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32–996 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 109–79]

THE STATUS OF TACTICAL WHEELED VEHICLE ARMORING INITIATIVES, AND IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE (IED)

JAMMER INITIATIVES IN OPERATION

IRAQI FREEDOM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

MAY 5, 2005
(II)

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman

CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania

JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas

JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JIM RYUN, Kansas

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

KEN CALVERT, California

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia

JEFF MILLER, Florida

JOE WILSON, South Carolina

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

THELMA DRAKE, Virginia

JOE SCHWARZ, Michigan

CATHY MCMORRIS, Washington

MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky

IKE SKELTON, Missouri

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas

LANE EVANS, Illinois

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii

MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas

ADAM SMITH, Washington

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island

STEVE ISRAEL, New York

RICK LARSEN, Washington

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam

TIM RYAN, Ohio

MARK UDALL, Colorado

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, Georgia

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma

ROBERT S. RANGEL, Staff Director

JESSE TOLLESON, Program Analyst

ANDREW HUNTER, Professional Staff Member

PAUL ARCANGELI, Professional Staff Member

CURTIS FLOOD, Staff Assistant
(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2005

Page

HEARING:

Thursday, May 5, 2005, The Status of Tactical Wheeled Vehicle Armoring

Initiatives, and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Jammer Initiatives in

Operation Iraqi Freedom ..................................................................................... 1

APPENDIX:

Thursday, May 5, 2005 ............................................................................................ 73

THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2005

THE STATUS OF TACTICAL WHEELED VEHICLE ARMORING INITIATIVES, AND IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE (IED) JAMMER INITIATIVES IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services ......................................................................................... 1

Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services .................................................................................... 5

Weldon, Hon. Curt, a Representative from Pennsylvania .................................... 4

WITNESSES

Catto, Maj. Gen. (Sel) William D., Commanding General, Marine Corps Systems Command, U.S. Marine Corps ................................................................... 12

DeTeresa, Dr. Steven, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ...................... 6

Kennedy, Lt. Col. Paul J., Former Battalion Commander, 2nd Battalion,

4th Marine Regiment, First Marine Division, Headquarters Battalion, First

Marine Division, U.S. Marine Corps .................................................................. 65

Mattis, Lt. Gen. James N., Former Commander, First Marine Division, Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, U.S. Marine Corps ............................................................................................................. 65

Sorenson, Brig. Gen. (Promotable) Jeffrey A., Deputy for Acquisition and

Systems Management, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) ........................................................................ 12

Votel, Brig. Gen. Joseph L., Director, Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Office of the

Deputy Chief of Staff, G3 .................................................................................... 14

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Catto, Maj. (Sel) Gen. William D. ................................................................... 90

Hunter, Hon. Duncan ....................................................................................... 77

Sorenson, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A., joint with Brig. Gen. Joseph L. Votel ....... 82
Page

IV

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Actions Needed to Improve the Availability of Critical Items During

Current and Future Operations [The information referred to is retained

in the committee files and can be viewed upon request.]

Armor & Countermeasure Timeline Key Points with chart on Army

HMMWV Ad-on Armor Production vs. Operational Requirements .......... 137

Article of April 25, 2005 from New York Times on the Marines From

Iraq Sound Off About Want of Armor and Men by Michael Moss ............ 142

Guns Trucks and Transparent Armor for Force Protection presented by

Dr. Steven DeTeresa ..................................................................................... 105

House Report 108–491—Section 801—Rapid Acquisition Authority to Respond to Combat Emergencies ..................................................................... 147

OEF AoA Requirements ................................................................................... 153

Response to the New York Times Article and the Issue of Armor Available to the Battalion From its Arrival in Kuwait Through the Redeployment to OIF ................................................................................................... 135

The ‘‘Iron Horse’’ in El Taqaddum, Iraq ......................................................... 148

UAH Requirements .......................................................................................... 154

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Mr. Andrews ..................................................................................................... 158

Mr. Langevin ..................................................................................................... 157

Mr. Reyes .......................................................................................................... 157

Mr. Shuster ....................................................................................................... 158
(1)

THE STATUS OF TACTICAL WHEELED VEHICLE ARMORING INITIATIVES, AND IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE (IED) JAMMER INITIATIVES IN OPERATION IRAQI

FREEDOM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Thursday, May 5, 2005.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:05 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of

the committee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE

ON ARMED SERVICES

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

This morning the committee continues its review of the status of the armoring program for Army and Marine Corps tactical vehicles

in Iraq, as well as the status of deployment of electronic jamming

devices to counter the threat of improvised explosive devices, better

known to all of us as IEDs.

Our leadoff witness is Dr. Steven J. Teresa of the Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory. And on our second panel, Brigadier General Joseph Votel, Director of the Joint IED Defeat Task

Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Brigadier General Jeffrey

Sorenson, Deputy for Acquisition and Systems Management, Office

of the Assistant Secretary of the Army; and Brigadier General William Catto, Commanding General, Marine Corps Systems Command.

And on our third panel, Lieutenant General James N. Mattis,

Former Commander, First Marine Division, and Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command; and Lieutenant Colonel Paul J. Kennedy, Former Battalion Commander, 2nd

Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, First Marine Division.

The jurisdiction of this committee is such that we cover a very

wide range of issues, but the significance of other issues pales relative to the importance of providing the best protection possible to

our men and women serving in Operation Enduring Freedom and

Iraqi Freedom.

No other issue in the past two years has taken a higher priority

for this committee. We have done a lot of work on this specific

issue of armor, and I wanted to let my colleagues know where we

stand with respect to committee action that has been taken and the

task force that we have put together to work the armor issue, because there has been no element of this conflict that has been more

deadly to our people than the IED blowing these things remotely,
2

sometimes hardwired, on our troops who are either in operation or

in convoy. And we put together a task force headed up by Mr. Bob

Simmons. I want to run down some of the things that we have

done so we can take a look at the present state of affairs, and when

we get our updates from the services and from Dr. DeTeresa, the

committee can decide where we want to go from here.

We began oversight of the Army on these programs in 2003. The

Army at that point approved $129 million for add-on armor kits;

$300 million remains, however, at this time unfunded.

In January of 2004, we reviewed the Army production plan that

was originally scheduled to complete 7,000 kits by December of

2004. We determined that the best production effort could actually

finish those kits much earlier, in fact by April 2004; and we submitted a memo to the Army noting that we had enough in terms

of arsenals, industry and steel mills, if they operated at max capacity, to move this production of armor to the left, that is, to move

it up to April.

We visited the steel mills that churn this stuff out. We reached

agreement with steel mill management and union officials to voluntarily set aside the commercial work they were doing and dedicate

a hundred percent of their capacity to armor plate production.

The delivery schedule for steel was compressed at that point by

four months; that is, we moved the production from December 2004

to April 2004. Now, at this point, we found something else, and

that was that when we built Strykers, we utilized high hard

steel;that is three-eighths-inch high-performance steel, and we had

a lot of it left over from Stryker production. So we discovered that

at the steel mills while we were making the visits, and we started

to move that into the system.

We determined at that point that we needed additional manufacturing capacity, and the Army, working with Les Brownley, the

Army committed nine depots and arsenals to armor kit production.

We also suggested to the Army that 11 sites be opened in Iraq

to install Humvee armor, because by doing that we could put that

armor on—when the Humvees arrived in country, we could marry

it up with armor and move it out to its location in theater.

On March 2nd of 2004, the Secretary directed the compression of

the schedule to what we recommended in terms of production rates,

to the House recommended production rates. The Army notified us

at that time of delinquent deliveries of steel from Canadian steel

mills, and they requested our assistance. And we sent our team out

to Canada to resolve the delivery issues. At that point, we started

to look also at the tactical truck fleet because these 5-ton trucks

with the Army, particularly 7-ton trucks with the Marines, with

the capability that they have in terms of a load carrying capacity,

lends itself to the heavy weight that is involved in armoring up.

We delivered, on June of 2004, Stryker steel gun boxes; these

were gun boxes made out of excess Stryker steel that we had found

that were delivered to Iraq. In November of 2004, aluminum mill

shipments threatened to break production of armor kits for trucks.

Our team met with the aluminum company executives and arranged for a shift in priorities back to the armor programs.

Our oversight team also discovered that the IED countermeasure

supplier was running out of Army funding and laying off produc-
3

tion personnel, and at that point, we went into a negotiation with

the Secretary of Defense, and we agreed on a very substantial reprogramming to put the IED countermeasure production at full

speed.

In January of 2005, we shipped our first—the Army shipped its

first 5-ton truck kit, three months later than the original commitment. And our HASC team at the same time was working on oversight of IED production, and we started to move into that area.

CENTCOM then reported this policy—that we are all familiar

with now—that no unarmored vehicles, that is, vehicles without

level one, two or three armor, would go out on operation after February 15 in theater in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Since then, we have been working the IED countermeasure problem, and what we have done is the committee passed last year—

I think everybody’s familiar with this provision that we passed that

said that the Secretary of Defense, if he is taking casualties on the

battlefield, can wave every existing American law with respect to

acquisition and simply buy what the troops need as quickly as possible.

We have developed some new jamming capability, and we have

a product that we think we can flood into the field very quickly.

And a couple of days ago the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF)

signed out the directive that is utilizing this new license that

HASC developed and that we passed into law last year for the first

time, and that is that with a goal of arriving at contract within 15

days after certification. The certification was signed just a couple

of days ago. We hope to be able to get this new capability flooded

into the field, not ramped up on a classic industrial schedule, but

flooded into the field within the next 45 to 60 days.

So SECDEF is moving out that. He signed the certification that

we provided for him, certifying that there was an urgent combat

need for this system, and this will be will be the first system

moved out under this new structure that we have. Now this is

going to require lots of personal accountability because what we are

doing is replacing miles of paperwork and lots of bureaucracy with

individual accountability, but we think that this is an area that is

so critical that we are going to have to move very quickly, like we

have managed to move in the past, and so we are going to exercise

this new instrument that we have put together.

Now, we have a big bureaucracy; we in Congress have helped to

build up bureaucracy in lots of agencies and for good—in many

cases, for good reasons, you need to have lots of checks and balances in a system where taxpayer monies are spent in large numbers. On the other hand, when you are in a combat situation, sometimes that bureaucracy gets in the way. We have moved out on our

armor situation sometimes fitfully, sometimes in a robust manner.

We have had a number of good news stories. We have gotten companies that have developed things, and we have gotten depots that

have moved out quickly, and we have been able to move capability

into the field. On the other hand, we have also been plagued with

all the glitches and foul-ups and delays that attend large bureaucracies.

What we are here to do today is to take a picture of where we

are, of our present status, what we have got in country, how well
4

it is protecting our troops, and where we need to go from here. And

so we are not going to be—we are not here to congratulate ourselves on accomplishments. We are not here to continue to berate

and criticize this system which we built, which moves products and

capability rather slowly to our people in uniform. But we are here

to speed it up, to see what else we can do to move this process

along and to provide better protection for our folks in uniform.

And we have got some warfighters here today. And I am glad we

have got them here because we also have some of our experts in

developing systems. And I have already asked a couple of questions

about some new things; perhaps we could put our Humvee and

trucks in theaters. So I am glad we have our warfighters here, and

they will be able to comment and perhaps have some interchange

with some of our designers on some of the requirements that we

could get into theater fairly quickly.

So gentlemen, thank you for being with us today.

And let me comment, also, that my good colleague, Mr. Weldon,

who is the chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee and whose subcommittee has moved large amounts of

money into the armor program and has been aggressively pursuing

this program, he has also been very concerned. And he and I are

partnering on this hearing.

