CAMP NAVISTAR, Kuwait — The green trucks of the Iraqi Express line up daily along the Iraq-Kuwait border in a pre-dawn ritual for a trip that lasts four days and covers 1,200 miles.
Behind a makeshift steel plate on the door of a cargo truck, Sgt. Cesar Feliciano is nervous. His pregnant wife in Puerto Rico doesn't know he's riding a bomb magnet across Iraq for the first time, or that he'll do it every week this year.
"I don't tell my family about it, going on convoys. I tell them I'm going to be in a safe place, so they don't worry about it," he says. "I hope nothing happens."
But on at least one of five trips, drivers say, something does happen. Eighteen months after insurgents began to line Iraqi roads with bombs, many U.S. military vehicles continue to brave the most perilous roadways without armor.
Starting Tuesday, as fresh troops continue to cross the dusty berm from Kuwait into Iraq in the largest troop rotation in U.S. military history, no American military vehicle can travel outside a protected base without some sort of armor, military officials said last week.
The announcement was the result of a concentrated push to armor trucks after a National Guardsman asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in December why soldiers were forced to scavenge for makeshift armor to protect themselves on trips into Iraq.
Nevertheless, the effort to further protect American soldiers, much of it undertaken on an ad hoc basis at military bases in Kuwait, is not finished. Even after the order takes effect Tuesday, about a quarter of the 25,300 military vehicles venturing outside bases will have only the makeshift steel plates known to soldiers as "Mad Max" or "hillbilly" armor. About 6,000 unarmored vehicles will be confined to the base camps.
Military leaders acknowledge that the improvised armor is a temporary measure until more factory-made armor kits can be produced. The makeshift armor has saved many lives, mechanics say, and some survivors have put their tales in writing.
Vehicles with the temporary armor will be used in Iraq until June, when the protection is to be upgraded, military officials told the Senate Armed Service Committee last week. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said a soldier had written recently to complain that enlisted personnel were still scavenging for armor.
"We're still losing people over there on this issue, and it's just perplexing to understand what the reluctance has been in terms of trying to get it right," Kennedy said.
Insurgents began using roadside bombs -- known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs -- in summer 2003. As armor was added to vehicles, insurgents upped the ante, using larger, deadlier bombs.
No one knows the danger better than the drivers of the Iraqi Express. Spec. Matthew Heath, 20, described an attack last Easter, when insurgents ambushed his convoy. One soldier was wounded, shot through the unarmored door of an 18-wheeler.
"We've caught some small-arms fire, IEDs, mortar rounds, little stuff like that, car bombs," said Heath of Statesville, N.C., who expects to head home next month after a year of running supply convoys. "On an average convoy we have about one IED attack."
Protection is getting better, commanders say, but there are few sure things in Iraq when it comes to safety.
"I would say the next rotation of troops will be better protected than this rotation of troops, which is better protected than the previous rotation of troops," said Brig. Gen. Michael Milano, of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command. "There are no guarantees. But we're doing -- and we're obligated to do -- everything we can to provide as much protection as we can to anybody operating in Iraq."
There are three levels of vehicle armor in Iraq. About 6,000 Humvees have "level 1" armor, meaning they were manufactured as armored vehicles, with beefed-up engines, air conditioners and equipment to handle the added weight. They weigh 2,000 pounds more than the standard Humvee, with steel-plated doors, steel plating under the cab and several layers of ballistic-resistant glass in the windows. They were designed to protect against rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire, shrapnel and some land mines.
Next are 12,000 vehicles that have factory-made, "level 2" armor bolted on in the war zone.
Then there are the 7,300 vehicles with Mad Max armor, slated to be phased out this summer.
The remaining unarmed vehicles won't travel outside protected bases, except on cargo trucks, military officials said.
When Chief Warrant Officer Randall Menough's crew began fashioning armor at Camp Buehring last year in Kuwait, there was no Army directive to Mad Max vehicles. But they did it anyway.
"I've been in the Army for 18 years and this is the most important thing I've done in my military career," Menough said.
The company commander, Capt. Angelica Martinez, said some units asked for more armor than could be provided.
"People want to build gunships, but we just can't do that," Martinez said.
