How Safe Are Our Troops?

• Share

(3 of 3)

The Bush Administration says it has ramped up the production cycle, spending $1.2 billion in the past year on improving armor for both vehicles and soldiers. The company beefing up the humvees, Armor Holdings Co., has boosted production at its Cincinnati, Ohio, plant from 30 a month when the Iraq war began to 450. "When I first started here, it took an entire year for us to build 59 humvees," says Michael Heaberlin, 52, a 10-year veteran of the line. "Now we do that many in 21/2 days." Stung by soldiers' complaints about the armor shortage, the Army late last week announced it would crank up production of armored humvees from the current 450 a month to 550. Pentagon officials expect all humvees in Iraq to be armored in some form by April.

Even that may not be enough if attacks persist at their current level. The demand for armored vehicles will keep rising. "Every time we get close to the duck as he's flying and we're catching up and we're trying to get a lead on him, the thing's upped," General Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, told Congress last month. Troops in the field say they don't have enough vehicles, period. If one goes down, they can't just drive over to a parking lot and pick up a new one. In insurgent hot spots like Ramadi, Marines say they sometimes don't go out in full force because there aren't enough vehicles that still work.

Even the heavily armored humvees, as Rumsfeld inelegantly reminded the troops last week, aren't fail-safe: 120 have been destroyed in combat in Iraq. Unlike M1 tanks, even beefed-up humvees can't always stop a rocket-propelled grenade or .50-cal. machine-gun bullet from killing those inside. But they are built to halt armor-piercing 7.62-mm rounds--the kind of bullets fired from AK-47s, an insurgent favorite. The roof is engineered to thwart the blast of a 155-mm artillery shell exploding overhead, and the floor is reinforced to protect passengers from a bomb or a 12-lb. mine buried in the road.

If nothing else, Specialist Wilson's grilling of Rumsfeld may finally force the military's civilian bosses to heed the concerns of soldiers like Captain Mark Chung, 37, an Army reservist who served in Iraq for nine months this year. Chung survived two roadside bomb attacks on his armored humvee; the second bomb exploded on the passenger side directly under his seat. "The up-armored humvee was the only thing that saved my life," he says. After returning from Iraq last month, Chung visited the Pentagon to implore officials to send more armored humvees to Iraq. He never got in to see Rumsfeld. "I knocked on his door," Chung says, "but the people in his office said I needed an appointment to see him." For the sake of the Americans risking their lives in Iraq, Rumsfeld would be wise to make some time for the soldiers now. --With reporting by Chris Maag/ Cincinnati, Nathan Thornburgh/ New York and Phil Zabriskie/ Baghdad