And Curt, did you have anything you wanted to say.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the Appendix on page 77.]

STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. WELDON. If the gentleman would yield.

Just briefly, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your tireless

work, along with the ranking member. Chairman Hunter has taken

a personal interest in this issue to the extent that I have never

seen in my 19 years in Congress, to the point of going out into the

field, on his own and with key staffers assigning teams, to get the

real story.

Now we should not have to do that. Now I want to tell you that

as a strong supporter of the military, I am not too happy today.

Now maybe this hearing will make me happy.

Now I am the Chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces

Subcommittee that oversees the funding for these programs. Over

the past year, while Chairman Hunter and staff have been out

doing yeomen’s efforts—it goes well beyond what a committee

chairman should ever have to do—and basically looking over the

shoulders of those men who are responsible for making sure that

our soldiers are protected, we have been assured repeatedly that

we have equipment in the field that in fact is meeting the needs.

And I want to hear today that that is, in fact, the case.

I want to applaud both you, Chairman Hunter, and especially the

staff that you have assigned, most particularly the incoming staff

director who has done a fantastic job on this issue on your behalf.

And I want to ask one question. I am a strong supporter of the Marines. I am going back to Iraq on Memorial Day with a delegation

to see the troops again for a short trip. But I want to ask the Marines to answer me a question today, because this offends me, as
5

perhaps one of the most loyal supporters of the Marines. I want to

ask if the commander of E company, Captain Kelly Royer—which

was the company that suffered the most casualties and deaths during their six-month tour in Iraq, 185—who on May 31st of 2004’s

fitness report, and I quote, He has single handedly reshaped a company in sore need of a leader, succeeded in forming a cohesive

fighting force that is battle-tested and worthy—but after he confronted the brass about the shortages threatening his men, it was

changed, and the superiors found him to be quote, dictatorial, with

no morale or motivation in his Marines.

I want the Marines to answer the question about Kelly Royer. Is

that what we do to an officer who reports that there are problems

within his unit? And what is the status of him today? Is, in fact,

he being railroaded out of the Marine Corps?

So, Mr. Chairman, I would ask, when the Marines come to the

table, that I expect answers on that question about this specific—

if they want to go into a classified session when we talk about the

personnel issues, then so be it, but I am quoting from Marine documents.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

And I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Skelton, who has been

a great partner in this bipartisan effort to accelerate armor of our

folks in theater.

And Mr. Skelton, thank you for everything you have done, and

the gentleman is recognized.

STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON

ARMED SERVICES

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you. And let me join you in

welcoming our witnesses and our panels this morning.

Mr. Chairman, let me commend you for holding this hearing.

This is good. This is very important. And I, too, would like to join

my friend from Pennsylvania on seeking the answers regarding

that company commander. That goes to the very heart of the credibility of the United States Marine Corps.

We are dealing with the process of writing our bill, Mr. Chairman, as you know, and our paramount responsibility is still the

oversight of our forces here deployed in Iraq. Today’s hearing is

very, very helpful. Men and women in our armed forces have exceeded what we, as their leaders, have the right to expect. This is

most especially true of the soldiers and the Marines involved in the

daily fight, to be given the responsibility to lead, to equip these

men and women is to be given a very, very important job, and I

consider that responsibility to belong to the members of this committee, to the Congress of the United States and the Constitution

and as well, of course, as the witnesses today.

The Army and the Marine Corps, with help from Congress, are

making progress with armoring vehicles, and they have dramatically upgraded their force protection capabilities. Mr. Chairman, I

believe if we had to grade our efforts to date we would have to give

ourselves a C at best. As the recent article from the New York

Times brought home again, we started our occupation in Iraq with-
6

out a plan, without the right equipment for the fight, and we were

too slow to react when it became clear that post-combat operations

were just as dangerous, if not more so, as the combat originally

was. A heavy price has sadly been paid for mistakes.

Now, it is neither helpful or fair to even try to single out a person or an organization as being to blame. Instead, I believe we

must make sure that at least something good comes out of this

mistake and something good comes out of this hearing. I, again,

Mr. Chairman, congratulate you for this hearing. I ask that the remainder of my statement be placed in the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. I thank the gentleman.

And our lead-off witness is Dr. Steve DeTeresa of Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory, a laboratory that heretofore has

been engaged in the design of our strategic weapons systems that

has lots of talented folks.

And Dr. DeTeresa, you folks have put a team together and have

put together some pretty substantial armor that you have moved

into theater. Tell us about this.

STATEMENT OF DR. STEVEN DETERESA, LAWRENCE

LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

Dr. DETERESA. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee,

thank you for inviting me to report on one of several force protection efforts that we at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab have

been conducting under the joint sponsorship of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and the Lawrence

Livermore Lab.

DARPA and Lawrence Livermore Lab have a history of responding quickly to urgent matters of national security, and we are privileged to have the recent opportunity to support our service men

and women engaged in the Global War on Terror.

This morning, I will describe our work to develop and field armor

kits to convert cargo trucks to gun trucks for convoy escort and

other missions requiring a mobile weapons platform. We have been

engaged in this work at the request of this committee since December of 2003. I am happy to report that our efforts have already

helped to save lives.

This project has truly been a joint effort, and the work I am

about to describe is that of many dedicated and hardworking Livermore Lab employees and consultants, DARPA program managers,

Vietnam veterans, Army personnel and civilians, and U.S. Industrial partners.

The concept of the gun truck was developed over more than five

years of wartime experience in Vietnam. We saw many parallels

between the need for these mobile weapons platforms in that conflict and in the current conflicts. Our work to develop a modern

version of the gun truck began where Vietnam left off. And we

were fortunate that much of the knowledge gained in this former

war is preserved in the Fort Eustis Transportation Museum and in

the memories of the close brotherhood of Vietnam gun truck veterans.

Allow me to describe the details of this project using the presentation slides that you have before you.
7

In your first slide, and in the poster over to my left, you will see

an example of a gun truck, and I will take the time to describe

what that is. As I mentioned, it is a cargo truck that is converted

with add-on armor into a mobile weapons platform. It involves

armor for the cab and an armored box that is on the back of the

cargo truck with multiple weapons. The reason we use a cargo

truck is that it can handle the excess weight which is within the

capacity of the truck, and the primary purpose is for convoy escort

and other defensive missions.

On your second slide, you see a summary of where we are to

date. Although small, we have made an impact. There are 31 5-ton

gun trucks in Iraq, and they are saving lives. And we believe more

are needed.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Dr. DeTeresa, if you can put the picture of

that gun truck back up there for one second. And we have got a

picture of one of those trucks that was hit by an IED, is that

your—that is, the Ironhorse effort took a heavy IED. And I saw the

report from the driver who said that all seven personnel walked

away with no injuries. That box is double hold, is it not?

Dr. DETERESA. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. So you have got two layers of three-eighths-inchhigh hard steel, separated by about eight inches?

Dr. DETERESA. There are two layers of steel, and then there is

also ballistic fiberglass.

The CHAIRMAN. And explain why you have the steel and the ballistic fiberglass on the inside of that box.

Dr. DETERESA. Well, it provides additional protection, both from

IED threats and small-arm threats. And the inside fiberglass is a

small shield, so it is a very effective combination of materials.

The CHAIRMAN. So you have got two layers of steel, approximately three-eighths-inch, eight inches apart, and then you have

got an inch and a quarter of E glass inside that interior wall. Is

that right?

Dr. DETERESA. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, explain the ballistic glass along the top. I

think this is instructive, as we go into the future here, in putting

these armored systems together.

Dr. DETERESA. Well, this is one of the things we have added to

this design since the Vietnam era. We were most interested in providing protection for the gun crew from the IED threat, and so

what we have added is the transparent armored windows that you

see on the sides of the box, allows the gun crew to have watch and

have high situational awareness and yet be protected.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, you will notice that my colleagues, most

folks in this committee, have been to Bethesda and Walter Reed;

we have looked at the casualty reports fairly extensively. A lot of

the casualties are the gunners. In the case of the Humvee, it is

usually the gunner who catches—who is in the blast plane and

catches that fragmentation in the face, head and neck. And it is

similarly, if you are in a truck, if you are standing up, even though

you are actually a little below some of the blast planes, if that IED

is close to the roadbed itself, the ballistic glass allows you to look

out, to have the situational awareness without catching that fragment when that IED blows. And that is an area where I think you
8

folks can do some real—give some real help to the Marines and the

Army with respect to their Humvees because the Humvee troop

carrier has a 4-foot high or so steel high-hard or RHA steel sides

to it, and if we had a slotted 12-inch high ballistic glass plane that

we could slide over the rim, just like those ballistic glass panes on

the rim of a gun truck, that would allow your folks that are riding

in the troop carrier version of the Humvee to look out, to have

what they call situational awareness and not catch the fragment

from that initial IED blast.

So is that—and I want to—when General Mattis comes up, we

have talked about that a little bit because he has been head of the

first division in a hot area, and I want to talk to you a little bit

about that, General Mattis, to see if there is not—you have at least

initially expressed support for that type of a ballistic glass apparatus to put on the Humvees. In fact, I will tell you what, why don’t

you come up right now while Steve DeTeresa is here. Come on up,

we are an informal bunch here.

General Mattis, you have been the commander of the First Marine Division during some very severe fighting and in a very severe

IED environment in the Fallujah AO. What do you think about

the—first, about the adequacy of the Humvee troop carrier, but

also the prospects of having a glass rim, a ballistic glass windshield

along the top of that troop carrier?

General MATTIS. Sir, the glass can only help. What we cannot do

with these armor solutions is encase the Marines and soldiers so

well that they cannot see what is going on outside. Much of their

survival depends on identifying the threat before they ever get to

it. At this time, we are finding anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of

the IEDs before they are detonated. That has a significant impact

on the reduction of casualties.

Glass like this can assist greatly because the armor, while it is

best—if something goes off, you have armor between you and the

blast—but, eventually, you get to the point where the lack of observation actually has the opposite effect behind the armor, actually

increasing your vulnerability.

The CHAIRMAN. So anyway, Steve, if that is the case, General, if

you had a rim, a 1-foot high glass rim around the troop-carrying

Humvees in the back, that obviously would give you that ability to

look out it, yet not catch the full—that blast in the initial IED explosion.

Mr. DeTeresa, is that something that you folks at Livermore

could fabricate fairly quickly for testing at Aberdeen?

Dr. DETERESA. Yes. We have actually thought about that design,

so we could work on that quickly.

The CHAIRMAN. Could you have a prototype in a week or so?

Dr. DETERESA. I would give it a little more time than that.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Well, please proceed, Mr. DeTeresa.

And General, hang tough right where you are at; you may want

to comment on some of his testimony here, if you could.

General MATTIS. Yes, sir.

Dr. DETERESA. We will go back to the truck that we see on our

left that we have in front of you, which was the 5-ton gun truck

called the Ironhorse, which took a hard hit from an IED. As we

heard, all the crew members survived with relatively minor injury.
9

And then the other feature of the truck—the truck was damaged

beyond repair, but all the armor was recovered and has been

moved to a new truck. And it is back out on the road. That is part

of the design of the kit that we have.

The next poster we would like to show is an example of what we

heard before, the troop-carrier version of the box made from the

Stryker steel. It is a lighter version, so that you can take the

weight with troops in the back of the cargo truck. This vehicle was

also, at least in one case, subjected to an attack by a car bomb, a

vehicle-borne IED. And we have another poster that shows the

damage to the truck. And again, all crew members survived.

