WASHINGTON — The Pentagon wants to replace the Humvee, which is carrying as much armor as possible on current models but is still getting blown up by increasingly powerful roadside bombs in Iraq.
U.S. troops there have begun using 31 larger, heavily armored, 5-ton "gun trucks" to escort troop convoys, a primary Humvee mission. But the military still needs a light utility vehicle that is less vulnerable to makeshift land mines than is the Humvee, Pentagon officials and lawmakers said Thursday.
"The Humvee is basically a big jeep," Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing Thursday. "We've tried to load them up with enough armor," he said. But "you can only do so much to a Humvee."
Nevertheless, Pentagon officials say the well-known military vehicle -- which was introduced in 1985 and is now driven in toned-down civilian form by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and thousands of other motorists -- is unlikely to be retired in the foreseeable future.
"We've got a lot of Humvees in the near term that I think we're going to use until they die," said Brig. Gen. William D. Catto, commanding general of the Marine Corps Systems Command.
The effort to build a hardier multiuse vehicle stems from the adaptability of insurgents who have changed their tactics in response to each defense crafted by Pentagon planners. Over the last two years, Iraqi insurgents have made roadside bombs their primary weapon. Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said the explosives are causing 70% of U.S. casualties in Iraq.
When U.S. troops found ways to spot the bombs' wires, insurgents turned to small-arms fire and wireless devices triggered by cellphones. When soldiers increased the use of "jammers" to block the remote-control signals, insurgents sought new ways to use hard-wired bombs.
As the Americans accelerated countermeasures, Pentagon officials said, the insurgents increased the size of the bombs. Guerrilla attacks have twice blown up Bradley fighting vehicles, which are more heavily armored than Humvees. In an incident April 28, four U.S. soldiers in a 19-ton Stryker armored combat vehicle were killed by a roadside bomb in northwestern Iraq.
To protect themselves, troops in Iraq at first welded improvised armor onto the thin-skinned Humvees. The Army and Marines then sent in kits of armor to ring the vehicles' sides. But this additional armor was too heavy to use on the Humvees' floors and roofs.
