THE PENTAGON SPENT THE 90íS BUYING ONE MILITARY AND OPERATING ANOTHER

A brilliant story from Pulitzer prize-winning Pentagon reporter Greg Jaffe, a great guy with whom I have crossed paths on several occasions (yes, you need to read the book to find out more), entitled, ìDefense Mechanism: Cold-War Thinking Prevented Vital Vehicle From Reaching Iraq: Planning for Big Battles, Army Snubbed a Humvee Model Built for Guerrilla Fights: ëWe Didnít Anticipateí Threat.íî

Story is basically how our soldiers currently serving in Iraq are desperate to get their hands on the armored version of the Humvee. The Army started building these well-protected versions of the modern-successor to the Jeep roughly a decade ago. But guess what happened over the 1990s? Every time the Army came under a budget crunch, strategic force planners chose to cut production of the armored version, because it costs $180k compared to the $90k skin flint version. So now the Army has over 100k Humvees, but only about 2% of them are armored. Right up to the Iraq war, the Army was planning to cut the number of armored vehicles produced in coming years.

So what happens to our soldiers in Iraq? Theyíre getting sliced and diced by terrorists and insurgents who can send even small-caliber handgun bullets right through the non-armored Humvees like a hot knife through butter. Our soldiers over there are so desperate in their efforts to shield themselves, theyíre taking to welding scrap metal on the interior walls of the vehicles and laying sandbags on the floor.

Meanwhile, Army force planners, who spent the 1990s dreaming of a big-time shoot out with the fabled ìnear-peer competitor,î are steering the big bucks toward such heavyweights as the Stryker fighting vehicle (19 tons with heavy armor) and the much-anticipated Future Combat System, which will replace our current 70-ton battle tank sometime around 2010. How many of these behemoths does the Army need in the Global War on Terror? Tough to say, unless you see the occupation of Iraq as a far more likely scenario than massive armored column battles. The Army went into the Iraq occupation stating they need just over 300 armored Humvees for the job. Right now the latest estimate sits somewhere north of 10,000.

Jaffeís article is a real masterpiece of analysis, the best part being his noting that the units within the Army most in need of armored Humvees are the forgotten soldiers of Military Operations Other Than War (or MOOTW to defense insiders): the military police. MP units have long pushed the Army to stock up on these vehicles, but lacking any three- and four-star generals in their ranks (you donít become senior flags doing MOOTW), they have lost these budget battles year after year.

You want to know when the first celebrated cases of skinny Humvees being shot up during some overseas intervention occurred? In Somalia roughly a decade ago. Over the past few years, the Army has budgeted enough funds to build only about 30 armored Humvees a month, which is why National Guard units currently gearing up for duty in Iraq are forced to beg local businesses to help them fortify their vehicles before they ship out. The Armyís excuse? ìHow could we have foreseen such an occupation?î

Indeed, how could they have foreseen such efforts, when an incoming Bush Administration told everyone who cared to listen in 2001 that there would be no nation-building on their watch, nor any quagmires in Third World hell-holes? But even more pathetic than blaming the Bush White House for this state of affairs is watching Karl Roveís new attack ads trying to pin it all on John Kerryís voting record in the Senate. Truth be told, the Army did this to itselfóyear after year over the entire post-Cold War period. The Clinton Administration let them do it, and the Bush Administration went out of their way to encourage it, but in the end, the Pentagonís strategic mindset is the ultimate culprit. Built around the notion that the only warfare worth planning for is one involving a peer competitor, we spent the 1990s searching for one, only to leave ourselves woefully unprepared for the GWOT.