I think that this points out that with relatively simple armor

kits, especially with these heavier 5-ton gun trucks, that we can

save lives pretty simply.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, one question, were all of these adaptations made in the field?

Dr. DETERESA. The kits were sent to the field and were assembled in the field, but the kits were designed here and tested thoroughly at the Aberdeen Test Center.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the thickness of that Stryker steel that

you have got in the back there, Mr. DeTeresa?

Dr. DETERESA. Actually, that is something I do not recall exactly.

I believe it is a little bit over a quarter-inch thick, as I remember;

but it has got additional armor with it.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay.

Dr. DETERESA. We have jumped around a bit, and if we are going

to follow my package of——

The CHAIRMAN. Go right ahead, Mr. DeTeresa. Reassemble and

continue to present.

Dr. DETERESA. Let me point out on slide number five, which you

have in front of you, what we have is a comparison between an uparmored Humvee and the 5-ton gun trucks. And let me tell you up

front that we have always believed—and we still believe—that the

best convoy escort is provided by the combination of these vehicles,

not one or the other. And that is based on the experience in Vietnam, and it is based on things that we are seeing today.

The up-armored Humvee obviously gives you the nimble vehicle

that is able to move around as a commander vehicle and a scout

vehicle. But the 5-ton gun truck, by virtue of the fact that it can

handle the additional armor and have multiple weapons, provides

a much more serious convoy protection platform. And there are

many things we have compared here, but in the end, I will save

some time and say that both will make the effective convoy escort

as we have seen in Vietnam.

We have one last poster which is an example of 5-ton gun trucks

that were being made—we call them homemade gun trucks—that

were being made in the field. Pointing out that the troops recognized the benefit of using a 5-ton truck for armoring and providing

escort to convoys.

This was one of our motivations. When we saw this, we said, we

can do better; we can provide them with a very good kit that is

easy to assemble and provide substantial armor protection, knowing what we know from the history of Vietnam. So that is where

we got to in our efforts was to improve that situation, recognizing
10

that this was something that was needed and was actually being

developed by the troops in the field.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. DeTeresa, was that one of the ones assembled at the Mad Max shop—what they called the Mad Max truck

in Balad?

Dr. DETERESA. Stunt Works is the other name. I am not sure

where this one came from, but actually, I believe there are several

kinds of those facilities around the country where people are doing

this.

I would like to skip all the way to our various view graph, which

is our timeline for the project. I just want to go over a few points.

I mentioned that we started this work at the request of this committee. That was back in December of 2003. In the first phase of

this, in the matter of the time period from January—end of January to April 2004, we had designed, built and tested at Aberdeen

Test Center the first prototype, so we were ready to go. Over the

next few months, there were lots of discussions about requirements

and features that were needed to send the kit into field, and the

committee helped to expedite that.

And finally, in July, we were able to send the first prototype,

which was well received by the unit, and soon after, we received

an operational needs statement requesting 28 more kits. To meet

that, we pursued funding, and again, the committee helped and introduced us to some of the DARPA efforts. And jointly with

DARPA, we got the funding to build the 30 kits actually that we

sent, and that was done over the time period from October to December; we built and fielded those 30 kits. They were built over a

period of time from the end of December to January, and now, all

31 are on the road, including the ones you have seen in some of

the posters here.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. DeTeresa, what type of weaponry will the

gun truck accommodate?

Dr. DETERESA. Typically, a gun truck handles crew served weapons, machine guns. And that is the purpose of this. As a mobile

weapons platform, you want substantial firepower on the back of

these trucks, meaning multiple weapons. And I actually have a

slide, but I will just describe that now. The reason for multiple

weapons—and for reference, it is number nine—besides the greater

firepower, you have got redundancy in case of weapon malfunctions, which does happen, and you are able to repel simultaneous

attacks in different directions. So to make a true gun truck, you

really need multiple weapons. And actually, that has been a little

bit of an issue with the folks who have our gun trucks over there.

They have a hard time getting the multiple weapons.

The CHAIRMAN. But it takes 50’s.

Dr. DETERESA. Fifty calibers are preferred, but smaller-gauge

weapons are also useful.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay.

Dr. DETERESA. If we skip to ten, one of the things I wanted to

highlight is the fact that we have tested this thoroughly at the Aberdeen Test Center. You will see examples of the prototype box,

which was subjected to a live IED test. And you will see holes in

the side of the armor. You will see damaged ballistics windows.

The result of all that was nothing got through the box. This is sub-
11

stantial. And any of the typical IEDs that we see out there will not

penetrate this armor. So it is a very simple design and a very effective one.

And in addition, they have also tested the armor against RPGs

and minimized the impact of an RPG by stripping all the attending

frags and minimizing any of the blastings effects. So, again, by virtue of the fact that this is a cargo truck that can handle a substantial weight, there is nothing magical about the armor system. It

provides very substantial protection.

I would like to skip to number 12, in the interest of time, again,

to again point out that there are 31 of these gun trucks in the field

and to point out also that the feedback on these has been very positive. We have had comments from the gun crews that they feel

much safer and they feel well protected and that these are clearly

superior to anything they have used before.

One of the other satisfying things about this is that the crews

and the troops that are engaged in this, providing feedback and

suggestions for improvement, and we strive to continue to improve

the design and make this a better weapons platform for the troops.

And 13, I think it is important to acknowledge many of the DOD

organizations that have made this possible, provided a lot of critical support. First of all, the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command and their sub-organization Aberdeen Test Center was instrumental in all the ballistic and road testing and actually helped

with some aspects of the design. And those folks were hardworking

folks who did a lot of work to get our kits up to speed and sent

out.

The Army Research Lab has always been our partners in looking

at armor materials and performance, and they have provided a lot

of valuable input. We have not talked about it, but the cab kit that

we designed was actually based on an initial design by the U.S.

Marine Corps. And this is at the Albany, Georgia, Logistics Base

for the 923 truck. They shared that design with us. We improved

it and provided that for the field.

And then the Tank and Automotive Command of the U.S. Army

was helpful in expediting these kits to the field when we got to the

point where we could ship.

So what I would like to do is summarize with 14 and say, we

have produced a kit which is relatively inexpensive. I did not mention the number, but $40,000 will provide a full gun truck kit,

which includes the cab armor. It is a highly effective and highly

survivable mobile weapons platform. And we believe that the combinations of these gun trucks and up-armored Humvees are the

right vehicles and the right combination for convoy escort. I will

also mention that these trucks are also valuable for troop transport

and perimeter and checkpoint security.

If I may, I would just like to make a closing statement. I would

like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss this element of

force protection and also to thank you for your continued support

and concern for the safety of our men and women in the military.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. DeTeresa. And thanks for laying

that out. I thought that was a good context to bring up our next

panel. And so we are going to move, without further ado, to—we
12

will bring our next panel up. And we will have—and we are going

to get, for the committee, the state of armor in the theater, where

we are at, what the production rate is, and how far away we are

from completion.

And General Mattis, if you want to stick around right there, I

think we have got enough chairs, or you can move back to an observation post, whichever you want. Why don’t you hang around

there as we bring up General Joe Votel, who is director of the IED

Defeat Task Force; General Jeff Sorenson, United States Army

Deputy for Acquisition and Systems management; and Brigadier

General William D. Catto, United States Marine Corps Commanding General, Marine Corps Systems Command?

Come on up, gentlemen.

General Sorenson, you are going to lead off here.

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. (PROMOTABLE) JEFFREY A.

SORENSON, DEPUTY FOR ACQUISITION AND SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE

ARMY (ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS AND TECHNOLOGY)

General SORENSON. Yes, Chairman Hunter, Congressman Skelton, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for

this opportunity to provide you an update to the status of current

force protection programs.

Since our journey began in August 2003, we have increased the

number of armored vehicles deployed to theater by a factor of over

a hundred fold in 18 months. This serves as testament to the tremendous support of our industrial partners, our government program management offices and their supporting engineer and logistics centers, and our test community.

We have also increased delivery of body armor, IED countermeasure systems and changes in tactics and training to provide a

holistic approach to enhancing the force protection capability of our

deployed forces.

Your support to provide resources to fund our efforts is greatly

appreciated, and with your continued support, including quick passage of the FY 2005 supplemental, we will continue our efforts to

satisfy theater force protection requirements in an expeditious

manner.

Following my other colleagues’ introductory remarks, I will discuss in detail our current armor status with the charts that have

been provided to you and will be ready to answer any questions

that you have. Thank you.

[The joint prepared statement of General Sorenson and General

Votel can be found in the Appendix on page 82.]

The CHAIRMAN. Okay, thank you very much.

General Catto.

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. (SEL) WILLIAM D. CATTO, COMMANDING GENERAL, MARINE CORPS SYSTEMS COMMAND,

U.S. MARINE CORPS

General CATTO. Chairman Hunter, Congressman Skelton, honorable members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to

appear before you to discuss the state of vehicle armoring in the
13

Marine Corps today. I am accompanied this morning by my Deputy

Commander, Mr. Barry Dillon.

As you may remember, the Marine Corps forces departed Iraq for

the first time in October of 2003. At that time, none of our tactical

wheeled vehicles were equipped with armor. A month later, in November, we received confirmation that as part of Operation Iraqi

Freedom II, we would return to Al Anbar province, which includes

Fallujah and Ramadi.

When one of our forces took responsibility for this province in

March of 2004, 92 percent of their 3,049 vehicles had armor installed. Armor was available in Kuwait for the remainder of the vehicles, but operational timeline did not allow for installation prior

to crossing the line of departure. As operation tempo allowed, the

remaining vehicles were armored.

I am pleased to be able to report to you today that 100 percent

of our wheeled vehicles involved in combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa are equipped at a minimum with

zonal two, level two armor.

The current wartime environment is ever changing as we face a

thinking, adaptive enemy. Therefore, we continue to address the

immediate and anticipated needs of our warfighters in theater in

multiple ways, ensuring that we design, fully test and manufacture

armor solutions that perform well while at the same time ensuring

that it does not severely degrade the operational capabilities of existing vehicles.

Each successive armor enhancement has been designed and vetted with the operational forces in the fight. Our vehicle armoring

program has evolved over the last 17 months through now three

generations of armor.

The first generation consisted of level three protection, comprised

of commercial, off-the-shelf components or three-sixteenths-inch

high hard-armored steel doors and flanks. At that time, they were

the best available material solutions.

Our second generation, offering level two protection, consisted of

three-eighths-inch rolled homogenous armored zonal kits. By August 2004, 100 percent of our vehicles had this type of armor.

Our current or third generation marine armor kit consists of integrated components offering enhanced level two protection as can

be seen in your handouts and the display boards. By addressing

the details of our armoring strategy in my written statement for

the record, I would like to specifically highlight the most recent

measures we are taking in theater.

Since mines are a growing threat, we are expediting the delivery

of Marine armor kit underbodies for organizational or battalion

level installation into 400 Humvee A2s. Production of these underbodies will be completed in the next 30 days. Within the next 60

days, we expect to complete production of underbodies to upgrade

the armor of our 5-ton medium trucks and logistic support vehicles.

Additionally, with the assistance of the Chairman and his staff,

the Defense Logistics Agency in Kuwait has made available up to

450 sheets of 6-by-6-foot rolled homogenous armor for use in theater. The Marine Corps Logistics Command, which is our depot, has

completed its assessment of this material to determine the best and

most expeditious and effective means for in-theater cutting and in-
14

stallation of this steel for use as rocker panels of our base Humvees

and sustainment for 5-ton truck underbodies.

