Chinks in Our Armor

[Diverlady]

May 10 issue - Tom Christie was worried. It was the fall of 2003, and the Pentagon's chief weapons tester had noted problems with the Army's pride and joy, the new Stryker Armored Vehicle. The $4 billion program was seen as the vanguard of the lighter, high-speed Army of the future. But even with new add-on armor, the Stryker "did not meet Army requirements" against rocket-propelled grenades in tests, Christie wrote in his 2003 annual report. Now the Pentagon was about to deploy the first 300 Strykers to Iraq while an insurgency raged.So Christie did something unusual: he sent a classified letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office urging the military to be very cautious about where in Iraq it deployed the Stryker. The response? "I was slapped down," says the straight-talking Christie. "It was: 'What are we supposed to do with this [letter]? ... Are you trying to embarrass somebody?' "

Link to article


And you wonder what would prompt a guy to vote against a military weapons bill like Kerry has? Maybe he was right. But the right wing follows blindly behind this gang of dolts in the white house who are putting our guys at risk.

[frankiep]

Uh, the Stryker was being planned for since before Bush got to the White House. And the White House doesn't have much to do with developing new weaponry, that is left to the Pentagon. The White House, in this case Clinton, listened to the advice and recommendations of the military professionals, as he should have when it came to new weapons development. To blame the White House, Bush, Clinton, or whoever, for a new design that doesn't work perfectly is ridiculous. If you did want to blame an administration for this it would have to be the Clinton administration, but to blame them would be dumb.

[h2g2Fan]

From the title, I thought this thread was going to be another xenophobic, "too many azns in the USA" thread. I'm pleased to see that is it not!

Good read, maybe a little overzealous with your analysis, though.

[frankiep]

If you want to blame anyone for the Stryker than blame GEN Shinseki. It was his baby for the entire time he was Army Chief of Staff. He didn't think that track vehicles were useful anymore and had a hard on for the wheel based Stryker. He is also the same idiot who, in the name of morale, decided to take the black beret, an elite symbol of pride and accomplishment, from the Army Rangers and give them to every swinging richard in the Army. Instead of improving morale across the Army it had the opposite effect. Those who were just given the black beret didn't give a crap about it's history since they didn't have to earn it and the Rangers who had lost the beret were, understandibly, pissed. As it turns out, the new berets were made by commies in China, didn't fit right at all, and cost a mere 90 million dollars. Shinseki was a complete fool and I'm so glad that he is retired. Just too bad that he left behind things like the Stryker.

[Janus]

Originally posted by h2g2Fan
From the title, I thought this thread was going to be another xenophobic, "too many azns in the USA" thread. I'm pleased to see that is it not!

Good read, maybe a little overzealous with your analysis, though.

I thought it was about Asian tank drivers.

[Stone]

Originally posted by frankiep
And the White House doesn't have much to do with developing new weaponry, that is left to the Pentagon. The White House, in this case Clinton, listened to the advice and recommendations of the military professionals, as he should have when it came to new weapons development. To blame the White House, Bush, Clinton, or whoever, for a new design that doesn't work perfectly is ridiculous. If you did want to blame an administration for this it would have to be the Clinton administration, but to blame them would be dumb.

Well as the Secretary of defence, dont you think Rummy should be a bit worried about the insufficient armor - and the resulting deaths? Instead he was worried about embarassing someone. He needs to stop thinking about the election and start doing his job. As a member of the president's cabinet, im sure he has SOME influence over the deployment location of the stryker.

[Bo]

Originally posted by Janus


I thought it was about Asian tank drivers.

Yeah, for a sec I thought we were selling body armor to the Chinese.

[Feenix566]

Rummy doesn't decide what gets deployed where. That's up to the generals and officers in the field. Rummy just tells the military what its objectives are, and the military decides how to carry them out.