ARMORED HUMVEES: Too dangerous?
Most of the accidents involve new hummers, the ones with armor installed at the factory. The hummer was always considered a safe vehicle, because it had a low center of gravity, and it’s width made is less prone to rollovers. But now there are more rollovers, and they appear to be caused by the increased weight of the armor, and the higher speeds troops use to avoid, or get away from, ambushes. Combat casualties have been falling sharply over the past three months, and part of that has to do with the high speed driving tactics adopted by troops using hummers. Such tactics have evolved over the last two years. But all that hot rodding comes at the cost of more fatal accidents.
As I wrote before, “it’s not as simple as more armor = better.” There are tradeoffs — speed vs. protection is one of the oldest in military design — which the simplistic and uninformed press coverage of the issue missed, as usual.
UPDATE: On the tradeoff, reader Mike Dayton emails: “Not only military design. Which do you see more of – rabbits or armadillos?”
Heh.
ANOTHER UPDATE: My combat-engineer secretary emails from Iraq:
As far as the armor on the humvees goes, this argument could also be made for the body armor we wear on our persons. In fact, Anthony Zinni states in Battle Ready that he felt that Vietnam era body armor was not worth the trade off in mobility. I felt the same way about our body armor until I got here. As far as humvee mobility, I think that the trade is worth it as an armored humvee you would “just lead don’t lead ’em as much.” This is of course personal opinion based on zero empirical evidence. In addition to rollover tendencies, a long term issue will be maintenance — the add on armor is simply wearing the
vehicles out.Just my .02.
In other news got to swim in a pool which use to belong to Saddam on one of the palace compounds at the airport. I think his architectural tastes could best be described as “thug/pimp.” I would imagine that a Houston drug dealer from ’88 would be in heaven.
Makes sense to me.