M113 Gavin light, M2 Bradley Medium, M1 Abrams Heavy Tracked Armored Fighting Vehicle Upgrades for Non-Linear Combat in Iraq

U.S. Army finally begins to adapt to the non-linear, 4GW battlefield: more M113 Gavins to save the day in Iraq

These M113 Gavins are for the 3rd Infantry Division's 2d tour of duty to Iraq. After being the first to Baghdad while the USMC was bogged down trying to clear cities on foot, the 3rd ID (M) raced in using "Thunder Runs" to take out the enemy's center of gravity in classic 3rd Generation Warfare 2D maneuver. During the course of the heavy fighting that followed the 3rd ID came to many lessons learned; one of them is the need for GUNSHIELDS and extra armor layers to withstand RPGs and other high explosives attacks. However, we still have a long, long way to go to fully adapt the U.S. Army to the non-linear battlefield....our Airborne/Air Assault/Light Infantry units need M113 Gavins starting with Delta Weapons companies and supply & transportation units...we still have thousands of M113 Gavins in storage that need to be put into service....but the tide has turned finally against the emasculated wheeled Army mentality...if we can change our culture and develop an egalitarian, adult warfighting strategy to win 4GWs...our many men who died in Iraq will not have died in vain.

An excellent way to do this would be to "start over" with a Non-Linear Maneuver Brigade (NLMB) that does all of the non-sexy but necessary things nobody in DoD wants to do: use fixed-wing observation/attack aircraft, amphibious and aircraft delivered tracked AFVs for 2D and 3D maneuver...live in ISO Container "BattleBoxes" not former dictator palaces which inflame the locals and starts guerrilla wars....call it "SeaBasing 21" or adult common sense, we need massive doses of this if we are to stave off defeat in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East...

EXCLUSIVE M113 GAVIN NEWS!! SUPER GAVINS TO RESCUE MESS IN IRAQ!

We still have a long, long way to go to fully adapt the U.S. Army to the non-linear battlefield..our light units need M113 Gavins starting with Delta Weapons companies and supply & transportation units with XM1108 cargo carrying variants...we still have thousands of M113 Gavins in storage that need to be put into service....but it was at this moment that the tide finally turned against the wheeled madness threatening to destroy the U.S. Army and our Soldiers... American Iraq War Casualties

www.geocities.com/militaryincompetence/americaniraqwarcasualties.htm

www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/10557885.htm?1c_

Army to upgrade armor on older personnel carriers

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Army, beset with complaints that its troops are going into combat in inadequately armored Humvees, will send an older and less used class of armored personnel carriers to Iraq after spending $84 million to add armor to them.

These vehicles, both veteran warhorses, are the M113/A3 armored personnel carrier and the M577 command post carrier. Both will be tougher and safer than newly armored Humvees.

Army officials who pushed hard over the last two years for getting the M113 into duty in Iraq said it was more useful, cheaper and easier to transport than the Army's new wheeled Stryker armored vehicle, which also is in use in Iraq.

The Army and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld found themselves at the center of a firestorm last month over the pace of adding armor to the Humvee, a small transport vehicle that's been pressed into service in Iraq as a combat vehicle. Critics have charged that even with armor the Humvee is too easily destroyed by rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices.

An Army representative, who didn't want to be identified, said Monday that $84 million was being spent to add armor to 734 M113/A3s and M577s.

For the M113s, that includes hardened steel side armor, a "slat armor" cage that bolts to the side armor and protects against RPGs, anti-mine armor on the bottom and a new transparent, bulletproof gun shield on the top that vastly improves gunners' vision.

The M577, nicknamed the "high-top shoe" for its tall, ungainly silhouette, will get only slat armor and anti-mine armor. Its high sides can't take the steel armor without making the vehicle unstable and even more liable to roll over.

The slat-type armor essentially is a metal cage designed to detonate RPGs before they breach the steel armor and the light aluminum wall. Similar slat armor has been added to the Stryker vehicle.

The armor kits will be produced in the United States, the Army representative said, and installed in Kuwait.

The representative said the M113 upgrade was requested by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the ground commander in Iraq, and approved by Gen. George Casey, the commander of multinational forces in Iraq.

The M113 typically carries a driver, a commander and 11 infantry Soldiers. It can be fitted with a .50-caliber machine gun or a MK19 40 mm grenade launcher. The M113/A3 version, introduced in 1987, has a bigger turbo-charged diesel engine, an improved transmission, steering and braking package, and inside liners to suppress spall, the superheated molten metal produced by RPG and tank-round hits. It has a range of 300 miles and a road speed of more than 40 mph. It also can swim.

More than 80,000 M113s in 28 configurations have been manufactured since they were introduced in 1960, and they still do yeoman duty in many of the world's armies.

At around 13 tons, the M113 is much easier to transport than the behemoth M1A2 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle or even the wheeled Stryker.

The Army has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying armored Humvees at $150,000 each and buying and making special tempered-steel and bulletproof-glass kits to add armor protection to the thin-skinned variety. The demand for armor on the Humvees grew as insurgents began pouring RPGs onto American patrols and convoys, and detonating deadly homemade bombs in the late summer of 2003.

The current demand in Iraq is for more than 22,000 armor-protected Humvees, a goal the Army says it will meet sometime between now and March. Its prime focus has turned now to armoring the five models of trucks that travel Iraq's dangerous roads to supply American forces.

Rumsfeld recently told a Tennessee National Guard Soldier, who asked why his outfit had to scavenge dumps in Kuwait for scraps of armor for their Humvees, that "you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might like to have."

