Humvee armor maker says Pentagon not ordering more
Toolbox
By Dan Higgins
Albany Times Union - Published: December 17, 2004
ALBANY, N.Y. — When Army Spc. Thomas Wilson asked Defense Secretary DonaldRumsfeld last week why troops had to pick through the trash to find armor for Humvees, it caught John Abrams' attention.
Abrams' company, Arcadia Supply Inc., helps make vehicle armor, and is turning it out as fast as the Army can place an order.
The company is just waiting for the Army to ask for more.
"We could purchase more machinery, hire more people — very easily, we could double production," said Abrams, who is the company's vice president.
Arcadia uses high-pressure water jets and a hard mineral powder to cut the metal for armored door panels and seat-back panels for Humvees and 5-ton utility trucks, called M939s. The company has cut enough metal for 1,200 vehicles since March.
The cut and painted metal is shipped to the Watervliet Arsenal, which assembles the pieces into kits with finishing items like nuts and bolts. The arsenal sends the kits to Iraq and Kuwait, where soldiers use the material to "up-armor" their vehicles.
Time magazine reported this week that there are 19,389 Humvees in Iraq. Just less than 6,000 are fully armored; another 9,100 have been up-armored.
Abrams said the arsenal is a valuable customer, accounting for about 10 percent of annual revenue. But he worries that military bureaucracy is preventing Arcadia from getting larger orders.
The company cuts armor plating for vehicles in batches of 200 or so at a time.
"There's never anything (promised) behind that," Abrams said. That's why he can't add more people and machines to make more.
He declined to say what the kits cost.
The armor plating — including 70-pound door panels made of carbonized steel that is three-eighths of an inch thick — has saved lives by putting a stronger barrier between soldiers and roadside bombs.
But soldiers have been complaining for months that there wasn't enough armor to adequately protect them.
The issue rose to national prominence last week, when Rumsfeld, addressing troops in Kuwait, invited soldiers to ask him "tough questions."
He got one from Wilson, of Chattanooga, Tenn., who drew cheers from comrades when he asked Rumsfeld where the extra armor was.
Rumsfeld responded by telling the soldier, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want or wish you have."
A spokesman for the Watervliet Arsenal said Tuesday that work on the kits is actually ahead of schedule.
"We are asking people supporting us to accelerate. We are three to four weeks ahead of schedule," said Gary LaDue, a civilian deputy to Col. Donald Olson, the arsenal's commander.
LaDue said he was glad to hear that Arcadia could double its output, and said the arsenal would likely use that capacity.
The arsenal had been working on the problem of armoring vehicles for months, he said, long before the remarks by Wilson and Rumsfeld brought the issue into the spotlight. He declined to comment on Rumsfeld's statements that there were logistical problems getting enough armor to soldiers.
U.S. Rep. Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., said companies like Arcadia should be given longer contracts, so they can plan better and make more equipment. "That makes perfect sense to me," he said. "Give us a sense of what's going to happen down the road."
McNulty said the Department of Defense is responsible for sending
soldiers into harm's way without adequate equipment. "And here there's a company in Albany that's just waiting for the Pentagon to pick up the phone," he said.
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