The operational tempo determines the rate at which we can pull

our tactical vehicles out of service to install upgraded protective solutions, therefore, we are continuing looking to identify production

and installation capabilities and opportunities to enhance the speed

and production and installation without degrading operational

force capabilities. A perfect example is our armor installation facility established at Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq.

Finally, with your continued support, enabled by speedy passage

of the fiscal year 2005 supplemental, we can continue our efforts

to quickly meet emerging vehicle armor protection requirements to

stay ahead of an adaptive enemy. I will be happy to answer any

questions that committee members may have.

[The prepared statement of General Catto can be found in the

Appendix on page 90.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

General Votel.

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. JOSEPH L. VOTEL, DIRECTOR,

JOINT IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE DEFEAT TASK

FORCE, HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, G3

General VOTEL. Yes. Mr. Chairman and Congressman Skelton,

thank you very much for the invitation to be here today, and members of the committee. Sir, we would also like to express our thanks

to Mr. Bob Simmons and Mr. Norm Morris on your committee who

have been so instrumental in helping us breakdown obstacles in

fielding these devices that we are going to discuss this morning.

Thank you very much for that.

You are aware, from our previous classified discussions, the sensitivity of the area in which we are talking this morning. I am

going to do my best to answer all of your inquiries as part of my

presentation——

The CHAIRMAN. You can keep it as general as you want to, General.

General VOTEL. Thank you, sir.

We are continuing to make progress in a number of areas, but

as you noted and as we agree, obviously, there still is much to be

done. There are still many soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors

who are being injured by these devices, so we continue to focus in

on this area.

I look forward to updating you and members of the committee

here on this particular area of our holistic approach, electronic

countermeasure devices, following my counterparts. Thank you, sir.

[The joint prepared statement of General Votel and General

Sorenson can be found in the Appendix on page 82.]

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thanks. And we will move—and I apologize to other members for taking so long to move through our first

two panels to get to questions, but I think it is important to set

the stage and understand what we have.

General Catto, one question on this. The underbody steel that we

are going to put on the Humvees operating in the western AO

there where we are taking some triple stack mines, at this point,
15

they were going to—they had the armor, the RHA, available in Kuwait. Do the Marines have possession of that right now, that steel?

General CATTO. Chairman Hunter, I just talked with the folks at

DLA. They have given us 450 pieces of the armor. We are looking

now at how are we going to cut it and get it there. The plan is to

do it as rapidly as we possibly can. In fact, I talked to General

Payne this morning at our depot about how we are going to do

that.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you going to cut it with the equipment that

they have got in Kuwait? They have got that heavy machinery that

is available to cut it in Kuwait. Are you going to move it up in already cut pieces?

General CATTO. We will cut it to size there, prepare it and then

move it up so we can install it at the battalion level in western

Iraq, so they do not have to do the work, other than installation.

The CHAIRMAN. How are you fixed for plasma cutters and the

requisite attachment stuff, your bolts, your nuts, the accessories?

Do you have plenty of those?

General CATTO. I think, at this time, we are fine; if we are not,

I will let you know and ask for help.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Gentlemen, if you could just give us very

quickly—and then I want to move to Mr. Skelton—the percentage

of Humvees that are level one, and that is obviously, that is the

1114, that is the manufactured Humvee, the percentage of those

that are in theater and the percentage that are level one, as opposed to level two and three. Have you got that basic info, General

Sorenson?

General SORENSON. Yes, sir. If I can refer you to the spreadsheet

charts that are in your packet there, the first one entitled, Armor

Summary. If you go to the top line, identified as UAH, meaning uparmored Humvee, this is the 1114 series you speak of. And today,

as of the 28th of April, the latest report out of the area of responsibility (AOR) is that they are at almost 80 percent full of level one

requirements for the up-armor Humvee.

With respect to add-on armor kits for the Humvees——

The CHAIRMAN. Now when you say, ‘‘of the requirement,’’ what

does that mean in hard numbers?

General SORENSON. Sir, if you, again, go across here—if I can

refer you to the spreadsheet that we passed out. You have the AOR

requirement, which at this point in time is 10,079. Now that was

an increase just identified here at the end of March. The previous

requirement was 8,105, which was in August 2004, and to date, as

we have predicted before, we were going to complete that requirement here in the May timeframe. However, because of the fact that

the requirement has increased, we are now projecting July 2005

that all up-armor Humvees and 1114s——

The CHAIRMAN. So you will have how many in theater at that

time?

General SORENSON. At that time, it will be over 10,000.

Mr. REYES. Mr. Chairman, I have a question. When you refer to

the area of operations, you are referring to the areas of both Iraq

and Afghanistan?

General SORENSON. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. General Catto, same question.
16

General CATTO. The up-armor Humvees?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

General CATTO. We have 37 of the foreign variants that we

bought very early when we went into Iraq back in March. We also

have over 475 M–1114s that we have received through Multinational Corps Iraq that have come through the joint community

for our use. Additionally, we have 498 that are on order today, and

as the production capability ramps up, we will be receiving them.

I would like to stress one thing, also. As we work through the

M–1114 shortages, the joint community and the Army have been

very helpful with trading assets for us in terms of, the guys who

need it the most got the assets.

The CHAIRMAN. So in theater, you have received up-armored

Humvees from Army units and other parts of Iraq?

General CATTO. 475 that have come from Multinational Corps

Iraq and the joint community that have been parceled out to us

through the Army productions.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. General Mattis, do you have any take on

how many Humvees you have got in our AO in Iraq? How many

were in the Fallujah AO?

General MATTIS. Mr. Chairman, you are aware that I departed

Iraq about six months ago, but it is around 2,675 is our latest reporting, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a total Humvee pool.

General MATTIS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And how many of those are fully up-armored?

Maybe General Catto has got that.

General CATTO. Well, we have 100 percent of our A2s and baseline Humvees are armored at level two with the zonal kits, and

they have been that way since August of 2004.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. But how many of those are at level one,

which is the up-armor?

General CATTO. 475 that we have had loaned to us through the

Multinational Corps Iraq, and the 37 foreign that we bought very

early in the campaign when we went back.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you.

Gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.

Mr. SKELTON. I will ask just one question—any of you can answer this. I am privileged to represent Jefferson City, Cole County,

Missouri. A National Guard unit was activated and given orders to

go to Iraq. Through local funding and local steel, that was cut to

specification and later approved by Aberdeen, their vehicles were

later armored. What other examples have you—and I notice you

have not mentioned any such situations—how many other examples of local self-help have you experienced in helping soldiers, Marines, National Guard, Reserves up-armor the vehicles for the

young folks who are being deployed? Any of you.

General SORENSON. Sir, I will try to answer that question first.

I think there have been a number of examples where people have

gone to the local communities and tried to acquire some steel to

put on their vehicles. We have been aggressive in pointing out to

them that if the right steel, right composition of steel, whether it

is RHA, the rolled homogenous armor or the high hard steel is not
17

applied, then, in an IED incident, they may be causing more problems than solving.

We have, I think at this point in time, gotten ahead of the byway

with respect to putting armor on vehicles. As you will note here in

the data that was provided, in many cases, we are over requirements in terms of being able to satisfy what is necessary. In fact,

we have at this point in time with respect to a total of armored vehicles, we have at this time 36,000 vehicles that basically have the

armor. Now we are in the process of changing out the level three,

which essentially was the headquarter’s, Department of Army approved, steel provided to units, provided to theater to put on vehicles and replacing that with level two, which is a more hardened

with ballistics glass capability for the units and for the vehicles.

Mr. SKELTON. I merely say I am proud of the citizens of Jefferson

City that took it upon themselves when the military was not uparmoring the vehicles at that time.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Hefley.

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Well, you know, it seems obvious that the IEDs are the big

threat, and that is what we are talking about armoring against.

And we have made huge investments in defeating the radio frequency detonator IEDs with the use of jammers. So the enemy adjusts to our technology it appears and are now beginning to use

more and more hardwired—or at least that is my information, you

can correct me if I am wrong on that. And I would like to know

what we are doing to defeat the high hardwired threats. And also,

have we explored the use of spectral contrast or terrain analysis to

find these hardwired devices before they can be employed?

General VOTEL. Sir, I think I can address that one for you.

Certainly, we can characterize the enemy by being very adaptive,

very smart, very learning, very innovative in what he is doing. And

it is very clear to us from watching him and studying him that he

watches how we base our operations, attempts to learn from those

and then attempts to exploit what he thinks are vulnerabilities. In

theater, the radio control device, initiated device, does remain the

primary threat that we are seeing. We have seen him do some

other things and move to, as you have suggested, some of the

hardwired capabilities.

In general, some of the things that we are trying to do, working

with the services in helping us, is use some of our aerial platforms,

be they from an aero stat or from a UAV or from some other type

of fixed wing aircraft, to help us with change detection technology

that will allow us to identify anomalies on the ground that will

help us identify where these devices are in place.

We are also pursuing a strategy for persistent surveillance,

things like NS microwave, the JLENS Raid Aero stats and towers

that we are moving in theater that provide us long-term persistent

surveillance over the high likelihood areas where IEDs are placed

so we can provide the long-term persistent stare, if you will, that

allows us to see what is happening there.

And then I will tell you that I think the third thing that we are

doing is really helping focus on training for our soldiers and Marines. A key piece of this, of identifying any anomalies on the
18

ground, really exists in the eyes of our soldiers and Marines who

are on patrol, be they from vehicles or on their feet. They clearly

are our best sensor. So what we are attempting to do is make sure

that we have provided the best information and provided the most

relevant current training and situational awareness so they understand the environment that they are going into and, more importantly, they understand the enemy that they are fighting and how

he operates.

Mr. HEFLEY. I see the light is still green, and let me ask one

other quick question.

How did we get ourselves in this position? Did we have no idea

going in there that we would need armored vehicles? Are we surprised that the IEDs became such a big deal?

General CATTO. If I may, Congressman Hefley, remember this

has been an evolving theater. When the Marine Corps went back

in Iraq in early March, the threats were 60-millimeter, 81-millimeter mortar kinds of rounds. That has evolved from the lower kinds

of munitions, 122- to 155-millimeter artillery shells to 500-pound

bombs, to double-stacked anti-tank mines, et cetera.

As we have added armor, they have added greater explosives, so

as General Votel discussed, it is not just one solution, it is a combination of good tactics, training and procedure with our soldiers

and Marines on the ground. It is using aerial assets such as UAVs,

fixed-wing assets, EA6s for our electronic countermeasures in the

air; and it is using IEDs and things like explosive-sniffing dogs.

It is a game of improvements, changes, counter improvements,

changes. So there is no one solution.

General MATTIS. Sir, if I could take a stab at that, as well, if I

were to sum up what I learned after 30 years in this business, all

combat is one improvisation after another. That is all it is. The

enemy has not made all of its adaptations because they wanted to;

they have been forced into positions.

For example, when we found their hard wires, the initial way

they set off IEDs, they went into direct attacks with small arms.

That didn’t work out well for them, so they had to adapt again.

They went for the radio frequency. You are aware from closed sessions what we have done to check and checkmate those, and we

forced them into other indirect fire modes.

But this is combat, and this is a thinking enemy up against us.

We are out-thinking them and we will continue to out-think them.

I will tell you that something as small as a rifle scope that we

are putting on every Marine’s rifle, thanks to the money provided

by the Congress, has turned out to be very helpful in spotting those

little antennas and the red wires going off into the ditches and that

sort of thing.