One serving officer, who asked not to be identified, said Rumsfeld "didn't even let us go to war with the Army we had; he made us leave half our armored vehicles at home in pursuit of lighter, faster and cheaper."

PAST PROGNOSIS: June 17th, 2004

The U.S. Army is self-destructing.

On February 25, Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA) presented to the House Armed Services Commitee (HASC) their plan to expand to 43-48 Brigades by handing Soldiers a rifle and made to walk or ride around in a cheapo truck. The "Hollow Army" of the 1970s has returned even though thousands of M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs sit in storage that could upgraded with RPG-resistant armor, gunshields, C4ISR to be non-linear battlefield transport means for every rifle squad. Previously, the Army on January 28, 2004 presented President Bush an expansion plan to gut the Army of its tracked combat engineers and heavy tank battalions for more vulnerable light troops on foot and in wheeled rubber-tired trucks or armored cars-with-a-computers; a techno-madness concocted by Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) egomaniacs who want to steer weak, All Volunteer Force (AVF) co-dependants around a map graphic linear battlefield fantasy that doesn't exist. Its the dismal WWII Italian Army with computers. Troops-in-trucks is a miserable 500+ dead and over 2,000 wounded failure in the physical world we live in where nation-states are collapsing via 4th Generation Warfare attacks by RPGs, car/roadside bombs, land mines and an "AK47" in every third world household. So while our men are getting killed and maimed in wheeled vehicles that can never adequately protect them, the Army tries to bribe them with $10,000 re-enlistment bonuses to stay in Iraq for one more year. If you are DEAD you can't spend it. However, if these monies were instead pooled together, say the money that would have been given to 8 Soldiers ($80,000) a M113A3 Gavin light tracked Armored Fighting Vehicle (AFV) sitting in storage could be supplied with RPG-resistant armor, underbelly countermine armor and gunshields to enable these same 8 Soldiers to fight alert, and heads-out to prevail in 360 non-linear combat, so they can return home ALIVE and intact. Yet the Army lusts for two $250,000 so-called "up-armored HMMWV trucks" for every squad; $500,000 that can't fully protect our men, can't go cross-country, can't swim and requires 4 out of 9 men to stay with the vehicles and not fight on foot. For $400,000 just one M113A4 Gavin could carry the entire rifle squad, require only two men stay with the vehicle, one manning a heavy machine gun or autocannon in overwatch, providing full amphibious, cross-country, stealthy, hybrid-electric drive, RPG-roadside bomb protected mobility: superior capabilities no Army on eath has today. While others fantasize about "FCS" capabilities 10 years from now, for just $400,000 per Gavin we could have them today in every Army rifle squad.

Tragically, current Army leaders sick with NPD illness refuse to do what's right to adapt properly to the Non-Linear Battlefield (NLB) of our 4GW world to accomplish the mission and save their men; they have bought into the discredited sociologists Alvin and Heidi Toffler's mythical, feel-good "Third Wave" world-view that anything that is physical is no longer important; all that matters is that we slap a computer in to do mental gymnastics to create a virtual, WWII-style linear battlefield that does not exist, where everybody stays in their inferior social position in the Army to feed NPD ego; relying on higher headquarters to micromanage them and "save them" as they beg for outside fire support--an expensive guided bomb dropped by a sexy USAF aircraft---when overwhelmed by enemy AK47s, RPGs and IEDs. A homogenized, one-size-fits-all, "medium" or "light" weight truck/foot-slogging Army; a bureaucrat's wish to-pinch-pennies-wheels too light to fight and too heavy to fly, restricted to easily ambushed roads/trails. The Army's narcissistic Generals can then brag that they have been such "visionaries" bringing in a mythical "new age" of network-centric, information-driven warfare; a "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) where local units are physically weak and unable to take initiative like the science fiction movie, "Demolition Man" warned us about using satire. Providing ALL Army units with 22,000 pound light tracked M113A3 Gavin AFVs instead of impotent rubber-tired 22,000 pound FMTV-type trucks would provide local units physical, armored/air/ amphibious/cross-country mobility, firepower and supply superiority to take the fight to the enemy anywhere in the world using small-unit initiative, imagination and daring. The IDF has up-armored M113 light tracked AFVs and doesn't lose a man a day like we are in Iraq....

We certainly can't have that!

This is why its time the American people and the Soldiers of the Army itself work through the Congress to take back control of DoD and the Army which belongs to them---NOT the senior officers who are on ego trips and waiting for high-paid jobs after retirement (re: Generals Heebner and Keane) from corrupt contractors building crap equipment for our troops like General Dynamics Land Systems and their borrowed Canadian "Stryker" armored car/deathtrap design. If we don't get our military on track, the DoD mandarins will continue to "transform" ourselves like the French did before WWII--according to our fantasies instead of realities that will continue to result in real disasters for America and our men.

If you REALLY care about our troops dying and being maimed in combat, contact your Congressman/Senator and insist the rest of the Army be re-equipped with tracked AFVs:

Contact Congress

If you are a Soldier/marine headed to Iraq, read our Survive Iraq Gear List which we will constantly update as new information comes in.

Politics of the New "Hollow" Wheeled U.S. Army in Action: armored HMMWVs and Strykers fail

FULL REPORT ON HOW ARMY IS SACRIFICING ITS MEN IN IRAQ INSIDE INADEQUATE WHEELED TRUCKS

NEW! Army troops-in-trucks in Iraq is medically unsafe and unsound"

Dire NLB Medical Threats

Music from "Batman Begins" by Hans Zimmer