Why can't humvees be armored on the floor?

I'm listening to Mike Malley, and one of his callers tonight has a brother who rebuilds the equipment returned from Iraq. She was talking about the disgusting things they find in those Humvees, but also said that the outer parts of the vehicle can be armored, but they can't armor the floor, so if the soldiers drive over an ied, tey die. Why can't they armor the floor? That sounds like an easy thing to do. I've rebuild a lot of old cars into streetros, and we sure can rebuild the floor, so why not put the armor plate in??? I don't understand!

But she didn't say specifically why. So I don't know for sure if it was because of design or weight.

but they must not want to SPEND any more than necessary on the cannon fodder. Must not be a big profit margin on that. Even my army boyfriend tells me about all the contractors they're hiring out for EVERY fucking thing, not letting the army handle shit they always have. So maybe they're just waiting for the lowest bidder on this?

The new Humvees would save life's and stop troops from being wounded. But dear old Rummy will not send them until 2008 .Does that tell you we have no plans of leaving soon.They will cut down just for 2006 run .but in Dec the troop level will rise again

They all used to sit on their helmets during 'copter rides.

Why?

To keep their "family jewels" intact in the lightly armored Huey's flights over hostile territory.

Better check huh lol

Just for this purpose.

(And if you haven't noticed by now, you never will :rofl:)

Grrls after my own heart.

StreetRodders rule!

HumVees have a hyperflexible drivetrain and cannot be bottom-shielded without compromising terrain adaptability (know what I'm saying?).

To armor-up the floorplate would probably cause all sorts of problems.

Simply put, these are the wrong vehicles in the wrong application.

I still see no reason not to be able to put the extra plates on the inside of the floorplate. The onlly problem I can see is possibly weight!

I agree, these are not the right vehicles for the application, but if AH Rummy made the decision to use them, there's no reason they couldn't be more protected!

Sorry, but this time you are dealing with a "wiman" who knows her way around vehicles!

My sister has a military-style HumVee.

Both the transmission and suspension are barely adequate under simple curb weight.

And the acceleration rate is abysmal.

An additional 500+ lbs would mean 2 or 3 less men in the vehicle.

GM bid that thing to the razor's edge. It was intended to scoot Special Forces troops across Eastern Europe.

The talcum-like sand of Iraq is grinding these things into junk.

The National Guard is leaving them where they park them.

Hum Vees were not built to be armored. They are the new jeep. If you want armor ride in an APC.

The Israeli Army has them, as do our Special Forces. The US Army 'up-armored' a part of their fleet after Kosovo. The Marine Corps, however opted not to, because the up-armoring limited the mobility because it adds 2000 pounds, (including steel plating on the floor to protect from ied's).
So now in Iraq, the Marine Corps ended up borrowing a part of the Army's fleet, but of course there are not enough of them to go around.

I'm a vet, and as all you other vets out there know, anything of that nature is always done by enlisted personnel if it's to get done. That way officers can not be held responsible. Always remember shit falls down to the lowest level.

Welcome home from a recon ranger

I was in the peace time navy in 1959to62, but I was sure that things haven't changed. The closest I got to any trouble was Gitmo when it was a great place for relaxing in the Caribbean. Thanks for doing what I couldn't.

I would bet anything that I own that our members of congress that visit get armored cars of some sort, let alone georgie boy

http://www.armyrecognition.com/europe/France/vehicules_a_roues/VAB/VAB_France_description.htm#1

http://armyreco.ifrance.com/europe/france/vehicules_a_roues/vbl/vbl_france_description.htm


These lessons learned about equipment and tactics have been well known. The British in Northern Ireland and the Israelis in the West Bank have produced numerous counter-insurgency specific vehicles designed to address IEDs and small arms fire faced in urban environments. The issuance of the Humvee in the 1980s was a defensible decision; its high mobility and light weight made it air-transportable and flexible, in line with the Army's Air Land Battle doctrine. Firepower, Protection, and Mobility are the three main factors of any military vehicle, and the kind of maneuver fast-paced warfare that U.S. military anticipated in Europe during the 1980s reqired a premium on mobility.

