[Normando]

Esta breve notícia estava no site da CNN hoje (27 Abril):

"As the Pentagon is rushing to increase the number of armored Humvees in Iraq, the head of the U.S. Army Forces Command is complaining the reinforced vehicles don't provide adequate protection for U.S. troops battling insurgents, according to a memo obtained by CNN. In a memo to the Army chief of staff dated March 30, Gen. Larry Ellis writes, "Commanders in the field are reporting to me that the Up-Armored High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeling Vehicle (HMMWV) is not providing the solution the Army hoped to achieve." Ellis calls for doubling this year's order for the Army's new Stryker armored vehicle, and rushing them to Iraq. "It is imperative that the Army accelerates the production of Stryker vehicles to support current operations," the general writes."

Parece-me que os americanos estão mesmo à nora com a incapacidade do Humvee de providenciar protecção suficiente aos soldados. Não há dia que na TV não passem imagens de Humvees a arder ou todos esburacados com iraquianos a dançar em cima do capot. Ainda ontem foram quatro Humvees "pró maneta" no mesmo incidente, em Bagdade, durante uma operação de busca a um edifício. Não sendo eu perito nestas questões, deixava aqui umas perguntas: será defeito do veículo em causa? Há alternativas ao Humvee? O tal Striker é mesmo uma opção? Ou será que naquele teatro de operações não há mesmo veículo que resista?

[FFAP]

Bem, a minha aérea também não é esta, mas pelo que tenho conhecimento o Hummer não é um blindado, mas sim um jipe que por falta de melhor é usado em todo o lado, qualquer tiro de RPG o destrói.
   O Stiker também não me parece ser grande coisa, é um blindado de rodas de "raiz", e não de circunstancia como o Hummer, mas também não aguenta um impacto dum RPG directo, se repararem nas repostagens televisivas podem ver que a todos os Striker está a ser aplicada uma proteção adicional para o proteger contra os RPG, ou seja, andaram os americanos a gastar milhões e milhões de dólares no seu projecto para nada...
   Na minha humilde opinião era enviar para o Iraque M113 que isso sim é o melhor blindado ligeiro(APC) que foi construido.

[Rui Elias]

Digamos que o Hummer não pode augurar nada de bom para quem o utiliza.

Ainda ontem nos arredores de Najaf, o condutor de um Hummvie, embevecido decerto pela luxuriante paisagem iraquiana, enquanto percorria uma daquelas largas estradas construidas por Saddam não reparou que vinha um roquet em sentido contrário, causando um embate frontal.

Do carro não sobrou nada e dos ocupantes, parece que receberam guia de marcha para Arliongton.

Claro que se uma patrulha da nossa gloriosa GNR lá estivesse, poderia disciplinar melhor o trânsito, mas os GNR preferem gozar das delícias de Nassíria.

[JNSA]

O caso dos Humvees é um dos dilemas com que muitos exércitos modernos se deparam. Por um lado precisam de um veículo pequeno, leve, de fácil manutenção, com baixo nível de consumo, para as missões de manutenção de paz. Mas às vezes lá apanham com um RPG-7 e aí é que está o problema. A verdade é que, para ter uma blindagem capaz de resistir a estes projécteis, é preciso um blindado de lagartas (os Stryker andam com uma "gaiola" gigantesca atrás e mesmo assim podem ser facilmente destruídos, já para não falar da mobilidade, que vai para o "galheiro"    

[Spectral]

Um tema que tem muito que se lhe diga.

A grande verdade é que todos os veículos são vulneráveis a um RPG, até um tanque como o Abrams ou o Leopard. Um M-113 (versão basica) resiste menos a um tiro de RPG do que um Stryker versão basica, ponto final.

Realmente, como o JNSA sugeriu, esses veículos israelitas poderiam ser a solução, mas: ambos apresentam uma mobilidade bastante baixa, o que reduz a sua utilidade numa guerra dinâmica, e no caso do Achzaritz, o compartimento das tropas é algo claustrofóbico, além de ter uma entrada muito pouco ortodoxa.

