"Hillbilly Armor" nothing new to forces in Iraq (ABC WNT)

[underpants]

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=312959&page=1

Dec. 8, 2004 — They call it "hillbilly armor" — U.S. military vehicles protected with scrap metal salvaged from landfills. And now U.S. soldiers want to know how long they will have to scavenge for junk to protect themselves in combat.

"What we basically have is what we call hillbilly steel, hillbilly armor," said Col. John Zimmermann, a senior officer with the Tennessee National Guard. "It's real frustrating for these soldiers."

-page 2-
In the meantime, the Marines of Fox 2/5 Company have learned to improvise, using scrap metal to shore up their transport trucks in Iraq.

"One of the main problems have is exposure from the shoulder up, and that is one of the main reasons they came over to us and asked us to raise their sides and high-backs," said Kurt Hendler, a reservist serving with the Seabees, the Navy's construction force.

Hendler and his welding partner, Joe Parrot, are customizing the standard equipped personnel trucks with new steel doors, higher sides and deflecting roofs — all fashioned from steel plates intended for road repairs in Iraq.

This makeshift armor ended up saving the life of a crew whose vehicle took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade. They say it will take 2½ months to get a new door to replace the one that was damaged.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

1. If I hear the assholes in power

give one more pious sermon about "supporting the troops"...

[rkc3]

2. They'll probably be discharged for making unauthorized

improvements to government property.

[Ready4Change]

3. I'm far from defending this administration, but...

Soldiers have been making "hill billy" modifications to their equipment in the field pretty much since there WERE soldiers. Oft times the mods are frowned on, sometimes the soldiers are penalized, and sometimes the modification works and is adopted by the armed forces at large.

There are really 2 problems here. The obvious one is the failure of the higher ups to provide equipment/procedures to solve the problems the soldiers are trying to counter in the field.

The second is the failure of the higher ups to acknowledge that, since we have changed from an assault stance to an occupation stance, that this puts our soldiers into a situation where they are saturated by potential foes. When you are assaulting you can clear out zones wherein more vulnerable, less armored vehicles can operate. But when you are saturated, everything is open to attack.

[donhakman]

4. Compared to Nascar

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1418718

[underpants]

5. True True and True

:thumbsup: