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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (91726)	12/21/2004 9:01:59 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793777

I read this and thought, "if it works, the army will gold-plate the hell out of it." Picture at site defensetech.org Defense tech - D.I.Y. GUN TRUCK U.S. convoys have become juicy targets for insurgents. The vehicles roll around the desert with about as much armor as a Chevy pick-up. And the gun trucks meant to protect the supply trains aren't muscular enough to shove guerillas aside. So one Army Staff Sergeant, James King, decided to take matters into his own hands, The State (via Jeff Quinton) reports. SSG King has designed a new gun truck for convoy protection. The truck currently is undergoing a seven-day road test in Iraq and initial reports are good, Maj. Ricky Smith, the 175th [Maintenance Company's] commander, reported Wednesday. “So far, no one has shot at it and that is the effect we wanted — to scare the h--- out of the bad guys,” Smith wrote in an e-mail to The State... King’s design adds an armored box, bristling with guns, that can be bolted onto the back of a heavy transport truck in a convoy. It is much different than the gun trucks the Army has used for decades. Those are quick, agile gun trucks designed to race up and down the length of a convoy to meet attackers. King’s gun truck — recently unveiled at Camp Arifjan, where the 175th is stationed in Kuwait — weighs more than 20 tons. The vehicle originally was designed to haul a battle tank... The walls of the box are protected on the side by several layers of Kevlar. There are a few inches between the Kevlar and the sides of the truck to absorb most of the impact and shrapnel if it is hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, King said. That part of the design has not been tested, King said. “We won’t know until an RPG hits it.” The box is made of three-eighths-inch-thick steel plating, which can stop most small-arms fire. The floor is reinforced with two layers of the steel plating to protect against bombs. The box is armed with one 40-mm and one .50-caliber machine gun. It has room for two other gunners. If the truck makes it past its first real-world road test in Iraq this week, King and the others who worked on the project will construct seven more boxes for the 7th Transportation Group.

To: LindyBill who wrote (91726)	12/21/2004 12:21:30 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793777

Good for John Podheretz! One of the very few that have printed Rummy's complete statement....Also, I wonder if all the hullabalu wasn't somewhat planned....Maybe Podheretz is correct....see the bottom of his article....LOLOL! You might have taken the measure of his full answer: "I talked to the general coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they're being — the Army is — I think it's something like 400 a month are being done, and it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. "As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary. I can assure you that Gen. Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly Gen. Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that it would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip." Under other circumstances, you might have seen this as a moment in which the defense secretary gave a stunningly complete and honest answer to a brave American about the conditions under which that American must fight.