It is a very complex issue. We improvise better than the enemy

improvises; but it is a bloody issue, and we have to keep improvising to stay ahead of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Meehan.

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much,

Generals, for appearing.

General Sorenson, a recent GAO study found that the Army has

been consistently unable to meet reoccurring spikes in demand for
19

up-armored Humvees and add-on kits, which obviously is a surprise to members of the committee who have worked hard on this,

including the chairman.

The GAO faulted the Pentagon for the shortfall, because it didn’t

ramp up armor production to the maximum level. It also pointed

out that the Pentagon didn’t release funds in a timely and predictable manner, even though money had been appropriated and was

available.

The GAO recommended several actions for the Army to take.

They recommended that the Army update its war reserve requirements at least every year to account for change in operational

tempo; and second, develop computer models that can estimate

supply requirements to deploying units as part of prewar planning.

Can you comment on what the Army is doing to follow up on

those GAO recommendations?

General SORENSON. Yes, Congressman. Let me give you some insight into what we are trying to do as we go forward here in planning for future contingency operations and future operations.

To date, what you have found in many cases as we tried to ramp

up, as previous Congressmen asked the question, Did we not know

what was going on, after the March to Baghdad, there was clearly

a need and an interest in the theater commanders to move to a

more motorized force. As the motorized force was becoming more

apparent on the streets, the enemy began to take advantage of it

and began to attack us with IEDs.

Subsequent to that, we began to try to do what we could do with

the vehicles we had, such as the M–1114, such as putting armor

on trucks, trucks that were never designed to carry armor in some

cases, and so we had to go through a lengthy process to do that.

What we have learned from all this activity is that in the future,

we are going to be fighting as an expeditionary Army, we are going

to be fighting as a modular force, and we are going to be fighting

an asymmetric enemy. In order to contest that, we have to be more

flexible. So as a consequence of what we are doing right now with

our trucks and vehicles is developing an armor strategy by which

we will put armoring into the chassis—armoring into the ballistic

glass, armoring into latches, armoring into the frame, increasing

the engine capability such that a vehicle would be almost like a

chameleon.

In an operation in terms of the move to Baghdad, where speed

was more of the essence, maybe you don’t need the armor, but as

you go into stability operations, because that chassis, because the

engine, because the latches, because the glass are there, we then

hang the armor package on it; and it now becomes, as opposed to

an unarmored vehicle that was needed to, if you will, proceed

quickly, an armored vehicle that now conducts stability operations.

That is what you are going to see in terms of the future. And we

are working at that right now with the consortium of vehicle contractors and working through at this point in time through fiscal

year 2006, beginning to let contracts for these kits that can be

added on to the vehicles in the future.

Mr. MEEHAN. General, how much of the fiscal 2005 supplemental

does the Army intend to use to purchase these M–1114 Humvees?
20

And it was my understanding that the Army is planning a transition from the M–1114, the fully armored, to the M–1151 version.

What is the Army’s plan for purchasing fully armored 1151

Humvees with both the underbody and the perimeter and overhead

kits? And how many and when?

General SORENSON. Sir, as we talked, as I was just mentioning,

we are going to buy the 1114s. We are going to buy about a thousand 1114s through this next year. As we transition to what we

call the 1151–1152 vehicle, we will be procuring those that will essentially have the frame, have the engine armored with an

underbody protection capability such that we can add these packages on. And the intent is to move from the 1114, which is basically a standard armored vehicle that at this point can only conduct stability operations to the point where we can get a vehicle

both to do combat operations and then stability operations.

Mr. MEEHAN. General Votel, I am concerned the Army has not

fielded the best jammer technologies for the troops in Iraq. The

Army has spent $140 million sole-source contract to procure the

older Warlock jammer systems which have limited effectiveness. At

the same time, you are investing $500 million in a competitive program for rapidly developing, proving and fielding the next generation of jammer technologies.

How do you balance the immediate needs of our troops with investing in what I think will be a more proven technology for the

future?

General VOTEL. Thank you, Congressman.

That is a difficult balance, and it is one that we are constantly

looking at. What is the overriding factor for us is trying to provide

protection to our soldiers and Marines and forces deployed right

now and trying to address the immediate requirement; and that is

what is taking priority for us.

So we are at the same time developing a next-generation system,

if you will, which is in testing as we speak here. We are also continuing to procure some of our legacy systems that are currently

fielded. We are looking at ways to take systems that we have in

the field and give them additional capability, and then we are

doing things, as the chairman identified here, of putting out rapidly developed, low-cost systems that can address a portion of the

threat.

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to compliment the General, you and the task force’s use of the Backscatter x-ray imaging

for force protection in Iraq. I am familiar with that; there is a company in Massachusetts that I have visited, and it is a source of

pride to us, and I am just happy to see that Backscatter x-ray imaging.

General VOTEL. We have had two reports in the last two weeks

where the Backscatter, the van model, has actually helped us identify vehicle borne IEDs (VBID), giving indication to a soldier and/

or a Marine in each situation, and allowed us to deal with that in

another manner.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon.

Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for appearing here. I apologize for having had to go out and back, but
21

I had a number of other things going on, like our colleagues do. But

this is an extremely important hearing to all of us, and to me personally as the chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

As you heard me say in my opening statement, I am not a happy

camper right now. I am embarrassed and I feel let down. I feel let

down because the responsibility of this committee is to oversee the

safety and services of our military personnel when they enter

harm’s way, and they have done that. It was this committee that

stepped out ahead of this Administration a year ago, saying we

could not stand for the budget that was being requested which

called for a cut in the Army’s net funding for this year. And we requested a $25 billion supplemental when the White House didn’t

want it.

It was this committee who saw the need to provide additional

support for our troops, and we fought that battle even though we

knew that it would cause us problems personally in the case of the

members on this side of the aisle with our Administration, but we

did the right thing.

It was this committee back in 1996 when the Pentagon said they

didn’t want to arm the Predator. It was this committee that put

language into the defense bill that called for the armoring of the

Predator when the services did not request it, and we had the vision to see. And three, four years later everyone took credit for

what this committee had done, even though the first year we did

it in a bill that was blocked by the Pentagon.

And so I come to this hearing with a sense of outrage. I can’t tell

you the number of homes I have sat in with families whose soldiers

have come home in body bags. I know you take the loss of any life

seriously. I sat in the home of a young Marine in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, who had just married before he went in; and I tried to

console his wife and his parents.

Last week, I was at another event for a soldier that fell in January, and I was with his brother, who is still serving in Iraq, and

his parents. And like our colleagues here, we have to live with this,

and we take it very seriously.

When we think and have been told that a problem has been resolved, or is being resolved, then we believe that. This staff director

should not have to go out to companies to double-check whether or

not they are doing what they said they would do, but we did it.

And I would thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the documentation—

and I would urge all of our colleagues to look at that to give you

the complete assessment of what this committee has done on this

issue of armoring and providing personal protection for the troops.

We will take a back seat to no one in that support.

But what really offends me, and I have to say this to my Marine

Corps friends—and you remember very well my first term in Congress; I fought the Administration and I fought the current Vice

President and led the effort to restore the V–22 program, which

took us 12 years. You know I was in the forefront of that, and it

was tough; but we won the day because it was what the Marines

deserved to have to provide the over-the-horizon medium lift capability they needed.
22

I am absolutely overwhelmingly offended when I read reports

that a Marine captain, Kelly Royer, commander of E Company, a

company that suffered the largest casualties of any company in the

theater the six months they were there, is perhaps being railroaded

out of the Corps because he simply spoke up about the troops that

he was leading.

Now I am not going to perceive to know who Royer is. I have no

idea who the guy is. I never met him; I never talked to him. But

I do know he came out and publicly spoke out about his frustration

with his company not being properly protected.

Instead of what I think should have been the proper response,

which was to have everybody join in and fight the system and demand that the work be done to protect those troops, it appears as

though—it appears as though he is being singled out now, even

though past reports of his career, which I read into the record and

I am going to read into the record again, were positive.

‘‘On May 31, 2004,’’ his fitness report and I quote, ‘‘he has singlehandedly reshaped the company in sore need of a leader, succeeded

in forming a cohesive fighting force that is battle tested and worthy,’’ unquote. Those are pretty strong words. And then I have

other quotes that I assume came from his personnel file.

Now he is being found to be dictatorial with no morale or motivation in his Marines. Perhaps it is just coincidental that the one report was before he spoke out and the second was after he spoke

out. But I am going to tell you, as one Member of Congress, I am

not going to sit still until we find out. If it can’t be done in open

session, then we want a closed session.

Will you tell us why the reports about Captain Royer have been

changed?

And so, General, I would ask you and the public to tell me, do

you have any indication that there is any attempt to punish directly, or indirectly, Captain Royer for having spoken out about the

problems of E Company?

General MATTIS. Congressman Weldon, I can assure you, I can

unequivocally state that this has nothing to do with him speaking

out. I used to speak to Captain Royer probably on a several-timesa-month basis. My headquarters was in Ramadi. I didn’t focus on

it any more than the other places.

But you know, sir, have you ever been disappointed when you

found out something that you didn’t know what was going on?

When NCOs come forward, when sergeants come forward with a

concern, I have always found it very well advised for an officer to

dismiss the NCOs’ concerns. The pressures, as some of you who

have served, the pressures you understand on company and battalion commanders in the midst of a tough fight are beyond my ability

to explain them.

Take one of our most articulate associate justices of the Supreme

Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was an infantry officer in

the Civil War; and he said—speaking to his fellow veterans many

years after the war, he said, ‘‘We have shared the uncommunicable

experience of war.’’

So I am probably not going to articulate it well, sir, but I would

tell you the last thing that any commander, any battalion commander, ever wanted to do—and the battalion commander joins us
23

here today—is to relieve one of his company commanders. The

pressures on a company commander in combat, especially one in an

intense fight, to hold the key terrain of Ramadi—and that was the

key terrain; for all you have heard of Fallujah, Ramadi was the key

terrain. That battalion was given more up-armored Humvees than

any other, by a factor of two, because of the nature of the fight

there.

The fight there, that was written about in that New York Times

article, was over a year ago.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 142.]

General MATTIS. We had 17 different forms of armor on the 1st

Marine Division vehicles at that time. And to set the tactical context for when that article starts out, the supply lines out of Kuwait

had virtually been cut in the northern Babil area. Army troops, already completing a 12-month tour, were being turned around in

Kuwait to return to Iraq and relieve us, so it could bring more assault battalions into the fight in Fallujah that had been blown up

at the same time.

Out on the Syrian border, Husaiba was under severe attack. We

lost the company commander and four NCOs in the first hour of

fighting. Ramadi was an open fight. The enemy got their back broken, and from that time until June, there was no fight left in the

enemy in Ramadi.

They have recovered since that time. They are an adaptive

enemy.

My point to you is that in the midst of what was going on, this

company was standing strongly against the enemy. But when

NCOs, months later, come in with concerns, the battalion commander took the last step he ever wanted to take; and I support

him in what he decided to do. It had nothing to do with, since that

time, his concerns. We addressed his concerns every day, as we did

with every company commander, but that was war and the enemy

surged against us.

And you are aware of what happened in Fallujah. We went in,

we stopped, we came back out at this time; and we had to ship

troops hundreds of miles while a robust enemy assassination campaign killed the people in many places that had been working with

us. It was not a good time and we eventually restored the situation,

but there are costs not just in lives lost and wounded, but also

costs in terms of people’s identities and the challenges to our character.

And I can explain more in private session.

Mr. WELDON. I would appreciate a private session. I am not trying to second-guess what our military officers do. That is not my

job, and I never want that to be my job. I have total confidence in

our leadership.

