- The United States army has decided that small town reserve
units across America can fit homemade armour-plating to their vehicles
before heading to Iraq.
-
- Army chiefs prompted outrage when they ordered a number
of reserve units to remove steel plating lovingly bolted to their vehicles
as they prepared to ship out. The top brass said it was untested and unapproved.
-
- The armour plating has been designed to fit over the
thin metal floorboards and canvas doors of the existing vehicles.
-
- It was fitted by troops and their families, with the
help of local businessmen and town councils, friendly mechanics and - in
the case of one Alabama National Guard signals company - high-school engineering
students.
-
- The army has increased production of armoured Humvee
vehicles and bolt-on armour kits but approved kits, which cost about £30,000
each, will not be sent to all units before summer 2005.
-
- The weekend warriors of the 428th Transportation Company
of the army reserve, based in Jefferson City, Missouri, were not prepared
to wait that long when, just days before they were due to deploy to Iraq,
they heard that the jeep-like vehicles were vulnerable to roadside bombs.
-
- Virgil Kirkweg, whose sheet-metal factory built armour
for 50 vehicles from the unit, said: "Some military police friends
of theirs said they were being hit by roadside bombs - people were losing
arms and legs, getting killed."
-
- Mr Kirkweg's son-in-law, who is serving in Iraq, sent
pictures of crude armour his unit had tried to make in the field after
scavenging parts from a Baghdad scrap heap.
-
- Mr Kirkweg's armour costs less than £300 per vehicle
and takes three days to make.
-
- "We're not saying it's picture perfect but it's
substantially better than going out with nothing," he said after testing
the steel plating by shooting at it with a hunting rifle.
-
- But the Missouri reservists were told not to fit the
armour until it was officially tested.
-
- A signals unit from Foley, a small town in Alabama, fared
even worse. The state's National Guard commanders ordered it to remove
its home-made armour and banned all such alterations.
-
- The order caused a storm of protest from soldiers, their
families and neighbours.
-
- A Missouri congressman, Ike Skelton, who is the senior
Democrat on the House of Representatives armed services committee, lobbied
the secretary of the army to allow the 428th Transportation Company to
take its armour to Iraq.
-
- But this week, the army sent a message to all units,
offering guidance on how to make homemade armour.
-
- Major Gary Tallman, a spokesman for army weaponry at
the Pentagon, stressed that his commanders had never actually banned improvised
armour, but said: "A perception got out that the answer was no. We've
now sent out a formal message saying, 'If you're going to do this, here's
how to do it right'."
-
- A huge rotation of US forces is under way in Iraq that
will see more than 100,000 reservists and national guardsmen deployed in
the largest and most hazardous reserve mission since the Vietnam War.
-
- * Coalition forces are prepared for any increase in violence
during the four-day Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday which begins tomorrow, Brig
Mark Kimmitt, the American deputy chief of operations for the coalition,
said yesterday.
-
- At the start of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month, last
October there was a sharp increase in attacks.
-
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
-
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/31/wwmd131.
xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/31/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=24412
|