Army has $4.1 billion for armor

WASHINGTON – The Army said Wednesday it is spending $4.1 billion to armor all military wheeled vehicles in Iraq by June, with most of the money expected to be used on trucks.

In comments to reporters at the Pentagon, Army Major Gen. Stephen Speakes, U.S. Central Command deputy commanding general for operations, would not provide specific figures for cargo trucks, Humvees or other individual categories or specify how much of the $4.1 billion is new money shifted to meet the demand for more armor. About half the money will be spent to build “up-armored” vehicles, while the rest will go toward armor kits to retrofit existing vehicles.

The Army and the Pentagon have come under sharp attack for the lack of armor on many of the Humvees, trucks and other vehicles U.S. troops use in Iraq. Insurgents using roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades have regularly targeted military vehicles, killing numerous U.S. troops.

Criticism intensified last week after a U.S. soldier complained publicly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait that troops had to scrounge in landfills for scrap metal to protect their vehicles.

“Right now, all of our industrial production – in other words, every kit or cab we can make – is going to the combat zone,” Speakes said. The Army service headquarters in Kuwait “will take everything we give them and respond to the combatant commanders, putting kits on where the combatant commanders want them,” he said.

Speakes and other Army officials said the new money was not in response to complaints from soldiers or Congress.

Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorensen, deputy for acquisition and system management, said time – not money – was the issue. He said the Army Proving Ground at Aberdeen, Md., was testing armor samples from various defense firms around the clock against rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons used by insurgents.

“This is not Wal-Mart,” Sorensen said. “This is a very detailed process in terms of trying to get this capability. So this has not been something where (neither) the Army nor the contractors have taken a laid-back attitude. They have been very forthright … with trying to accelerate the delivery capability.”

Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East, said insurgents may use doorbell mechanisms and remote controls from toys to detonate the bombs that have become a major source of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever find a silver bullet” against the homemade bombs, Smith said. “As we adapt, they adapt.”