You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Iraq
Humvee Customized in Kurdish Monster Garage
2004-01-12
EFL
While driving through the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Kirkuk several months ago, Master Sgt. Dana Watson, 43, of St. Johns, Mich., came up with the idea to seek local assistance when he spotted men at a metal works shop grinding and welding pieces of steel. "I went to these guys with the design to fit our vehicles with some kind of reinforced steel and asked if they could build a prototype," Watson, a combat engineer with the Tikrit-based 4th Infantry Division, said recently. "They said they could, and after making a bid for the project, they won the tender."
And make it able to tear through a hedgerow while your at it.
The winning company, which belongs to the Tuttle Family Kirkuk businessman Delshat Peerot Aziz, has built and installed 8mm thick steel casings in the rear compartments of 100 Humvees and other vehicles where gun-toting soldiers sit. It also fitted new doors made of the same material onto each of the vehicles. While watching the Iraqi Kurdish workers putting the finishing touches on several Humvees, Watson said the revamped vehicles out of Fort Hood, Texas, can repel the blasts from roadside bombs and machine gun fire.
And they now have some bitching exhaust stacks as well.
I think the old M113 and M114s carried 13 or 14mm of armor, if I remember correctly...
"Our number one concern was IEDs (improvised explosive devices)," said Spc. Christopher Roessner, 20, of Ventura, Calif., while sitting in the back of one of the strengthened vehicles. "I feel a whole lot safer sitting in the back of one of these Humvees than the old ones."
The spoiler is non-functional we’ve got a bottle under the dash that the Capt. doesn’t know about.
Roessner and his fellow soldiers go on daily patrols of dangerous roads in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, where anti-U.S. insurgents have planted improvised explosive devices that have killed and wounded many U.S. troops. Aziz and the 15 engineers he employed to refit each of the vehicles are Iraqi Kurds, an ethnic group that had been long impressed (sic) under Saddam’s Baath regime. But the Kurds in Iraq’s north have enjoyed greater freedoms than most Iraqis since the 1991 Gulf War due to aerial protection from U.S.-led air forces. "I am happy to be working with U.S. soldiers because they brought freedom to Iraq and appreciate a quality ride," Aziz told The Associated Press. "If I can make it safer for them to do their work, then I am helping Iraq become safer."
A little shade-tree engineering of the HUMVEEs; some military traditions will never die.
Yeah, well, I still don't think the flames painted on the sides look military. But then, I'm old school...
Posted by:Super Hose

#4  This is beautiful on so many levels; the Kurds getting back at Saddam, the Sargeant taking the initiative on the spot, Kurdish-American relations being bettered, the fact that they made a tender! for the job (how Western! :) and won a contract - how capitalistic, which is great news in itself!

I want to see a picture too!
Posted by: Tony (UK)   2004-1-13 12:02:53 AM  

#3  I wanna see a picture, dammit!
Posted by: Scooter McGruder   2004-1-12 10:30:24 PM  

#2  a humvee on nitrous would put the fear of our God in the Jihadis though
Posted by: Frank G   2004-1-12 10:29:02 PM  

#1  Damn, 8mm is a fair amount of steel. Enough to stop shrapnel and block some explosive, if not direct fire. Good on that engineer. I wonder if these are the kevlar humvees, or the original fiberglass?

The 113 has about 15mm of 'armor', but it's aluminum rather than steel. Not real good at stopping stuff, and it burns (specially with the fueltank right under the crew compartment). blehh
Posted by: 4thInfVet   2004-1-12 10:06:33 PM  

00:00