East Tennessee Heartland

WASHINGTON — Army officials on Wednesday said the military is spending $4.1 billion on armor in the next six to eight months to make sure vehicles used in Iraq have protective armor.
   "By March, we will have 98 percent of the light tactical vehicles — in other words, the Humvees — armored," Army Brig. Gen. Jeff Sorenson told reporters during a Pentagon briefing, according to a transcript. "And we’re also going to have the heavy truck fleet."
   Other vehicles should have armor by summer, he said.
   U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R- Tenn., said he thinks "
   everything will be accelerated."
   "I think the Congress, if it were in session, would already be meeting on this,"
   he said.
   Gen. Sorenson and Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes also said the Army has created a task force that will look at production of factory-armored vehicles as well as kits.
   They said armor was added to all of the 278th Regimental Combat Team’s vehicles before the unit traveled into Iraq last week.
   Spc. Thomas "Jerry" Wilson, a 278th member from Ringgold, Ga., last week in Kuwait asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld why soldiers were having to "dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles." The soldier posed the question after discussing it with Chattanooga Times Free Press military affairs reporter Edward Lee Pitts. Before heading from Kuwait into Iraq, some 278th members crafted their own armor, which they called "hillbilly armor," primarily using steel taken off vehicles being sent home from the Middle East.
   In a makeshift armoring factory at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, soldiers hammered metal to be fitted onto the sides and underbellies of trucks, Humvees and other military vehicles. They also took used ballistic windshields out of trash bins and installed them on some vehicles.
   Gen. Speakes said at the time of Spc. Wilson’s question that 20 vehicles remained to be uparmored.
   "We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day," he said We dnesday. "And so over 800 vehicles from the 278 th... were up-armored, and they are a part now oftheir total force that is operating up in Iraq."
   By the time the 278th headed into Iraq, Gen. Speakes said the unit had 252 vehicles with bolt-on armor produced in the United States and shipped to Kuwait for installation by soldiers. He said another 459 vehicles had less protective, "level three" armor — the homemade armor to which Spc. Wilson referred.
   "Level one" armor is built into the vehicle at the time it is manufactured, according to military officials. "Level two" armor is factory-made but installed on vehicles at a later date.
   The general said the 278th also picked up 119 armored Humvees in Iraq that were left behind by departing units.
   Gen. Speakes was critical of Tennessee soldiers’ characterization of the armor they installed as "hillbilly armor."
   "I think that it’s very, very unfair to characterize this as an issue that pits the active Army against, for example, Army guardsmen," he said.
   But he conceded that "when we first went to the war, there was a clear differentiation between the equipping of Guard units, for example, and the equipping of what were activecomponent units."
   The general said that has changed.
   A number of experts and lawmakers including Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., since have said the lack of adequate armor was emblematic of the Pentagon’s poor planning for the post-invasion situation in Iraq. The Senate Armed Services Committee has announced it plans a hear- ing on the armor and similar issues.
   But the generals said it took time for officials to develop, test and manufacture armor once it became clear insurgents posed an increasing threat.
   "This is not Wal-Mart," Gen Sorenson said. "As we’ve gone through, this is a very detailed process in terms of trying to get this capability."
   Te nnessee lawmakers, who have written letters to Mr. Rumsfeld seeking answers about the armor supply, had mixed reac tions to the Pentagon statements on Wednesday.
   A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, RTenn., said the Pentagon had yet to respond to a letter sent last week to Mr. Rumsfeld.
   "We certainly are anxious to hear back from them," Amy Call said. But she said it "is a positive thing" that the Pentagon is moving ahead on the issue.
   "Sen. Frist wants to get these soldiers outfitted as soon as possible," Ms. Call said.
   Sen. Lamar Alexander, RTe nn., is "encouraged by actions the Department of Defense is taking to make sure that our troops have the resources they need and the safest environment possible to do their job," spokeswoman Alexia Poe said.
   However, U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., was critical.
   "They’ve not shot us straight," Rep. Ford said of previous Pentagon explanations about problems in Iraq. "I won’t believe this until I actually hear from the men and the women on the ground."
   The generals also discussed efforts to speed production of factory-armored vehicles and add-on kits.
   One company will boost its monthly production from 450 armored Humvees to 550 by February or March, officials said.
   Army spokeswoman Nancy Ray said officials can do that without worry about caps in the Department of Defense authorization bill because it simply means accelerating the contract and not increasing the total number of vehicles to be armored.
   E-mail Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com

This story was published Thursday, December 16, 2004

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