And maybe this report is wrong, that the leadership overseeing

Captain Royer on May 31 of a year ago—which wasn’t even a year

ago, was about 11 months ago—made such very, very strong, positive comments about the leadership qualities of this Marine. I

didn’t write those comments. I don’t know who did. You know who

did. But somebody wrote—they weren’t mediocre comments, but ex-
24

tremely strong comments about the work of this leader 11 months

ago.

And I understand the New York Times article was about issues

that happened months ago, but the point is, something changed.

Maybe it was the officer himself that changed, which is what you

are saying, but you can understand why perhaps we would be

somewhat suspect if that officer had also come out and publicly

spoken out about the concerns of the troops under him, especially

when that unit was the most heavily hit unit in terms of suffering

casualties in theater.

I look forward to a private session with you, and I would thank

again the chairman and the deputy staff director for their outstanding work on this issue.

The CHAIRMAN. And let me suggest, Mr. Weldon, that we will accommodate a private session, General, if we could. Anything else

would disserve the officer in the process. We will do that.

The gentleman from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen for being here. I hope you all know how

glad we are that you are here. I hope you also are feeling very, very

uncomfortable about being here because there is a lot of dissatisfaction on this committee, the Congress and the American people. If

it makes you feel any better, most of us are very uncomfortable

with our position here.

I have a different take on this than Mr. Weldon. I think we have

also dropped the ball, that we have thought that, well, if we just

have a funding level when someone says they are short of money

and we pump money into it, that is good enough.

That is not good enough. That is not the kind of oversight that

Congress needs to be providing, the kind of attention. It should not

take a young man standing up in Iraq at a town meeting that Secretary Rumsfeld is holding on December 8, making the comments

that he does. That generates another focus on this kind of issue.

So I think this is a very painful day for all of us, but the goal

is the same, I think, to get better. I assume this is the report that

Mr. Meehan was referring to, the GAO report that came out in

April of this year.

I ask unanimous consent that this could be inserted in the record

in its entirety.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection.

Dr. SNYDER. And the title of it is, Actions Needed to Improve the

Availability of Critical Items During Current and Future Operations. In just one of—their very brief, one-page summary, they

say, ‘‘While U.S. troops develop short-term solutions to manage

item shortage during OIF, DOD and its services have begun to undertake systemic long-term changes to fix some supply problems

identified. While GAO did not evaluate their potential for success,

the majority of the changes are focused on distribution and not on

the full gambit of systemic deficiencies that GAO identified.’’

[The information referred to is retained in the committee files

and can be viewed upon request.]

Dr. SNYDER. I think you have some pretty knowledgeable people

saying you are not there yet; you are going to have other problems

down the line. It not just the distribution system. I look at it as
25

a pyramid. In Congress, I think we think the top of this pyramid

is funding, that if we are giving you proper funding and have our

laws stay out of your way for procurement, we are doing our job.

But that is not accurate. If the problem down below is distribution systems and proper planning, information, all those kinds of

things, if the stones in the pyramid below are inadequate, the pyramid crumbles and it doesn’t matter what is on top.

One of the problems that we have had on this committee on this

issue—and in my view, a lot of issues—is getting information. We

have been told multiple times, I don’t know how many times, that

the industrial capacity was at full capacity, maximum capacity,

that everything was being done to produce armor that could be;

and it turned out not to be accurate.

I was really struck in the last week when the information in one

of the newspapers came out about the death of Pat Tillman, and

they make very strong statements that information was withheld

from the American public that this was a fratricide incident until

after this brave man’s funeral. I don’t think that does his family

or the American people any favors.

It is a problem that this Congress and the American people have

had about getting information about these kinds of problems, and

it is very, very frustrating. And we are now two years into this war

and still having problems getting the information.

I commend you for being here today. I hope and I know you are

working very, very hard to solve this, but we all are not doing the

kind of job—we are not having the kind of success that we would

like to have; and in my view, that includes this committee also.

One specific, detailed question, General Catto: You mentioned

March. What March are you talking about?

General CATTO. March of 2004.

Dr. SNYDER. March of 2004, so a year ago. And would you repeat

again what you said about the changing threat? Did I understand

you to say at that time that IEDs were not considered the kind of

threat you were dealing with?

General CATTO. That is correct. In a low level, we did not have

a lot of incidents of IEDs at that time frame, and they have increasingly become a bigger threat with more incidents, greater explosives, et cetera.

Dr. SNYDER. Are you saying they had been a threat and dropped

off, or they have continued to escalate since that time?

General CATTO. They have continued to escalate since the time

the Marine Corps went back into Iraq until the present time.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Reyes has made a lot of trips to Iraq, and Mr.

Weldon and the chairman and others. I have made several trips,

and prior to March, I was in Iraq; and in my office I have a picture

of me sitting in a mess hall, talking to some troops. And there is

a poster right behind us—this is a mess hall photo that says, ‘‘Beware of IEDs.’’ That was six months before. I am confused on this

time frame.

General MATTIS. If I could take a stab at this, what we are getting here: The Marines came out of Iraq for a period. The first

IEDs that hit us the summer before, we went through 5–1/2

months of stability operation. We didn’t lose one sailor or Marine
26

killed. The IEDs were small, ineffective, and relatively easy to hunt

down the people who were laying them.

They adapted. Basically they made bigger IEDs and went to RF

stuff.

We came out of Iraq in October. The IED threat matured. We got

the word we are going back in November. General Kelly, my assistant division commander, and I flew back into Iraq in November

and December. General Catto joined us in December with modifications to armored kits, and we began the armoring.

In March, when we came in, we were hit by a limited number

of IEDs, you are right, but the Marine Corps was out of the theater, and the 82nd Airborne was turned over to us in March. We

have a little gap.

Just like politics, every war is local. They are all local. We didn’t

see the maturation. We picked up from 82nd Airborne’s great turnover to us, what we were coming back for; that is what we were

armoring our vehicles for.

Dr. SNYDER. My time is up, but one of the issues that has been

talked about, we have this turnover. I guess you are saying there

was not adequate communication between the units that you were

replacing, that somehow our sharing of intelligence when we have

that kind of transition on these rotations——

General MATTIS. Quite the opposite. The 82nd Airborne warned

us about what we were going into.

We got the word in November we were going back in. The ships

were still at sea bringing our gear home. They arrived in December. General Catto was at my headquarters with armored solutions

that we began producing in January. We were going as fast as we

could, and it was thanks to the 82nd Airborne’s very keen attention

and getting us that information, we knew what we were getting

back into over there, sir.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. I would direct the gentlemen to look at the time line and the actions taken by the staff

team that the committee has put into action. I don’t know if he has

taken a look at that, but they have worked steadily.

We have compressed schedules. We have driven reprogramming.

We have met with union leadership and business leadership to reopen mills and to keep them operating at full capacity. So our

team—I want our members to know that our team has been out

there. And if they look at the key points where we compressed the

schedules on the 7,000 kits in April of 2004, how we have driven

the reprogramming on IEDs, I want our members to know that our

staff team, that has been dedicated to this, has been active.

Look at the road map that we have provided there for you.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Chairman, may I respond?

The CHAIRMAN. I certainly would like to have the gentleman respond, but I heard the gentleman say that there is more to this

than just simply funding money. And the committee has been doing

more than providing money.

Dr. SNYDER. It is also a bigger issue than just this armor. The

GAO report talks about problems with batteries, tires, vehicles,

body armor, meals ready-to-eat, vehicle generators.
27

I appreciate what you all have done and what the committee

staff has done on this specific issue and what members do in terms

of bringing this to the attention of the American people, but there

are problems out there that we will continue to have problems addressing; and it is going to bite us again. I mean, that is what GAO

is predicting.

Well, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. That is why we are having this hearing and that

is why we had four classified hearings on the force protection situation, to see what we can do from this point, how we can move forward and how we can accelerate the programs we have initiated.

The gentleman from Nevada, Mr. Gibbons.

Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like

to ask General Votel about the training our soldiers receive in improvised explosive devices before they are deployed over there.

As I understand it today, our soldiers are not receiving a lot of

training here in the United States, but more likely receive their

training in IEDs when they deploy, immediately before they deploy

to overseas.

In your opinion, General, how great is the need to establish a

training center, an IED training center, for our soldiers to experience IED environments before they are deployed overseas?

General VOTEL. Thank you, sir. I think it is very important that

we provide a high-quality experience for our soldiers and our Marines and everyone who is deploying, so they have the opportunity

to practice and train in the environment in which they are going

to fight.

My observation is, I think we are well on our way to doing that

with the resources that we already have at the National Training

Center out in California, at the Joint Readiness Training Center in

Louisiana and, on the Army side, the Combined Arms Training

Center in Hunfeld, Germany. All of those locations for Army forces

are being used to train units to be there. And we talk directly with

the commanders and the operations officers that run those training

areas to ensure that they have the latest information and that we

are replicating the environment as closely as we can.

Mr. GIBBONS. What kind of physical environment is best suited

for an IED training center? What do you need? Is it an area where

you can utilize technology for defeat of IEDs as well as the experience of detecting and disarming IEDs? What kind of environment

do you need and do we have that environment in these centers that

you are talking about?

General VOTEL. Yes, sir, I do. At the training center in California, it is an environment that is uniquely suited to what we are

doing. I know that historically has been a place where we have

trained a lot of our large, armored mobile forces on the Army side,

but they have undergone a fairly remarkable transformation to

build up villages and to replicate some of the urban environment

that exists in Iraq. And so what we have tried to do is provide this

combination of open terrain and urban terrain that we do see in

Iraq.

One of the things we are seeing is, we have made very good use

of Yuma Proving Ground, Yuma, of course, being an Army facility.

Also it is home to the Joint Experimentation range complex that
28

has been put together with OSD money, and we made an additional investment to more closely replicate not just the physical environment—that is, roads, buildings—but also some of the background signatures, cell phone nets, other atmospherics that are

necessary for us to go in and test the equipment, or the particular

solutions we are looking at, and test it against an environment that

we can closely replicate to what we see in Iraq.

There is a combination of training areas, like we have at the

NTC, that are very suitable; and there are test facilities out in

Yuma, Arizona, that are very suitable to what we are doing. And

there are things going on in other places.

In Louisiana, at the Joint Readiness Training Center, the terrain

is a little bit different than it might be Iraq or Afghanistan. Nonetheless, we are able to replicate many of the situations very successfully there.

Both of the training centers have made huge investments in trying to provide HUMINT roles who actually replicate the people on

the ground. So we are doing a good job of trying to replicate that

and close the gap between what units experience in training and

what they are going to experience when they get into theater.

Mr. GIBBONS. Are there any restrictions that you are running

into, or obstructions that you are running into, with regard to the

utilization of electronic countermeasures for IEDs that influence

the training in any of these areas?

General VOTEL. Yes, sir, there are some FCC regulations. We are

working through the Spectrum Management office in the Pentagon

to help us with that. We have been successful in working through

some of those to get some access to frequencies that we can use to

prove to soldiers. Of course, confidence in these systems is paramount in making sure that they are used properly and we have soldiers set up. So we have had some success in doing that and we

are continuing to do that.

One of the other things we are doing is, we are working in conjunction with the rapid equipping force. We have gone out and purchased a number of training boxes, if you will, that replicate the

current family of Warlock systems, and we have bought a fairly

large number of those, about 500 of each of those. Those are in the

process of being produced. We think we will have the first deliveries here in about three weeks, and we will be sending these out

to the training sites so they will have, in numbers, these training

devices that can be used and can replicate the capabilities in a

training environment.

Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, General. And I hope during the course

of all this that you will let us know what we can do to assist you

in providing the training needs that will help our soldiers, sailors

and airmen deal with these IEDs in a very forward-looking, forward-leaning fashion.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Andrews.

Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank

the witnesses for their testimony this morning and acknowledge

the fact that no one has cared more or worked harder about protecting these young men and women than you have and the people

you represent. We appreciate your efforts.
29

I also want to say that it is clear to me that the efforts of Chairman Hunter and Mr. Taylor and Mr. Skelton and Mr. Simmons, a

lot of members of this committee, have made a difference, and I express my appreciation to them as well.

I am hearing really two stories or two parts of one story here.

The first is the story as to what happened after about November

of 2003, when we heard that it was going to become a top priority

to get more armor into the field. And that story has had fits and

starts and it has told us a lot about the labyrinth of the military

bureaucracy in dealing with the private sector. There have been

successes and failures, and I think the hearing properly focuses on

how to make the successes greater.

I am interested in the first part of the story, which is how we

got to a point, before November of 2003, where we were so poorly

prepared. It is my understanding, General Sorenson, in your written testimony, that we deployed 235 up-armored Humvees during

the initial phase of combat; and our present goal, if I am not mistaken, is 10,345.

That is a colossal difference, one for which you are not responsible. It is your job to fill the order. But I am heartsick about the

inaccuracy and inadequacy of the orders that were placed with you.

You were quoted in an article in the Philadelphia Enquirer talking about the beginning of the insurgencies and saying that no one,

no one, predicted in the insurgency a potential to use these IEDs

so widely. When did you first get asked to ramp up production of

the up-armored vehicles and by whom?

General SORENSON. Sir, thank you for the question.

I arrived at the Pentagon about October of 2003, shortly after the

AUSA convention. And at that time, I was beginning to get briefings with respect to what was going on in theater and the fact that

we were beginning to see incidents of IEDs and we were looking

at what were potential ways to respond to that.

At the same point in time, we went back and began to look at

what was in the laboratories, testing communities, at the time ARL

was putting together some door kits that you could add on to a

Humvee.

But going back to your other question about the 1114, this vehicle in terms of what the basis of issue was only for reconnaissance

soldiers and MPs who were going to be conducting military operations: Subsequent to that, we have found, because of the IEDs and

the stability operations and the fact that we had never anticipated,

if you will, this type of a threat, we had to go back and go ahead

to begin to armor.

I will go back and make one point. When we put together a kit

in response to Bosnia, we built the kit for the Humvee that essentially had a lot of body armor underneath, but not so much to the

side. As we began to look at the threat in terms of what we were

encountering in Iraq, we found that the threat wasn’t to the bottom, but was to the side because the IED explosives were coming

from the side.

Mr. ANDREWS. At some point there is a sea change. We go from

having 200 and some of these armored vehicles to rushing to get

ourselves over 10,000. Frankly, the track record in the months at

the end of calendar 2003 is not bad. You have ramped up 8,000-
30

and-something right now. But I am less interested in the industrial

production than I am the paradigm shift in people’s thinking. Who

was it that came to you and said, you know, we need a lot more

of these things in a hurry; and when did that happen?

General SORENSON. Sir, I would have to go back and create—we

have some time lines and time charts, and I can respond to that

for the record.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 158.]

Mr. ANDREWS. I would appreciate your doing that.

Let me ask you a related question. I know you cannot and should

not disclose sensitive intelligence. I am not asking you to do that,

but who is advising you how many of these things we are going to

need a year from now and what is the basis of their advice?

General SORENSON. Sir, I think, again, if you look at the data we

have provided here, we have begun to fund for in excess of the requirement. And right now, we are postured to do that with the kits

we currently have in production as well as the up-armored

Humvee.

At this point, Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has

been working this particular issue, looking at lessons learned, looking at what the future operations of the Army would be, looking

at what the future armored requirements are going to be. In the

June time frame, they are to report back to headquarters with respect to what they think the potential armored solutions.

Mr. ANDREWS. I know the committee would be interested in hearing what that recommendation is.

I just close with this point: One of the reasons that I think our

military is so successful is that it is your training and your orientation to anticipate the worst and prepare for it, and then if anything

short of that happens, we are home free. And I am just dismayed,

dismayed, that planners above your pay grade did not follow that

practice in this case and seemingly assumed the best, received the

worst, and we are here in this predicament as a result of it today.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Hayes.

Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I think this has been a

very valuable hearing in a long series of hearings in this particular

subject. Let me first start by making a comment.

General Mattis, I think you have an extremely clear and accurate view, so stated somewhere on the West Coast not long ago

about our objective in this whole process, and that is to destroy the

enemy. And I want to compliment you on your clear and concise

view and also your willingness to articulate that.

Along the same line, you also made a comment—I think it is valuable for the committee to seize on the day you spoke about taking

over for the 82nd. And I suspect that was General Swannack that

you replaced. The sequence of events that occurred and the rate at

which, or the nature by which, the battle reshaped itself with the

passage of time, I think is very important.

There have been statements made that we all care about—

Weldon, Andrews, acquisition of armor, installation, very important. But there are a lot of facts, and you really touched on some-
31

thing in there that I don’t think we really grasped before, the evolution of what has happened here; and I think we need to think

about that before going forward.

And my good friend, Dr. Snyder, I appreciate his participation,

and he is a faithful member, but I take exception to his characterization, as the chairman did, about our awareness and the aggressive way that the committee and the military have pursued the

issue of armor and IED jammers—the four classified hearings, very

important, and we continue to do that.

I remember Mr. Simmons on my right and others have visited

sites and encouraged numerous, various manufacturers and others

to get on the ball and get this material. The Philadelphia Enquirer

article, I was shocked and disappointed.

There is a long history here of what happened. We could have

done a lot better job. We don’t need to dwell on that. What we do

need to dwell on is the acquisition process. We would love to measure responses with a stopwatch. Typically, when the Pentagon gets

involved, it becomes a calendar. But an acquisition, you are talking

about carbon dating to find out what is going on.

I think part of what we talk about coming out of here today is

the acquisition process. This committee has very, very strongly supported our industrial defense base in this country. We have not received similar support from some folks in the Pentagon and some

folks in the other body—I guess we can call them the Senate here.

Our industrial defense base is vitally important. When we call on

them, and if you look at the reports here today, you find training

of people in Pennsylvania and Ohio, having them and the personnel ready to go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I hope, General Votel and General Sorenson, that is a part of our

lessons learned as we go forward today, because there are some

vital lessons that we can carry forward that will put us in a position to respond in the future to the always- and ever-changing battlefield.

Now for a question, General Votel and General Sorenson. As we

look at the whole issue of armoring, whether we begin with an armored vehicle or add on later, a part of our forward-looking consists of new materials that can be used that are lighter and even

more effective. My understanding is that there are some ceramic

and glass materials, laminating structures, that could improve and

strengthen efficiency.

Are we using that as a part to respond to all the issues we have

talked about with armor?

General SORENSON. Let me answer that question, and the answer is absolutely ‘‘yes.’’ to date, even in our armoring strategy and

armoring efforts to date, we have had about 60 vendors provide

technical solutions for armoring, everything from steel to composites and more elaborate capabilities. Of those, we have tested over

300 solutions. As we go into the future, as I was describing before,

the intent is to get to some composites, to some steel, basically a

standard common application that we can put on many of our vehicles in order to reduce the logistics requirements, as well as provide a better surge capability.

If we can get the same ballistic glass, or the same latch or the

same door to go on more of our vehicles, we could better respond
32

with respect to more vendors with improved solutions. And the intent at this point in time is to look at—in many cases, to look at

our science and technology base.

Mr. HAYES. One more question, if I may. Are you looking at glass

ceramics and glass laminates as future armor decisions? Are you

familiar with those?

General SORENSON. I am familiar with those, and as I mentioned

before, I think we are looking at those in our science and technology base at the present time, yes.

Mr. HAYES. Thank you, gentlemen, for your service.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. Let me begin by thanking you generals for being

here. I believe each of you is a combat veteran from this war, and

I thank you for your service in doing that.

I would like to echo the remarks that my friend from Arkansas

said. I am not particularly pleased, and I am certainly displeased

with what has happened. I don’t think our Nation has anywhere

near shown the commitment that our young men and women in the

field deserve.

I think it started with sending troops off to war and saying only

the front line troops need the best body armor. If you recall, the

Guardsmen and Reservists did not have it and people needlessly

died. And I would remind this committee that despite all of the

money we have thrown at the problem—we have thrown a lot of

money at the problem.

The day after that Tennessee Guardsman questioned Secretary

Rumsfeld, I went to Rock Island and there were a dozen people in

white coats telling me why they couldn’t get the job done, while

three blue collar workers were working on a Friday afternoon.

Now, tell me that is the national commitment to solve the problem.

With the jammers, I mean, let us face it, the game that keeps

getting played is, we are fulfilling the requirement. Requirement is

artificially low; requirement isn’t every vehicle. Everybody in this

room knows the only reason that the number of jammers is classified is because they don’t want the American people to know how

few are protected.

I appreciate General Votel’s efforts, and I appreciate what the

guys are doing at Indian Head. People are working on it. But we,

as a Nation, have been so incredibly inconsistent on this war.

George Bush says he is a wartime President. Well, doggone it,

if he can find the time to go out and pitch Social Security, he can

find the time to make these programs happen because kids are

needlessly dying. And I suspect that half the kids in Iraq needlessly died because of lack of armor, body armor, and lack of

jammers.

I think the next thing we need to address—and we do all get

ready to serve on programs and—I know I do; we are not addressing the need to change the shape of the vehicles. Pressure detonated mines are now causing a lot of injuries over there.

Bottom line is, almost all the vehicles we have over there have

flat bottoms. I am a boater. I understand boats probably better

than a lot of folks. A flat-bottom boat hits a wave, it bounces up.

A V-bottom boat hits the same wave, it slices through it. That ex-
33

plosion going off underneath the vehicle is a wave. And until we

start changing the shape of our vehicles, we can have all the

armor, but if that vehicle gets thrown 10, 20 yards, the people in

it get severely injured.

I don’t hear much talk about changing that. And, again, does

that have to be the fourth mistake we make? Why don’t we start

addressing it today? And the last thing, why is it that a Nation

that is at war can’t turn to these factories and say, make it, because the truth of the matter is, this body is afraid to declare war

on the insurgents in Iraq. If we had declared war as a body, then

our Nation would be in a position to call the steel mills, to call the

ballistic glass folks and call American manufacturing, what is left

of it, and say, Make the things our troops need.

Gentlemen, I realize you have been the pinatas de jour. I appreciate your service, but before we start pointing the finger at them,

every member of this committee ought to look in the mirror as to

whether or not we are making the commitment as a Nation. We

can find the time to cut taxes for Paris Hilton. We can find the

time to pass a $1.5 trillion prescription drug benefit, but somehow

we haven’t found the time to take care of the troops.

Getting to the question of V-bottom vehicles, gentlemen, what

kind of progress is being made toward that? And again do we have

to wait until we field 20,000 flat-bottom Humvees with armor before we finally decide it is time to move on to something. Again,

I don’t care who makes it as long as it is made in this country, but

do a better job of protecting the kids in the field.

General VOTEL. I will address a couple of things that we are

doing with respect to the shape of vehicles.

One of the areas which we deal with on the IED task force is the

functional capability for our engineering units and others to go out

and perform route clearance. Clearly, keeping the lines of communication, the roads, the systems that we rely on for operations, for

our logistics is vitally important.

