Hillbilly armor

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A U.S. Army 5-ton cargo truck with improvised armor on the doors, rear gunner's box, and an improved bumper.

Hillbilly armor, also known as farmer armor or haaji armor, is a slang term used by American troops to describe improvised vehicle armour, most notably in post-invasion Iraq.

Vehicle armor has occasionally been improvised by American armed forces in other conflicts. In World War II, U.S. tank crews welded spare strips of tank track to the hulls of their Sherman, Grant, and Stuart tanks.^[1] In the Vietnam War, U.S. "gun trucks" were reinforced with sandbags and locally fabricated steel armor plate.^[2]

[edit] "Hillbilly armor" in Iraq

Humvee with Marine Armor Kit.

When American troops first took Baghdad, only the U.S. military police had fully armored vehicles.^[3] During the occupation that followed the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, insurgent forces deployed roadside bombs and snipers with small arms to attack military vehicles on supply convoys and other known routes.

To protect themselves from these threats, American troops began reinforcing their Humvees, LMTVs and other vehicles with whatever was available, including scrap metal, kevlar blankets and vests, compromised ballistic glass and plywood. In some cases they relied on Iraqis to assist them in these efforts, and referred to the result as "Haaji" armor.^[1] They were also officially advised^[4] to line the floors of their Humvees with sandbags to deaden the impact of land mine explosions. A similar practice was common among M8 Greyhound crews during WW2^[5].

Some officers in Iraq were disciplined over their refusal to carry out missions in what they considered improperly armored vehicles.^[6]

[edit] Military-supplied "up-armor"

A reinforced door on an Army truck at a base at Ar-Ramadi, Iraq.

The Army began deploying 'up-armor' kits to better protect military vehicles in August 2003, two years before the Marine Corps would. Three levels of up-armor were implemented:

• Level I: fully integrated armor installed during vehicle production or retrofit (including ballistic windows)
• Level II: add-on armor (including ballistic windows)
• Level III: locally fabricated armor (interim solution, lacking ballistic windows)

The process of up-armoring all vehicles was to be complete by mid-2005.^[7]

As recently as February 2006, the Army was welding additional armor onto the armored Humvee variant M1114 and 5-ton MTV in Iraq.^[8]

The U.S. Marines developed their own Marine Armor Kit (MAK), consisting of bolt-on armor for the crew compartment, ballistic glass, suspension upgrades, and air conditioning. However, the kit was not fielded until early 2005, and even then only to certain specified units.^[9] The armor was made available for MTVR's, LVS's and HMMWV's. Level I armor kits are now phasing out MAKs for MTVR's and M1114 HMMWV's.

[edit] Rumsfeld questioning incident

A U.S. Army LMTV cargo truck with up-armored cab.

A 10K forklift outfitted with hillbilly armor protecting its cab

The practice of U.S. troops reinforcing their vehicles with improvised armor became well known after a U.S. soldier questioned U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the need to salvage armor from scrap materials on December 8, 2004 at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.^[10][11]

Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? We do not have proper vehicles to carry us north.^[4]

The question was met with cheers from fellow troops, and Rumsfeld's response:

I talked to the general coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place where they are needed. I'm told that they are being ... I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter, on the part of the Army, of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate they believe ... it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

I can assure you that Gen. Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly Gen. Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip.^[12]

Rumsfeld was paying a visit to approximately 2,300 troops on the eve of their deployment across the border to Iraq. Specialist Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team (Tennessee Army National Guard) asked the question, but it was later revealed that Lee Pitts, an embedded reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, had asked^[13] Wilson to make the inquiry.^[14] "I have been trying to get this story out for weeks—as soon as I found out I would be on an unarmored truck," said an email from Pitts to Times Free Press colleagues that was posted by Jim Romenesko on the Poynter Institute website.^[4] "It felt good to hand it off to the national press. I believe lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border riding with scrap metal as protection."^[15]

Several related questions were asked of Rumsfeld by other troops. Some of Wilson's fellow soldiers and commanders supported his inquiry in later interviews. Col. John Zimmerman, Staff Judge Advocate of Wilson's unit said that 95 percent of the unit's 300 vehicles lacked appropriate armor, and suggested that it was the result of a double standard used to equip the National Guard as compared with active-duty forces.^[16][17]

On December 9, 2004, President George W. Bush responded to the incident:

The concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment. If I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country, I'd want to ask the secretary of defense the same question, and that is, 'Are we getting the best we can get us?^[4]

On December 10, 2004, it was reported that following the incident, Armor Holdings, Inc., the company producing armored Humvees for the Army, was asked to increase production from 450 to 550 per month—its maximum capacity.^[3] Also on December 10, Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA, House Armed Services Committee) issued a news release harshly critical of the Bush administration and The Pentagon:

The Pentagon's excuses aren't even credible. It's been nearly two years since the war in Iraq began. It's been more than a year since the concerns about unarmored Humvees were raised. It's been more than two months since the company that provides the armor for the Humvees informed the Marine Corps that it could speed up production....

There is no excuse that the production of armored vehicles was not ramped up much earlier. No excuse.... Because of callous negligence on the part of the Pentagon's leadership, our soldiers have had to resort to dumpster diving to improve their chances of survival.

An Airman works on a truck as part of an expanded program to improve the armored protection for U.S. troops. Balad Air Base, Iraq (April 2005).

Meehan described the shortage of armored vehicles as "a dangerously exposed center of gravity" of America's military presence in Iraq, and the lack of preparedness for insurgent tactics such as deploying improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as "symptomatic of a headlong rush to war."^[18]

On December 15, 2004, the Department of Defense held a special briefing on the issue of up-armoring. Officials stated that the process of up-armoring SPC Wilson's unit was nearly complete on December 8 and was completed within 24 hours of the incident. Brig. Gen. Jeff Sorenson, Deputy for Acquisition Systems Management, stated during the briefing:

You can go back to other particular operations with respect to even the Soviet Union in terms of some of their operations that they had in Afghanistan as well as Chechnya, where they came in in a vehicle configuration that was all buttoned up and all isolated, and in many cases that particular formation was destroyed....

There's an art and science to this.... the whole point of what we're doing there is to win the hearts and minds of that particular population in that country. You don't do that by sitting—staying in a vehicle, not getting out of the vehicle and not being exposed. So there is an art there from the standpoint of what is the balance in terms of protection that is required to that particular vulnerability where we're unprotected....

We're trying to win the hearts and minds of this population, and you can't do that sitting within a closed vehicle. You can't do that in isolation. You have to get out and essentially engage.... it just wasn't going to make sense to win the hearts and minds of a people by having tanks and Bradleys and so forth running up and down the streets. So they tried to put people into vehicles that were less obtrusive as well as an ability for them to engage. However, as a consequence of that, we began to find a threat that we had not anticipated, and we then had to respond to that threat with the protection levels and the capabilities that we have provided.^[7]

[edit] Aftermath

The way the incident was portrayed by some media outlets—particularly that Rumsfeld's answer to Wilson may have been quoted without sufficient context—and the revelation that an embedded reporter may have "planted" the question received critical reaction in the following days.^[12]

The incident sparked criticism of Rumsfeld,^[19] and led some to question the nation's commitment to its troops.^[20]

[edit] See also

• Humvee usage in Iraq and political implications
• Gun Truck
• Armored fighting vehicle
• Armored car
• Stryker (vehicle)
• Technical

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• US Soldiers show off Hillbilly Armor – Video clip from the film Gunner Palace (2005)
• Hillbilly Armor – Discussion thread at Glock Talk Forums