On the one hand, I am glad to see that Humvees in Iraq are being uparmored. Because of the situation in Iraq, uparmoring is a must. But what will the U.S. Military do once we leave Iraq? The military will have a fleet of uparmored humvees that have been modified beyond specs. The extra armor is causing excessive vehicle wear, rollovers, and extra strain on engines, suspensions, etc. What will the military do with this "Frankenstein" fleet of Humvees after the war? Will it have to buy a new fleet, or perhaps develop a more-heavily armored vehicle?

More info at: http://www.militaryspot.com/humvee.htm

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TOW Gunner,

Tow I was wondering about that I saw somewhere that these Vehicles that these guys are adding their own Armour to are to heavy for their under frames how many are supposed to be in the Fleet when they finish.

The Humvee looks big and mean but that probably works against it because it's really just a jeep. We'll probqbly pawn a lot of them off to the ING and police. We're already bringing in a bunch of renovated M113's.

ONR Awards Contract to Develop Smart Armor

(Source: Solidica; issued Jan. 14, 2005)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. --- Solidica, Inc., announced today the award of an SBIR Phase I project with the Office of Naval Research, with support provided by Carderock Division Naval Surface Warfare Center, to develop a new approach to provide a means of retrofitting existing military vehicles with ballistic protection that can easily be applied in the field.

The approach includes advanced new embedding technologies that will be capable of placing both ceramic armor plates and threat detection fiberoptics directly within the armor components.

Ken Johnson, Vice President Strategic Development for Solidica states that "this project seeks to directly address some of the immediate challenges in the field for our servicemen and Solidica is honored to be selected to bring our technology into the fight." Solidica's laminated metal deposition technologies hold unique promise in this field due to its ability to both embed objects and diffuse impact energy, similar to that of much higher cost composite layered structures.