• Tipped upside down
Tipped upside down
The story of the U.S. Army’s 428th 428th Transportation Company’s desperate search for a way to protect its troops is at once a tragedy and a farce. It is a story of generosity and ingenuity, of bureaucratic intransigence and war profiteering. And it is a parable of the unintended consequences of the rush to war in Iraq.
The 428th is a Reserve unit headquartered in Jefferson City. It operates 72 vehicles, Humvees and 5-ton trucks, in support of field medical units. The unit was put on alert status last February and ordered to Fort Riley, Kan., two weeks ago to prepare for deployment to Iraq.
As a Reserve support unit, the 428th is supposed to operate far behind the front lines. As such, its vehicles hadn’t been equipped with armor designed to offer protection against small-arms fire and shrapnel.
But there are no front lines in Iraq. Instead, there are roadside bombs and guerrillas who don’t care who they kill. Learning that, the troops of the 428th applied a little Missouri ingenuity. The 428th persuaded Reid Millard, a Jefferson City funeral home operator, to donate $4,000 to buy 6.5 tons of quarter-inch steel plate to “up-armor” their vehicles.
Virgil Kirkweg, a co-owner of Industrial Enterprises Inc. of Apache Flats, donated the labor, also estimated at $4,000, to cut and drill the steel plate so it would fit the floorboards and doors of the vehicles.
Then the Army got involved. The Pentagon said it was OK if the 428th took its homemade armor to Iraq, but it wasn’t sure the troops would be allowed to bolt the plates in place once they got there. The homemade armor hadn’t been tested, nor had the 428th gone through the official Pentagon procurement process.
“I think it’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of,” Mr. Kirkweg said.
The Army has a legitimate interest in making sure the homemade armor will stop an AK-47 round or won’t fragment when hit by a grenade, but no more so than the troops of the 428th. And you don’t want the vehicles to be so heavy they won’t run, but 13,000 pounds cut up for 72 vehicles adds about the weight of a single soldier apiece.
What’s really startling is the price differential between the 428th’s armor and the Army’s official armor. Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Millard and Mr. Kirkweg, the 428th got their 72 vehicles armored for $111 each. The price of a single Humvee is $150,000. With the official Army-approved armor — installed at the Cincinnati plant of Armor Holdings, Inc. — the price goes up to $225,000.
The Pentagon has ordered 1,065 of the up-armored Humvees, but most of them won’t be delivered until 2005. In the meantime, Armor Holdings and other firms are developing upgrade kits that can be installed in the field.
Soldiers, understandably, are getting impatient.
Even as it was turning up its nose at the 428th’s homemade armor, the Army was awarding its Commendation Medal to Capt. Darryl M. Butler, an engineer with the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade in Baghdad. Capt. Butler’s achievement: He invented the Butler Mobile, a 900-pound steel armor kit for soft-topped Humvees.
The real story here is not why Capt. Butler gets a medal for his ingenuity and the 428th gets the brush-off, nor even why it should cost $75,000 a pop to armor a Humvee. The real story is why Army Reserve units like the 428th and Capt. Butler’s 354th were sent into battle with second-rate equipment.
Part 1 of the answer is that nobody — at least nobody in charge — anticipated that postwar Iraq would be so dangerous. Iraq was to be a cakewalk, our troops were to be welcomed with open arms. Nobody anticipated improvised explosive devices or guerrillas armed with rocket-propelled grenades or organized insurgency. This is an intelligence and policy failure of the first order and can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration in general, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in particular.
Part 2 of the answer is that Mr. Rumsfeld also wanted to prove that Iraq could be taken and held with a minimum number of active-duty soldiers backed by reservists and National Guard troops. What he and other Pentagon planners failed to consider was that for years, Reserve and Guard units have been deliberately short-changed on equipment.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Philip Dine reported Sunday, Army officials now admit that budget constraints led them to “only field so much” for Guard units. “There’s only so much stuff to go around,” one official told Mr. Dine.
The widespread use of Reserve and Guard units in combat roles — and the changing nature of combat — wasn’t anticipated. “We tipped the world upside down,” said Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, director of the Army National Guard. “The system has not caught up with reality.”
Active duty elements were first in line for the best equipment, with the rest parceled out to the Reserve and Guard. The issue reached the front burner Nov. 2, when a Chinook helicopter assigned to an Illinois-Iowa Guard unit was shot down, apparently by a shoulder-fired missile, killing 16 soldiers.
Only two of the unit’s helicopters had been equipped with the latest anti-missile defense systems. The Guard now admits that it ordered the new systems for only half of its helicopter fleet. What’s more, many Guard and Reserve units operate without the latest high-tech body armor, night vision goggles and other critical equipment.
“Resources aren’t infinite,” a Pentagon official told Mr. Dine.
No, but they’re pretty close to it. With the defense budget now at $402 billion, plus the $87 million supplemental budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, resources ought to be sufficient. What’s insufficient is the planning, coordination and resources.
It’s beyond troubling that American soldiers are scrounging for steel plate and warm gloves, boots and flak vests, to fight a misbegotten war while well-connected contractors are getting rich and generals and procurement officials are lining up six-figure jobs.
“I don’t care too much whose fault it is,” Sen. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., told Mr. Dine. “We need to solve it darn fast.” He’s right on the second part and wrong on the first. The people whose fault this is should lose their jobs. That or ride patrol in Baghdad in a soft-topped Humvee in a second-rate vest.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
