Marine Corps blasted for delays in underarmoring Humvees
Harry Hope
From Stars and Stripes, 6//22/05:
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=29898
Marine Corps takes heat from Congress for delays in underarmoring
Humvees
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, June 22, 2005
WASHINGTON --
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee blasted Marine
Corps brass Tuesday for long delays in providing makeshift armor for
the undercarriages of Humvees used by Marines in Iraq.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said he is frustrated and furious that
the underarmor was not made available until this month, even though
the committee has been demanding it since February and the threat of
roadside bombs has been apparent since last year.
"While you were waiting for the fancier stuff to arrive... they could
have been putting this steel on and saving some lives," he told Marine
commanders at a hearing Tuesday.
"... You couldn’t do everything you wanted, so you did nothing."
Corps Assistant Commandant Gen. William Nyland said financial
bureaucracy and confusion over available supplies were to blame for
the delay, and he noted that this month 400 underbody kits have been
rushed to units with unprotected vehicles.
But he acknowledged that service leaders should have done more to get
the temporary protection to Marines in Iraq.
Maj. Gen. William Cato, commanding general of the Corps’ System
Command, took personal responsibility for the delay, saying he did not
monitor and speed up the contract to purchase and cut the steel needed
for the temporary plates.
Last year, Marines who had served in Iraq approached committee members
with basic plans to cut and bolt steel plates to the undercarriage of
vehicles, to protect from shrapnel from roadside bomb attacks.
Hunter said he presented those ideas to Marine commanders in February,
but Corps leaders did not move on the plans until last month, when one
of Hunter’s staff located extra steel plates in a Kuwait storage
facility.
Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., blasted Corps leaders as lacking the "sense
of urgency" needed to respond to the evolving insurgent threat.
"How in the world could we have waited this long and endangered those
lives?" he asked Nyland.
"Why didn’t the first person in the command structure just say, ‘Let’s
do it’?"
Committee members also blasted the Marines for a report in The Boston
Globe on Tuesday, which said a Corps’ inspector general study found
the 30,000 Marines in Iraq need more machine guns, armored vehicles
and communications equipment to perform their mission.
Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ariz., said the findings indicated that most units
need nearly twice the number of .50-caliber machine guns and more
M240G and MK19 machine guns than they would normally possess.
But Nyland said the report shows the disparity between what leaders
expected would be needed before the war and what current equipment
levels are today.
He called it a "good news" story, since non-deployed units have been
able to help re-supply the Marines in combat.
According to The Boston Globe, the report said the Corps will need
another 650 Humvees to keep up with current operation demands, and the
II Marine Expeditionary Force’s Humvees lack sufficient armor to
protect troops against roadside bombings.
Nyland said all Marine Humvees in Iraq should have some undercarriage
armor by July, and most other vehicles will have some protection
underneath by the fall.
More advanced armor kits are scheduled to be delivered for many of the
vehicles by December.
__________________________________________________________
1,725 American troops have been killed and 12,896 have been wounded.
Harry
edi...@netpath.net
suddenly thrust into a major war after a long peacetime period - during
which it had been pared to the bone. It happened even worse at the
start of World War II - after 20 years of peace.
And - judging by Britain's experience at the start of World War II - it
happens in ANY democracy after prolonged peacetime.
No $4 to park! No $6 admission!
http://stores.ebay.com/INTERNET-GUN-SHOW
z
news:1119411525.3...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
How many years did it take them to get up to speed in WWII?