Vejam neste site:

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/israeli_weapons_vehicles_apc.html

Claro que numa situação de guerra urbana a mobilidade não é tão essencial, mas na situação actual do Iraque, em que os HUMVEEs são forçados a grandes patrulhas em território +- hostil, um Stryker tem grandes vantagens sobre um M-113 devido à sua rapidez ( e até muito menor ruído).

[Ricardo Nunes]

Seria o Fennek uma boa alternativa ao Hummer ?

The Fennek Armed Reconnaissance Vehicle, produced by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) of Kassel, Germany and SP Aerospace and Vehicle Systems BV of The Netherlands (the ARGE Fennek consortium), has been developed for the Dutch and German Armies. The prototype vehicle completed field trials in April 2000.

http://www.panzer-modell.de/referenz/in ... fennek.htm

[Spectral]

Hum, sempre gostei muito do aspecto do Fennek e seria um substituto ideal para o HUMVEE nas missóes de patrulha/ligação/escolta de comboios de veículos.

Aliás estão a aparecer uns veículos muito semelhantes pela Europa fora (Bélgica, Suíça, Itália), porque é óbvio que os HUMVEE e outros veículos semelhantes não chegam para o serviço..

[dremanu]

E que tal o Striker:





Os Filandêses usam um que se chama Sisus:

[Rui Elias]

O Striker pode ser muito bom e seguro, mas que é muito feio, é.

[Ricardo Nunes]

Lack Of Armor Claims Troops
United Press International
April 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - Twenty percent of the U.S. troops killed in Iraq might have lived had there been more armored, heavier vehicles available to them, Newsweek reports Monday.

A top Army general is recommending the Army send more Stryker medium-weight fighting vehicles to Iraq, which are lighter than tanks but heavier than Humvees, according to the magazine.

Newsweek reports that an unofficial study by a defense consultant now circulating through the Army says 142 Americans were killed by land mines or improvised roadside bombs and 48 others by rocket-propelled grenades.

"Almost all 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," according to Newsweek's account.

The Army is racing to send "up-armored" Humvees to Iraq, but remains almost 1,800 vehicles short for its needs.

[JQT]

É uma vergonha que umas forças armadas com B-2, F117, porta-aviões nucleares e não sei quantos satélites, não tenha mandado blindados suficientes para o Iraque, para um cenário de actuação há muito previsto e andem a brincar com a vida dos seus homens, fazendo-os andar em Humvees com chapas de aço aplicadas dos lados. Os americanos, quando lhes dá para a incompetência, é em força.

JQT

[Normando]

[CITAÇÃO]

Army rushing more armored Humvees to Iraq, adding steel plating to the 'soft' ones

By The Associated Press
Monday, April 26, 2004

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - Deafening noise, confusion and fear erupted as the roadside bomb slammed into the U.S. Army Humvee, knocking over Spc. Stephen Monti, who was manning a gun in the turret.
"Then we started checking whether we still had our 10 fingers on," Monti recalled of the recent ambush south of Baghdad.

Not only had all four soldiers escaped injury, but the vehicle -- which had been fortified by armor plating and bulletproof glass -- came through with just a few dents and a cracked windshield.

"There probably would have been wounds, maybe mortal ones, in your basic Humvee," said Monti, of St. Louis. "Every vehicle that goes out on the road should be 'up-armored.' Your safety is dramatically increased."

But many in Iraq are not, and attacks against them by roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades are driving up the casualty toll.

A Humvee was engulfed in flames Sunday after a roadside bomb struck a U.S. convoy in eastern Baghdad, killing a U.S. soldier. It was not known if the Humvee had the extra armor.

When the war began, only about 2 percent of Army's 110,000 Humvees were armored. Now, of the nearly 15,000 Humvees in Iraq, about 1,500 to 2,000 are armored, according to the Army. The numbers are increasing.

The Army is making a "full-court press" to locate and deliver every armored Humvee in its inventory to Iraq, said Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division. At the same time, factories are boosting production of the armored version.

During the war last year, some Humvees were ambushed as swift-moving U.S. troops bypassed pockets of resistance.