But this thin-skinned, unarmored vehicle is entirely inappropriate for urban counterinsurgency warfare, where protection and firepower assume greater importance. The extensive use and provisioning of the Humvee suggests that the Army did not fully anticipate the extent and tactics of the counter-insugency in Iraq, even though there was ample warning from the Israeli experience in Lebanon, as well as mere common sense. Likewise, problems with the Humvee from Panama and Somalia should have alerted the powers that be that this vehicle, without armor and with unarmored gunstations, would lead to unnecessary casualties.

The chief response to this problem has been to add expensive armor packages to existing Humvees. But, one must wonder, why stay with this platform which was never designed for urban warfare, nor is particularly suitable as an armored car. Off-the-shelf armored cars raning from the American V-150 , the German-made Fox (already in inventory), to the French VAB all would be superior, both in terms of protection and mobility. They all have, for instance, more ground clearance, stronger engines, and sloped armor. I speculate that these solutions would be cheaper and more easily available, more quickly than the current retrofitting of armored packages on existing Humvees at the rate of some 400 or so per month.

Each mission dicates a different vehicle. And the Humvee, designed for European armored campaingns, is not the right vehicle for a largely urban counterinsurgency war. Even so, the military has long had a sclerotic approach to adding new vehicles in its fleets. New vehicles complicate logistics and change the Table of Equipment. Acquistitions are also slowed down by the force of bureaucratic intertia; since there is already a "slot" for armored Humvees, it's easier to add them than to replace them in the Iraqi theater, even if they're less effective and more expensive. But these excuses are to be expected from mid-level beureaucrats and the change-resistant Pentagon. The SECDEF and President's leadership is called for. The SECDEF and the President need to cut the Gordian Knot of Pentagon/Army resistance and procure some appropriate, quickly available, low-tech, and reasonably armored alternative to Humvees, armored or otherwise.

http://www.affbrainwash.com/chrisroach/archives/016319.php

Those IEDs seem to be powerful enough to blow humvees them into the air.

Just asking :hide:

They'd just use bigger IED's.

An IED last year flipped an Abrahms A1 tank - a 72 ton tank.

I've read of Bradley's somersaulting in the air.

Of COURSE you could armor the floor in a HMMWV. It would be a direct-support maintenance task because you'd have to pull the driveline to box in the tunnel, but one-inch rolled-steel armor plates could be bolted to the floor of one of these vehicles.

The HMMWV contains a 6.2-litre GM diesel engine. It's not turbocharged. It puts out 135 horsepower, it's bolted to an automatic transmission containing 40-year-old technology, and it's sitting in a 5400-pound vehicle. This engine is perfect for many applications--like the Oldsmobiles it was designed to power, trash pumps, 60kw generators, lots of things--just not three-ton vehicles that may be called upon to go from 0 to 30, right now. I read a review of the civilian H1 (the same truck, but with 12-volt electrical instead of mil-spec 24-volt) that claimed a 22-second 0-60 time. This piece of shit can't get out of its own way when it's empty...much less when it's full of combat-equipped troops and it's got a crew-served weapon in the back.

The old reasoning for using weak, pointless technology like that shitty engine was that they wanted the driver to be able to fix it if it broke down in the middle of the war. That shit went out the window when they got rid of the Jeep and the M-880; soldiers in the field can't fix this engine because they don't have the tools or the knowledge to do it. All the good information Dad told you about how to get your car started again if it quit while you were driving won't work on a HMMWV because your car wasn't a diesel. In today's Modern Action Army, if your truck quits working you have to tow it to a mechanic, and you'd have to do exactly the same thing if you had a diesel that was big enough to pull the truck.

already has the technology to keep the soldiers safe. It's just cheaper to pay out Service Member Group Life Insurance than it is to equip us with the right stuff. Plus one of the government's corporations haven't figured how to make a huge profit on it yet. Trust me when they do we'll see better equipment. You know like our flak vests. We're facing IEDs and those flak vests do a really good job of keeping the torso protected, too bad the arms, legs and head all get blown off.

crude but effective.

Some models can be armored, some models can't...so they use sandbags

Also, soldiers choose between speed and armor(vehicle armor)...and some soldiers choose speed over armor. Lighter vehicles are faster vehicles.



*this is me speaking based on what my husband says what was happening in Iraq while he was there...I don't pretend to speak for other soldier's experiences.