Inside the Army on Humvee Protective Plates

The company that produces Humvee Protective Plates has on its webcite this press release dated August 30, 2004, which noted:

Some in Congress have accused the military of being lax in its provision of adequate protection equipment. During an April House Armed Services Committee hearing, Chairman Duncan Hunter (RCA) rebuked Army officials for not moving fast enough to supply vehicle armor, saying the supply system suffered from “a case of the slows.”

The wartime supplemental bill, signed into law Aug. 6, provides $1.3 billion for critical force protection requirements, according to the conference report. About $587 million alone is designated for the Army and Air Force to purchase up-armored humvees.

When the fiscal year 2005 National Defense Appropriations Act takes effect Oct. 1, another $160 million will be available for up-armored humvees. The supplemental also provides $100 million for bolton armor and additional money for soldier equipment, including body armor.

In the coming weeks, manufacturers of force protection equipment, such as Armor Holdings and AM General — the Army’s sole source suppliers of up-armored humvees — anticipate that money from the supplemental will begin to flow in the form of awards for up-armored humvees and bolton armor kits, said Bob Mecredy, president of the company’s aerospace and defense

group.

Some force protection awards were handed down earlier this month. The Army, which is striving to purchase more than 840,000 sets of individual body armor, on Aug. 19 and 20 announced delivery orders for Small Arms Protective Insert plates from at least seven companies. The orders come from a raft of indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery contracts that could collectively total more than $2 billion between now and 2007, according to the notices.

Contracts for up-armored humvees are expected to be issued in the coming weeks, Mecredy said. The funding will keep production at high levels to meet service requirements, he said.

Let’s see. Bush&Co started talking about this invasion soon after 9/11/2001 and Bush made the decision to invade on 3/19/2003 on his own time table. We should have anticipated this insurgency resistant, but the funding for these protective plates had to wait until a supplemental bill was signed into law on 8/6/2004? Of course, this is old news to those of us who have followed this story – but why couldn’t the Sec. of Defense been more honest with the troops yesterday?