By Joseph Tanfani
Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 March 2006.
Miscalculations and problems in the military supply pipeline created delays in armoring the Army's truck fleet in Iraq, leaving soldiers at greater risk from lethal explosions, according to a new government study.
When insurgents started targeting U.S. troop convoys with hidden bombs, commanders asked for more armor for humvees and larger trucks, including the Medium Tactical Vehicles used to transport and supply soldiers.
Instead of setting out to armor the entire truck fleet at once, the Army ordered armored cabs and kits in a series of small contracts, and did not always supply the required funds quickly, the Governmental Accountability Office said in a report released yesterday.
Armor production lines sometimes shut down for two months or more - then had to start up again, the study said. There were also shortages of materials, caused in part by this incremental approach.
For example, the Army decided it needed 3,780 armor kits for five types of trucks in November 2003 but did not finish installing them until May 2005 - 18 months later.
By that time, the armor requirements had leaped to more than 10,000, and the Army was still behind.
'As a result,' the GAO found, 'troops were placed at greater risk as they conducted wartime operations in vehicles not equipped with the preferred level of protection.'
The armoring effort still is not done. Although most trucks had at least some armor by January, the Army says it will not be finished with vulnerable fuel tankers until early 2007.
In a response, the Army did not dispute the findings but said it had already put in place streamlined procurement procedures.
Armoring vehicles is crucial because bombs and other improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the greatest threat faced by U.S. troops in Iraq. They accounted for 1,000 deaths in Iraq as of Saturday, more than half of all deaths by hostile fire, military statistics show. They also have injured 10,451 troops, more than 60 percent of all the wounded.
The GAO findings echo those in an Inquirer report last year that found the military's armoring effort suffered from piecemeal production and from not heeding warnings from previous wars.
In its report, the GAO study said Army officials identified this threat to vehicles after conflicts in Haiti, Rwanda and Somalia, and even created a requirement for add-on armor kits for trucks in 1996. But the Army had other spending priorities, and never built them.
"The Army went into Iraq with less protective capability than it might otherwise have done," the study said.
Even when the Army wanted to order more armor for trucks, the money was not released right away. The GAO says it could not figure out why, because the Army could not produce the records.
Armor alone is not the answer to the IED threat, the Army says. Once more armored vehicles began showing up in Iraq, insurgents responded by planting ever-more-powerful bombs.
In a recent radio address, President Bush called the roadside bombs "the principal threat to our troops and to the future of a free Iraq."
The military has spent more than $6 billion to find ways to defuse the IED threat, including high-tech devices that jam radio signals, preventing the bombs from exploding, and robots that scour suspicious roadways in advance of troops.
The military now says it defuses about 45 percent of IEDs before they explode.
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Citation: Joseph Tanfani. "Report: Military Errors Held Up Armor in Iraq," Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 March 2006.
Original URL: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/14172681.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
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