there were only 235 armored versions out of the 8,000 Humvees in Iraq. At that time there was only on contractor, O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt of Fairfield, OH, hired to reinforce only 50 vehicles a month. But only gradually has the Pentagon ramped up O’Gara-Hess to the present 550 vehicles as of this spring.

“It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it,” Mr. Rumsfeld said. But now we find that that the military failed to order additional beefed-up Humvee models from the AM General Corp. in Mishawaka, IN as well as additional armor kits from O’Gara-Hess. So the problem was two-fold in installing shielding for new Humvees as well as reinforcing what came to a total 10,000 older models. It was evident to the Pentagon by June 2003 of the need for armor kits when Army’s 101st Airborne Division cited “numerous” injuries from I.E.D’s when it put in its plea for not only vehicle armor but training as well for the troops to avoid such attacks, even more crucial with the absence of protective vehicle armor.

The Army fell short of its projected goal of supplying soldiers in Iraq with 8,105 factory-armored Humvees for use in both Iraq and Afghanistan by April 1, 2005. Army Brig. General Jeffrey Sorenson said that they were in fact completed by the end of March. However, the count included those still on U.S. soil. Congressman Robert Simmons (R-CT) and a member of the Armed Services Committee was quoted as saying, “What the hell good is it to possess a Humvee in America if the guy in Iraq doesn’t have it to drive?” Presently the proposed number of Humvees for manufacture has risen to 10,079 and the Army claims its new deadline is June 2005.

Yet given all of the Pentagon’s bean counters and the public’s awareness of armor deficiencies in the fields of combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our military officials chose to follow Capitol Hill’s lead by playing politics at the expense of our soldiers’ lives. It was bad enough when it became clear shortly after the full-scale war in Iraq was underway that our soldiers lacked sufficient supplies of body armor, as families stateside began receiving letters from troops requesting them to purchase Kevlar vests for them from army surplus stores.

Now it has taken an act of Congress to subsidize the $81 billion spending bill for the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan by adding an additional $213 million specifically appropriated for buying additional fully armored Humvees, proposed by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) in an amendment ratified by the Senate a week after the GAO report was released. The amendment also orders the Secretary of Defense to report to the Congress more frequently on the status of Humvee orders in order to expedite them to Iraq. Without such appropriation production would have dropped from 550 this month to 239 in June with zero produced in July. With the House of Representatives approving an additional $185 million on spending for factory-armored Humvees in March, there is now assurance that the differences in the allocations, in both the House and Senate amendments, to the bill will be reconciled providing for the necessary expenditure.

At the heart of failing our troops with the necessary vehicle armor was the Army’s negligence in utilizing extra production capacity available to make factory-armored Humvees as well as the add-on armor kits. According to a GAO stinging indictment the Pentagon “did not use the maximum available production capacity as the requirements increased dramatically.” So Mr. Rumsfeld’s off-the-cuff retort in December now looms large. His implication then was that production was at maximum capacity. Now we learn that the manufacturers were nowhere near capacity and more like 50%. In addition the Department of Defense never informed Congress about the available production capacity.

The GAO report further revealed that there were indeed seven additional areas of deficient supply of key items which included the protective vests, along with batteries, tires, vehicle generators, tank track shoes and packaged meals. The Army said it would review the recommendations of the report and would make the necessary adjustments in the supply line. And while as of last month all of the military’s 35,000 vehicles had been protected with some type of armor, 11,700 of them were retrofitted with mere sheets of cut steel; hardly adequate enough.

Loss of life we are told is a reality of war. However our federal agencies, the Congress and our Commander in Chief are all culpable for the lives of 400 Americans who perished as a direct result of lacking the necessary armor for combat. Various powers-that-be not only knew of the deficiencies of the required armor but apparently looked the other way in addition to casting blame on others when they were found out.

After the attacks of 9/11 many have stated that our country came together. We were all just Americans for a time. Later when we invaded Afghanistan followed by infiltration of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein our unity continued to thrive. But since Saddam’s capture we have fallen back into complacency and the fabric of our nation has yet become torn again. It is back to politics-as-usual with a government bereft of honesty with the American people. But perhaps we can all learn from this latest irreverence by our leadership that it will no longer be tolerated by the American people and that we intend to communicate such to its so-called leaders.