After Rumsfeld was asked earlier this week why soldiers going into Iraq are having to scrounge for vehicle armor, the Army is now actively looking to boost production of uparmored Humvees. That's a good thing, to be sure, and one I doubt is any coincidence considering the media attention the issue has received this week. However, in addition to building more up-armored humvees, there also needs to be more effort on getting the vehicles already in Iraq up-armored with kits. In particular, the gunners on such vehicles need some kind of protection. Ideally, a ring mount in the center of the Humvee's back seat works well, with 'chicken plates' around the gunner. Some of the Cav vehicles I've seen, with hardshell 'hatchback' style back ends, do this and it looks like it works very well. For most general-purpose 2- and 4-seater Humvee models, though, what's being done here now is to weld a metal box around the back cargo area of the vehicle for gunner to sit in. This is effective, but certainly falls into the category of 'hillbilly armor' or what we tend to call 'Mad Max' style armor. Some actual gunner protection kits for the 2- and 4- seater open back humvees would be nice to see -- I'm not sure what is being built for this space commercially.

Tags - Browse all tags

• uparmor-humvee

Category - Browse all categories

• iraq