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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (1712)	9/25/2006 3:36:15 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 10087

Its not unusual to get griping from current or retired soldiers. In this case they may have legitimate things to gripe about, but the story is rather one sided. Hammes said in his prepared remarks that not providing the best equipment was a "serious moral failure on the part of our leadership." The United States "did not ask our soldiers to invade France in 1944 with the same armor they trained on in 1941. Why are we asking our soldiers and Marines to use the same armor we found was insufficient in 2003," he asked. It would be nice if he was a little more specific. What armor does he consider to be a problem? The Humvees are now mostly armored, and armored about as well as they can be. Trucks used for transport might be more of a problem (but then a good sized IUD or a well aimed RPG shot would take out even well armoured trucks or Humvees). The M-1 is an excellent tank, its not outdated, neither is the M-2. The striker is fairly new, first introduced in large numbers during the Iraq campaign. Its a modification of an old design, but it still shows that not all the armor is the same. In 1941 most tanks were under armored and under gunned compared to what was possible under the currently available technology. Also tanks were simpler, and the military was getting 30 or 40% of the GDP, and there were less political and funding delays about many programs. We went in to WWII with underdeveloped tanks (as did everyone to a certain extent) and rapid improvement was possible. We went in to this war with more complex, modern, expensive and effective tanks and armored fighting vehicles, so less change would be expected or even possible.