Last fall, he notes, when the Army realized the gravity of the insurgency, engineers at the Army Research Lab at Aberdeen, Md., designed the add-on armor kits for the Humvees "over a weekend.
Dov Zakheim—who, until his recent departure, was the DoD's comptroller—told NEWSWEEK that another holdup has been an "antiquated" acquisitions system. Zakheim said the Pentagon fixed the problem only in the past six weeks with "joint rapid action cells," which allow contractors to waive regulatory red tape in wartime. Other Army officials complain that the nation does not have the industrial base any longer to produce equipment for a new kind of war. That's one reason so many supply trucks—seven out of eight, in fact—are still unarmored. The Army's "family" of medium trucks is now made by a single firm, Stewart & Stevenson of Sealy, Texas. All the features that make trucks driver-friendly—like a big front window—also make it a nightmare to drive on Iraq's lethal highways. So the Army has contracted both with its own depots and with outside firms to build appliqué armor kits.
Yet some critics contend that, contrary to what Rumsfeld told Wilson, America is not going to war with the Army equipment it already has. They claim that vested interests at the Pentagon are sometimes obstructing the best firepower and equipment available. Why? In part because the Pentagon is still obsessed with its "lighter, faster" vision and is hyping new, ill-tested armaments like the Stryker fighting vehicle. Much older equipment, like treaded M113 personnel carriers, lies unused in arms "boneyards" although they could be up-armored far more cheaply than Humvees.
Among these second-guessers is Rep. Robin Hayes, a North Carolina Republican. Hayes told NEWSWEEK that "the secretary of Defense exhibited a remarkable lack of sensitivity" in his remarks. Hayes said he has been frustrated by delays in getting several heavier armored gun carriers to the light-gunned 82nd Airborne, which first requested them a year ago. Four such tank-treaded vehicles are still sitting in mothballs in Pennsylvania. Army Gen. Richard Cody approved the transfer last March. But then the Army decided to wait for a newer system mounted on a wheeled Stryker, though the system has been held up due to reliability issues, according to a recent General Accounting Office report. On Dec. 9, a day after Rumsfeld's Kuwait appearance, Hayes wrote him a letter saying, "I simply cannot understand why we are not equipping our soldiers and Marines on the front lines with every weapon in our arsenal."