But the attacks have mounted as Iraq became what Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces, calls "a 360-degree battlefield," with none of safer rear areas of conventional warfare.

"They were not intended to be on the front lines," Dempsey said of the unarmored vehicles. "In a linear battlefield, Humvees always operated behind the front lines -- in most cases even out of artillery range. Iraq isn't a linear battlefield. As we find ourselves in a low- to mid-intensity conflict, and we have all these vehicles designed for a linear battlefield, they come up short."

The Army is trying to find every heavily armored Humvee "from every other place in the world," Dempsey told The Associated Press. "I saw an e-mail the other day that said there was one unarmored Humvee in Kosovo and they were tracking it coming here."

In the meantime, soldiers in Iraq are making do. They're hardening their "soft-skins," as unarmored Humvees are called, from kits available at some bases or by getting enterprising Iraqis to whack steel sheets onto their vehicles.

Some who have to ride in the soft-skins resort to prayer.

"It hasn't prevented me from going out, but whenever possible, I bum a ride in an armored Humvee. There is a little extra element of having to trust God more when going out in soft-skins," said Maj. Chip Huey, of Hattiesburg, Miss., chaplain for the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division.

The basic M998 Humvee, or High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle, began rolling off assembly lines in 1985, replacing the venerable Jeep and variously configured to serve as a field ambulance, scout vehicle or war zone taxi.

An armored Humvee, the M1114, first appeared in 1993, but the Army initially ordered a few, apparently not envisioning post-Cold War conflicts and peacekeeping missions such as Somalia, Kosovo, Haiti and Iraq, where guerrilla attacks could come anywhere and anytime.

Now, the M1114 probably ranks No. 1 on the wish list of many soldiers in Iraq, since it can stop AK-47 bullets, anti-personnel RPGs and most roadside bombs and mines -- weaponry that makes short work of the non-armored version.

"You can mitigate your risks in combat in a lot of ways. One active way is to up-armor. It's essential," said Capt. Brian Ducote, of Dunwoody, Ga. Like many units, the goal of his 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry, 1st Infantry Division is to shield 100 percent of its Humvees.

The unit is halfway there, with 22 of the 67 vehicles M1114s and a dozen others protected by added-on armor, which normally includes rolled steel plates for the sides, shields behind the back seats, reinforced flooring and bulletproof glass. Such refits take about a day.

"It's a great temporary fix, but they need to push the armored ones," said Staff Sgt. Brian Rasmussen, of Payson, Ariz. A soft-skin, he said, was not built to take the extra weight of the armor, which strains the suspension system and makes it hard to maneuver. Sometimes the bulletproof glass available is too thick to fit into the window frames, he said.

"My crew would feel a lot safer if we had one of these," said Sgt. Leandro Diaz, of Kenedy, Texas, pointing to Rasmussen's armored Humvee. Rasmussen looked more relaxed as the 2nd Battalion prepared for a 186- mile convoy along dangerous roads from this southern city to their base north of Baghdad.

Diaz said he had to tune the engine of his soft-skin for speeds of up to 75 mph to scoot out of ambush-prone areas. And the unit has found other ways to compensate, such as training everyone in an unarmored Humvee, including the driver, to pull triggers more quickly in event of an ambush, or simply avoiding using them on risky patrols.

Dempsey said his Germany-based division arrived in Iraq a year ago with a little more than two dozen armored Humvees out of a fleet of 400. Now, the combination of deliveries of new armored Humvees and the conversion of the unarmored ones will raise the division's total to about 200 with armor.

The Army's Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, which recently took control of Baghdad from the 1st Armored Division, will eventually end up with 700 armored Humvees, Dempsey said.

The Army says production is being speeded up at the Am General Plant in Mishawaka, Ind., the sole maker of the Humvee, and at O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt of Fairfield, Ohio, where the armor is mounted.

The Senate passed a supplementary $239.3 million bill in November to produce 1,065 armored vehicles at a cost of $150,000 apiece, compared with about half that for a soft-skin.

