NEWSWEEK: Study Suggests One in Four Soldiers Killed in Iraq Would Be Alive Today if They Had Been in Properly Armored Vehicles

Sunday April 25, 10:38 am ET

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Light-Skinned Humvees Were 'Never Designed To Do This,' Says General, About Facing Vast Roadside Bombs

NEW YORK, April 25 /PRNewswire/ -- An unofficial study analyzing the casualty figures in Iraq suggests that many U.S. deaths and wounds simply did not need to occur, Newsweek reports in the current issue.

According to the study by a defense consultant, that is now circulating through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in rocket-propelled grenade attacks.

Almost all of those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study suggested.

Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs.

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040425/NYSU005

The military is 1,800 armored Humvees short of its own stated requirement for Iraq.

Despite desperate attempts to supply bolt-on armor, many soldiers still ride around in light-skinned Humvees. This is a latter-day jeep that, as Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division, concedes in an interview, "was never designed to do this... It was never anticipated that we would have things like roadside bombs in the vast number that we've had here."

According to internal Pentagon e-mails obtained by Newsweek, the Humvee situation is so bad that the head of the U.S. Army Forces Command, Gen. Larry Ellis, has urged that more of the new Stryker combat vehicles be put into the field.

Sources say that the Army brass back in Washington have not yet concurred with that.

The problem: the rubber-tire Strykers are thin-skinned and don't maneuver through dangerous streets as well as the fast-pivoting, treaded Bradley, report Beijing Bureau Chief Melinda Liu, on assignment in Baghdad, National Security Correspondent John Barry and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh in the May 3 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 26).

According to a well-placed Defense Department source, the Army is so worried about the Stryker's vulnerability that most of the 300-vehicle brigade currently in Iraq has been deployed up in the safer Kurdish region around Mosul. "Any further south, and the Army was afraid the Arabs would light them up," he says.

Other quick fixes are being rushed in. In Ohio, O'Gara-Hess and Eisenhardt Armoring Co. says it is flush with new orders to crank out 300 "up-armored" Humvees per month.

And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has just approved a quiet plan to fly 28 M1A1 tanks from Germany into Iraq by April 27, Newsweek reports. The move comes as the military is planning for a final assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

Meanwhile, soldiers are rushing to jury-rig their Humvees with anything hard they can find: bolt-on armor, sandbags, even plywood panels, creating what one senior officer calls "Mad Max-mobiles."

But Pentagon sources say many of the retrofitted Humvees cannot take the extra weight, and their transmission or suspension systems fail.

Another method is to spray shock-absorbing polyurethane foam -- one popular brand name is called Rhino -- to the inside or outside of unarmored vehicles, Newsweek reports.

As Iraq's liberation has turned into a daily grind of low-intensity combat-and Rumsfeld grudgingly raises troop levels-many soldiers who are there say the Pentagon is failing to protect them with the best technology America has to offer, Newsweek reports.

Soldiers in Iraq complain that Washington has been too slow to acknowledge that the Iraqi insurgency consists of more than a few "deadenders." And even at the Pentagon many officers say Rumsfeld and his brass have been too reluctant to modify their long-term plans for a lighter military.

On the battlefield, that has translated into a lack of armor.

Perhaps the most telling example: a year ago, the Pentagon had more than 400 main battle tanks in Iraq; as of recently, a senior Defense official tells Newsweek, there was barely a brigade's worth of operational tanks still there. (A brigade usually has about 70 tanks).

The 1st Cavalry's 2d Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, has first-hand knowledge about Humvee troubles.

Newsweek reports that during the unit's inaugural mission in Sadr City, a 19-man patrol from the battalion, traveling in four Humvees, had just finished escorting three Iraqi "honey wagons" on their rounds in the grim slum. Suddenly the street became "a 300-meter-long- kill zone," recalls platoon leader Sgt. Shane Aguero, courtesy of gunmen from the Mahdi militia of Shiite rebel Moqtada al-Sadr.

The Humvees swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets.

Sgt. Yihjyh (Eddie) Chen, gunner in the lead vehicle, was shot dead. Another soldier was hit and began bleeding from the mouth, Newsweek reports.

Then, two of the Humvees became disabled. Aguero yelled at one driver to gun the engine to get his Humvee moving. The engine fell out. As they'd been drilled to do, the soldiers set out to strip the disabled vehicles of sensitive items and to "zee off the radio" -- to see that codes and equipment don't fall into enemy hands.

When another group got ambushed nearby, an enemy round came through the Humvee's right rear door -- through retrofitted panels that the soldiers had been told would repel AK-47 rounds.

Miraculously, none of the three people inside were hit. Then a third Humvee sputtered to a halt: debris had pierced the fuel tank. "It just wouldn't start, we coasted the last 50 yards out of the kill zone," said its driver, Spc. Dee Foster.

At last an armored Bradley fighting vehicle arrived, and its steel ramp opened to scoop him and his buddies to safety.