November 16, 2005
We Must Spend More on our Ground Forces
By Jack Kelly

Most of the .50 caliber (12.7mm) machine guns being used by our soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan were manufactured during World War II.

This is a testament to the durability, reliability and effectiveness of "Ma Deuce", the most popular infantry weapon in Iraq. (The military designation for the .50 caliber machine gun is M2.) But it also suggests we don't spend as much money, effort and imagination as we should on upgrading the equipment our ground forces use.

The goal of our enemies is to kill Americans, both because they enjoy it, and because their only hope for victory is to cause us to lose heart and abandon the fight.

The news media made much ado about the death of the 2,000th service member in Iraq, an event without military significance in the traditional sense.

How and why our news media became the principal allies of our enemies is a story for another day. It is sufficient here simply to note that this is the reality with which we must deal.

We've always had a moral imperative to hold down casualties. We now have a strategic imperative to do so as well.

Our enemies would prefer to kill our civilians, but have been unable to do so largely because our soldiers and Marines have been killing them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So the Americans our enemies have the greatest opportunity to kill are our ground troops. Finding better ways to protect them should be our highest defense procurement priority. It isn't.

So the Americans our enemies have the greatest opportunity to kill are our ground troops. Finding better ways to protect them should be our highest defense procurement priority. It isn't.

Retired Army Major General Bob Scales notes that our experience in Iraq and earlier conflicts makes it clear the best way to keep our guys from getting killed is to provide them with armor protection.

Putting more of our troops in armored vehicles also makes them better fighters. A vehicle can carry heavier weapons and more ammo than a dismounted infantryman can, and can get across the battlefield faster.

A little armor protection makes a big difference. If our soldiers and Marines can be protected against small arms, mortar fragments, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), casualties could be reduced substantially. The vehicles need to be light so we can afford to buy them in large numbers, and to move them by air to hot spots.

The vehicles also need to be light to cut down the size of our logistics "tail," which to a large degree we've been chasing in Iraq.

Our Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles are hard to kill, but require enormous amounts of logistic support. The Abrams burns three gallons of gas for every mile it travels.

Our enemy is a thinking enemy. Omar knows that if he pops up with his RPG in front of an Abrams or a Bradley, his ticket to Allah will be punched forthwith. So he waits to attack the largely unarmed and unarmored trucks carrying gas and ammo.

As attacks on our support units increase, more combat units are needed just to protect the support troops, who then need additional logistic support.

We could break this vicious circle with a light tracked vehicle equipped with a hybrid-electric engine, which provides increased horsepower and substantially reduces fuel consumption. If the vehicle had band (rubber) tracks, it would be nearly as fast on roads and as quiet as the Army's Stryker armored car, with greater cross-country mobility.

Fielding such a vehicle should be our most urgent defense priority. But while we'll spend tens of billions of dollars next year on ships, submarines and fighter aircraft of little use in the war on terror, the Army's program to develop light armored vehicles is on the verge of cancellation.

The FMC corp. -- by adding a hybrid-electric engine and band tracks and the communications suite from the Stryker to the venerable M113 armored personnel carrier -- already has built the kind of vehicle I've described above (at less than a third the cost of a Stryker), but the Army's shown no interest in buying it. It isn't hard to imagine improvements. The boron carbide plates in the protective vests our soldiers wear are stronger than steel, but weigh much less. If we can build missiles that can hit nuclear warheads entering our atmosphere at supersonic speeds, we ought to be able to build armored vehicles out of this, or similar substances.

Our failure to devote a fair share of weapons research and procurement dollars to the ground troops who bear the brunt of the fighting is worse than tragic. It borders on criminal negligence.

Jack Kelly is national security columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Blade of Toledo, Ohio.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_16_05_JKE.html