Such measures have been fueled by politicians, military experts and relatives of soldiers killed in unarmored vehicles, as well as images of insurgents gloating around burning Humvees, rifles raised in triumph.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune ... 91181.html

[Normando]

[CITAÇÃO]

Chicago Tribune - April 27, 2004

Military to provide armored vehicles to defend against bombings

BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Responding to a request by field commanders, military leaders are increasing the delivery of armored vehicles to Iraq because deadly roadside bombings have not diminished as expected.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that a request for more heavy armored vehicles - Abrams M1A1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles - has been made by commanders in Iraq. The Pentagon is considering sending more tanks and is accelerating production of armored Humvee utility vehicles.

The decision to add armor may suggest that the Pentagon made a deadly miscalculation by reducing heavy armor in Iraq.

Forces now arriving in Iraq as part of a massive troop rotation were ordered to leave many of their heavily armored tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles behind, in the belief that since their mission was peacekeeping instead of fighting, heavy equipment would be unnecessary.

But the violence targeting U.S. troops has escalated, not diminished. April has been the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since the war began a year ago, with at least 115 soldiers killed this month.

"The reason this is significant is because over the last several months they have been shipping all the armor in the theater out because of this persistent view that Humvees and mounted infantry is really all that's required," said one high-ranking Army officer in Washington. "The First Cavalry Division is only bringing one in six tanks, one in six Bradleys. They're going in Humvees, and most of their equipment is sitting in Ft. Hood, (Texas)."

Some officers said tanks and Bradleys provide the best defense against roadside bombs, and that they have also proven surprisingly effective in urban fighting. On several occasions, they noted, the arrival of tanks and Bradleys has brought an end to firefights.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently ordered about 20,000 troops scheduled to return home to stay in Iraq another 90 days. The bulk of that extended force comes from two heavily armored units, the 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The military's ubiquitous Humvee (an acronym for high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle) has proven especially vulnerable to the remotely detonated roadside bombs that Iraqi insurgents place along supply and patrol routes. Some of those bombs use strings of 155-mm artillery rounds, which can penetrate even armored vehicles if triggered at the proper moment.

Most Humvees have little or no armor plating. Doors are made of lightweight metal or canvas. "Up-armored" Humvees have heavy doors, floors, panels and bulletproof windows, but they also can be confining for troops conducting operations that require them to enter and exit vehicles quickly.

There are currently about 2,500 armored Humvees in Iraq, according to an Army spokeswoman. The new production pace should put 4,300 such vehicles in the country by September. Crews in Iraq are also using modification kits to add armor to Humvees already there.

But in a March 30 memo, Gen. Larry Ellis, the head of the Army's Forces Command, told the Army chief of staff, "Commanders in the field are reporting to me that the Up-Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle is not providing the solution the Army hoped to achieve. It is imperative that the Army accelerate the production of Stryker vehicles to support current operations."

The Stryker, which can carry 11 troops and has half-inch armor plating, has its own critics. The Stryker was deployed late last year for the first time in Iraq, despite a Pentagon study that found it may be vulnerable to rocket-propelled grenade attacks. The Army has devised a metal cage that surrounds the vehicle to ward off grenade hits.

One Army Stryker brigade is now in Iraq. Several of its vehicles have been damaged or destroyed in attacks.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/ne ... 534414.htm

[Rui Elias]

Enquanto os EUA não reforçam a sua presença com mais blindados, a pedido de um general, e enquanto metem a viola no saco em Faludja e levantam o cerco, perante a feroz e destemida resistência iraquiana, ontem mais 10 ocupantes sucumbiram.

De facto, andar de Humvvie no Iraque faz extremamente mal à saúde

Como já tenho dito, não há armas, das mais sofisticadas que há que dobrem a coragem e vontade de um povo em ver-se livre do ocupante.

[Ricardo Nunes]

Enquanto os EUA não reforçam a sua presença com mais blindados, a pedido de um general, e enquanto metem a viola no saco em Faludja e levantam o cerco, perante a feroz e destemida resistência iraquiana, ontem mais 10 ocupantes sucumbiram.

Parece que noto uma certa felicidade nas suas palavras sempre que um soldado norte-americano perece.  :oops: