The U.S. Army is hastening development and deployment of armor kits to Iraq
and planning new systems to harden logistics vehicles.
The task of armoring vehicles at a rapid rate is made easier by the fact that
most of the engineering work already has been done, and engineers need only
to tweak existing armor kits for duty in Iraq. The bigger challenge is to get
enough kits produced, officials said.
“There’s very little design work required,” said Richard
McClelland, director of the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command’s
research, development and engineering center. The armor kits for the most part
had been developed but never stockpiled, McClelland said. “We chose not
to buy them because we’ve never been in a situation like this. …
All our trucks are in harm’s way.”
TACOM is changing the way it tests armor systems in response to the new threats.
The new testing focus now includes blast resistance from explosives in addition
to small arms fire.
New solicitations from TACOM include an active protection anti-missile system
designed for the Army’s Stryker light armored eight-wheeled vehicle, but
possibly applicable for other platforms. McClelland said active-protection systems,
which weigh less than 1,000 pounds, would likely be installed only on trucks
with high value payloads.
“This would be a hit-to-kill, baby Star Wars system to counter missiles,”
McClelland said. “We’re looking at ways we could do this so that
they could be used on trucks.”
Another priority is ensuring that armor kits and their recipients fit seamlessly.
Many systems for support vehicles require the replacement of part or all of
the cab, whereas future systems will be designed to easily accommodate the kits,
McClelland said. Especially for logistics vehicles, having permanent armor is
not desirable given current weight limitations.
“You don’t want to armor everything,” he said. “There’s
only two places in the world you need armor: Iraq and Afghanistan … If
you’re driving around Ft. Hood you don’t want an armored vehicle.
You want a vehicle that’s designed to take (armor) when it needs it.”
Armor suppliers had to adapt existing armor kit designs to meet conditions
in Iraq.
“We modified the kits to face the threats in Iraq,” said Joe Coltman,
executive vice president of the Aerospace and Defense group at Armor Holdings
Inc. “There were changed made to the design to the perimeter of the cabs
and the transparencies.”
Design changes continue, based on feedback from the field, said Coltman. “Groups
from the Army and Marines did ‘lessons learned from Iraq’ studies
and gave direction back to the industrial base,” he said. “We’re
making changes on the fly, on the production line.”
He added that the demands are so high that production never stops for changes,
but retrofit kits are sent to upgrade vehicles that leave the factory without
the benefit of the new information. Other difficulties are overcome through
planning and coordination. “There are shortages of materials,” Coltman
said. “There are constant workarounds taking place.”
Each substitute material requires rounds of engineering and testing at company
facilities and military test ranges. Adding to the complexity are changes in
shipping locations, barcode tagging and design tweaks. To manage this information
flow, company officials from vehicle, armor and military hold meetings several
times a day.
“It seems like a very complex dynamic, and it is,” Coltman said.
“We have people working around the clock, on weekends, holidays, everything.”
Many of the larger logistics vehicles used in Iraq were armored one way or
another by the units themselves, “with homegrown solutions,” said
Hugh “Sandy” McCloud, land systems division director for Radian
Inc., and a former Army colonel.
The Army in 2003 directed Radian to replace the improvised sandbags and scrounged
metal with a new system that would protect medium-truck cabs from mines, rockets
and gunfire. In sixty days Radian delivered a prototype to Aberdeen testing
ground, where it was subjected to live fire and performance tests.
The first kits were shipped to Iraq at the start of 2004 and installed on the
Army’s family of medium tactical trucks, or FMTV. The kits provide 360
degrees of armor around the three-man teams in the cab, and can be installed
by a three-person team in 40 hours. Features include ballistic glass windows
and air conditioning.
“We armor the cabs primarily to protect crews so they can escape the
kill zone or survive the blast effects of an IED or RPG,” McCloud said.
“The nature of battle used to be all the armored vehicles were on the
front lines … The front lines don’t really exist. Today the threat
is all around you.”
McCloud declined to give details on the number and time line of the FMTV up-armor
kit deliveries, but he did mention several incidents where crews have come under
fire and survived courtesy of the new systems. “It’s safe to say
they’ve been battle-tested,” he said.