The Myth of the Indestructible Army Vehicle

I was reading my local paper, which is unusual since I cancelled the subscription, but for some reason I do not understand, intermittently a paper is left; perhaps to remind me of what I am missing, which it never fails to do - reaffirming my decision to not fork over my hard earned money to those who loathe and despise me and treat me with contempt, while working to further degrade my country and its citizens - which is to say it is a typical medium sized chain-owned newspaper written and edited by completely self satisfied and arrogantly unreflective liberals. (English teachers note - this is a run on sentence of the worst sort - or as I like to think, Joycian; however since I believe it is possible to determine what it is saying after only two readings, it fails utterly as post-modernist thought).

In said newspaper there was a recurring theme that I have noted and commented on in several postings in the Belmont Club, but always too late so that the discussion had veered off into other areas so that my comments were no longer in the center of the argument - at least that is my excuse. The theme is that our boys are being let down - as the overwrought author of this article suggested - murdered - because we did not give them what apparently everyone but the U.S. military knows is sitting unused in Haliburton warehouses after having been bought at 4 to 5 times their real cost, from which Dick Cheney was given a direct cut in small unmarked bills delivered to his undisclosed location - that is to say the totally safe military vehicle. This is a further reverberation of the hysteria that a Marine Corps amphib was destroyed by a IED - and that the reason the personnel in the vehicle were killed is because negligent leaders allowed Marines to ride around in amphibious vehicles, noting correctly that the ocean was a long way away. The obvious implication is that they should have been riding in the magic HUMVEE/truck/AFV/tank that cannot be damaged by anything, which is readily available. This is a follow on to the armored HUMVEE scandal and then the armored truck scandal.

I am not trying to be morbid and am certainly not indifferent to the loss of service peoples' lives - I was one for most of my life - but allowing this sort of thinking to be perpetuated (not that essentially writing to myself in the blogosphere will deal a death blow to that sort of thinking) is not just factually wrong but leads to Sheehanism - my boy died because (1) Bush lied, (2) it was an unnecessary war for oil and Bush's right oil buddies (3) he did not have the right stuff due to negligence and indifference. So every death in Iraq or anywhere else becomes a needless death laid at the feet of the incompetence or uncaring attitudes of generals, bureaucrats, but especially Don Rumsfeld and George Bush because they did not give the boys the top secret M-#### Wolfowitz - the vehicle that cannot be destroyed.

I have some bad news for people - if you blow up 500 lbs of military grade high explosive under a vehicle - any vehicle - bad things happen. That fact that most U.S. military combat vehicles are among the safest ever designed for doing something inherently unsafe is unrecognized by most observers. I am no technical expert so I cannot speak definitively to the particular technologies that are currently in use, but the M-1, M-2/3, with their armor, fire fighting capabilities, spall liners and blow out panels etc set new standards for survivability.

One of the problems in Iraq is that non-combat vehicles are just as exposed as combat vehicles. So cargo trucks and tankers never designed for front line combat are more subject to attack in the irregular urban environment of Iraq than their design parameters envisioned. They have been improved and, perhaps some aspects of the upgrade programs were not well handled or were delayed - I cannot address that and it is certainly within the realm of possibility, given the flaws in any large bureacracy; but it is still time consuming and difficult to upgrade a significant part of the entire wheeled vehicle fleet.

I might add that a truck, HUMVEE or, especially a fuel tanker, is difficult to make as impregnable to enemy fire as a specifically designe fighting vehicle. That is not to say that improvements, not envisioned when initially designed, cannot be made, but it is absurd to believe that given the right gear, you can take a hit from a very large explosive and not suffer casualties.

The problem inherent in this is a very old one - the right balance between protection, mobility and functionality (in combat vehicles it is called lethality) but, to take the amphib as an example - an amphibious vehicle has a very different set of design parameters than an M-1 tank. The challenge of building an amphibious tank that is an effective tank is a long and sad one - because protection almost invariably adds weight and volume (not always - halone fire extinquishers and blow out panels are an exception) - so an armored HUMVEE is a heavier HUMVEE - thus it is potentially a slower and less mobile HUMVEE or sacrifices some functionality do to weight or the volume consumed by more armor or it requires more power, which means more fuel consumption (less range). There is a price for everything, which is not to say that given the tactical conditions in Iraq, this is not a proper trade off - but it is a trade off.

Since the USMC has this unfortunate problem of being specialists in amphibious warfare, while wishing to become a more mobile, lethal and flexible force - they designed what was a practical compromise vehicle - one that works reasonably well as both an amphibious assault vehicle - it works well in water - and an effective land armored personnel carrier (not an Infantry Fighting Vehicle - which a 500 lb bomb would also damage badly or destroy). It is a necessary compromise and a good one, or so I am led to believe - any Marine is free to correct me.

So, we can mourn for our dead, continue to improve or gear (as we clearly are doing) but must remember that the enemy is trying to kill us and sometimes he will. But the myth of the perfectly safe truck, jeep, APC, tank, airplane, helicopter is crap and someone needs to tell the public that. It is always possible that the absence of the latest technology might have made a difference (as it should or we would not be developing it) and so therefore, my boy died because they did not procure enough or fast enough the jammer, flare, countermeasure, armor that would saved a life. That is true, but even the best there is with everything we know to provide for the safety of our people, is going to get hit and destroyed. The only perfectly safe vehicle is the one parked in the motor pool, trouble is it defends neither ourselves or our values.