What we have done is, we have gone out and brought into the

theater vehicles like the Buffalo, which comes with a specific Vshaped hull design and provides the type of protection that is afforded by that design. So that is in service with our engineering

units, who are primarily doing route clearance operations for us

right now. And the response we are getting from them is overwhelmingly positive.

One of the things we have recently done, really taking a cue from

the Marine Corps, is procuring a vehicle we call the Cougar. This

is designed as a joint EOD, explosive ordinance disposal, force vehicle, and it does have a V-shaped hull. It is produced in South Carolina. The Marine Corps moved out on that, and we watched that

closely and saw the advantage of that right away in making sure

our forces—most of those who are responding to these types of situations with IEDs and have, in combination with Army supplemental money and money that we have taken out of the Iraqi Freedom Fund, fully funded the expedited production of those. We will

see some coming into theater as early as August.

Mr. TAYLOR. What is your goal on that?

General VOTEL. We are working on 122—our focus is on EOD

teams that are in the theater of operations, Iraq, Afghanistan, the
34

Horn of Africa, and that is how we have addressed it through the

IED task force because that is what our focus is. We clearly recognize there are ramifications for the long-term force, and so we are

working with the institutional part of the Army to make sure that

we are programming for these in the long term.

General SORENSON. If I may add to that, right now I believe you

are aware of the fact in the data that was provided here, we have

395 armored security vehicles which essentially have a V-shaped

hull. In the supplemental, we have put a requirement in there to

buy an additional 824, bringing it up to almost over 1,100.

To date, the amount we are trying to satisfy is about 872, and

we will intend to do that by the fiscal year 2006 time frame.

Mr. TAYLOR. Gentlemen, what is the target date that you can assure this committee that before troops rotate to Iraq, they will have

trained with jammers here in the States? And the reason I say

this, right now I have got close to 4,000 Mississippians over there.

They never saw a jammer until they arrived in Iraq, never trained

with one in the States and were told they were trained with them

in Kuwait. That never happened; the first time they saw it was in

Iraq. And many of the jammers they received did not have the software in it.

That is water under the bridge. I regret that happened, but there

will be other units rotating into theater. What is the game plan so

that there are enough jammers that they can train in the United

States, since we are losing half of our casualties to IEDs, and that

they will be proficient at this before they get to the theater?

General VOTEL. Sir, I will address that. As we last talked here,

three, four weeks, we have gone back to the rapid equipment force

and we have made an immediate purchase here of 500 of each of

the types of jammers, training devices, if you will, of each of the

major Warlock systems that we have fielded in the theater. That

is under contract and we think we will have the first systems here

in about three, four weeks. We think production will be completed

in about 16 weeks.

Our goal is to basically take those devices and equally break

them between the major training sites where forces are undergoing

training so that, as they go to the mobilization sites and as they

go through their rehearsal exercises at the combat training centers,

they will have systems in number to train with.

We are moving training sets down into Kuwait so that as they

go through some of the training that takes place there, the refinement training, others will be able to reinforce that and do so with

real devices.

Mr. TAYLOR. The troops that are rotating in now are trained with

jammers prior to going into theater? The rotations in January and

May?

General VOTEL. I can’t speak necessarily for the Marine Corps

rotation. For the Army rotation, for the most part, I think that is

pretty much complete now. They have got in some amount of training back here and they get training from the Explosives Hazards

Awareness team and from folks off of our task force. They come

through Kuwait. That is what this rotation has got.

General MATTIS. For the Marines and sailors going in, part of

them, whether they be aviation Marines or combat service sup-
35

porter infantry, all of them go through training at March Air Force

Base where we train them in urban terrain. We are building a center at Twenty-nine Palms.

Right now we have to split the training between March Air Force

Base and Twenty-nine Palms. Twenty-nine Palms is the only place

we have the waiver in order to actually use the improved counterIED equipment. And so they all get it and have been getting it for

several months. I would have to check on when it started, but all

of them in country now have training on the gear they use.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, gentlemen, for your service to our country.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

And I want to remind the gentleman and the rest of the committee that we will vote momentarily on this supplemental, which has

in it the dollars that we are going to use to proliferate some new

technology into theater. And we are not going to proliferate it in

the old way, that is, we are going to surge production, using lots

of companies; it is not going to be a long, slow acquisition trail.

And we are going to move it in very, very quickly; and it is being

done under our new license that directs getting the contract under

way within 15 days.

But we look forward to working with you, General Votel, on that

program.

The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Kline.

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. You can sense a certain

frustration among the members of the committee.

My colleague, the gentleman from Mississippi, expressed his concern that we couldn’t find the time and the money to defend our

troops. I disagree with that. I think this committee has shown that

it is willing to spend the time in briefings and hearings, in visits

to bases and stations and plants around the country and, of course,

to our troops in theater. And certainly we have shown a willingness

to spend money, and we are going to spend some more today to

protect our troops.

There has been some discussion today about what went wrong,

what failed. Well, clearly when we do acquisition for the Pentagon,

we have a system that is, as my colleague said, sometimes carbon

dated in identifying requirements and planning and programming

and budgeting to make sure that we are buying the best equipment, the right equipment for our troops, and getting it fielded on

time; and I think we would have to agree that somehow that system let us down here. We didn’t properly plan, program, budget,

execute to get our troops the equipment that they needed in the

form of armored vehicles, which were never designed to be armored

in the first place. But we didn’t foresee that need and we didn’t get

that equipment and appropriate devices to counter the IED threat.

So that is where we are today.

We have been scrambling on this committee, and I know you

have, to make up for what is clearly a failure in that system, to

get the equipment that our Marines and soldiers need on the

ground. And this committee, under this chairman, has taken extraordinary steps to give you the latitude, to give the Secretary the
36

latitude to get things done quickly, to bypass the carbon-dating

process and get at least to a count of the process, if not the stopwatch, which we would like to see. And yet we continue to be frustrated.

And we are counting the numbers and the percentages, and is it

the right requirement? And what we want to do is make sure that

our soldiers and Marines have got what it takes to keep them as

safe as we can keep soldiers and Marines engaged in combat.

So the question is, what more can we do to get either regulations

out of the way, to get you money faster? What more can we do to

kick this thing where it needs to be kicked and move us down the

road faster?

Now, we are always going to be chasing—General Mattis very

eloquently described the situation we have in combat. We are dealing with an adaptive enemy, so our requirements are changing

right now in real time while we are sitting here. And that archaic,

decades-long, established system of identifying those requirements

and validating them and then programming them is not responsive

enough.

I guess I will give up on my speech and just ask the question

again. Would anybody like to step up to it? What more can we do

to move this thing so that we can acquire things in the same responsive way that you insist that your solders and Marines do in

the field?

General CATTO. Congressman Kline, one thing that would be

very helpful to us: As we talk about looking at what can we do for

the future, let’s take a second and talk about survivability in vehicles. We are at about the 98 percent point in what we can do to

make vehicles better. You can’t put any more armor on these

things. We are breaking the springs; the suspensions can’t—the

enemy continues to put bigger explosives, et cetera. We are just at

the peak of what we can do.

We need to look at vehicle design from the tires up. It has to be

for survivability where you have a combination of deployability in

terms of—if you look at the Cougar, that thing weighs 36,000

pounds; it is tough to hurt, but let me tell you fellows, it is very

hard to get it off the ship. So there is a trade there.

We have to look at things like ceramics, which you talked about.

The problem with the ceramics is, if you hit a ceramic today, it will

work for the first blast and then it shatters. Well, if you are in a

daisy-chain IED, you are fine the first time; the second one kills

you. Metal doesn’t do that, but metal is heavy and—you understand the problem, it is physics.

We need help in the science and technology regime to get us materials that are light and very, very strong so when General

Sorenson’s guys and my guys put A-kits on vehicles, we don’t weigh

them down so they can’t move. I mean, there is a balance between

what can we do for the weight, what can we do for mobility, and

how are we going to deploy them.

In this case, in my opinion, it is a science and technology issue

to help us with the kinds of composites and blast-protective material that will allow us—to give us this kind of protection on vehicles and still be able to move. I mean, that goes all the way to

things like our SAPI plates. You put a small arms protective insert
37

in an outer tactical vest that weighs 4.5 pounds, one in the front,

one in the back, well, pretty soon our Marines and soldiers are

wearing 60 pounds of gear between Kevlar helmets, their SAPI

plates, et cetera. How do we make that helmet more protective? We

can’t make it any heavier.

We are really at the point now where it is a science and technology effort, where we have to get the materials that give us the

same form and function, but that are lighter.

And so I think, to answer your question, you need to put moneys

in the science and technology regime that are pointed exactly to

those kinds of things, and they have to be funded long enough for

us to make the research and get the breakthrough.

General SORENSON. Sir, if I may just add on, not to spend time

talking about the science and technology, I agree with General

Catto, those particular efforts would certainly help us to do what

we need to do for force protection and survivability.

But to address your question about the process, just a couple

thoughts: As an acquisition officer for a number of years here, this

particular dilemma we have encountered, now we have, in the department, had to go back through and recalibrate the way we go

through our process. Our vice chief’s staff, as we began this particular conflict, began having weekly meetings which were basically

what he called the Army Strategic Planning Board, where requirements would be vetted, we would look forward in terms of what

was necessary for planning purposes, and begin to make changes

immediately to what we were procuring or how we had to make

changes so we could get that through the acquisition process.

The dilemma becomes, in many cases, just like what we talked

about; and I think the chairman has spoken about what the committee has done.

I will go back to October 2003, where we began to identify a need

to have armor packages, we had to go through a lengthy process

in order to get the reprogrammings done, and you take money from

one pot and you put it in another one. I will tell you, that process

is very laborious; it takes an enormous amount of time in trying

to work through all the records as we go through the Army staff

to 0SD staff, to OMB, to Congress, and back down the chain.

If there could be some flexibility put in with respect to providing,

if you will, an amount of money to do what was necessary—you

know, By the way, you go do that, spend it on what you need and

report back on what you spent—that would give an enormous

amount of flexibility to the acquisition process, as opposed to what

it is right now where we have our budgets and we have our lines,

and any time we want to change things we have to go through this

entire pyramid up here, and down the pyramid down the righthand side.

So, again, providing some flexibility to accounts, line accounts,

that basically say, You have $100 million, you have $200 million,

you use this as you see necessary; and by the way, report back to

us how that money is being spent. I think that would go a long way

to improving our ability to react to necessary changes on an immediate basis.

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, General. That is precisely the direction

I was looking at.
38

I hope, Mr. Chairman, we can follow up on that as a committee.

The CHAIRMAN. If the gentleman will yield——

Mr. KLINE. I yield back.

The CHAIRMAN. If the gentleman will yield on that.

General, I would ask you to look at the new law that this committee did just write for you, and it says that if you are taking casualties in combat, the Secretary can waive every law on the books

of the United States of America up to $100 million, the figure you

just suggested.

This first—this jammer is going to be the first model under this

particular provision. Secretary Rumsfeld has signed that; he has

certified it as an urgent need. We are going to knock that thing

out, and we are going to surge it into production, and we are going

to surge it into the field. We got back an 8-month profile from the

Navy on the production. We said, That doesn’t work, we want to

do it really within 30 to 60 days.

So my recommendation is, if we can get that to you while you

are here today, that is a license that you need to use. And you need

to get one guy to sign off on that, and that is SECDEF. You go to

SECDEF and tell him you have a combat requirement, and I don’t

think he is going to turn you down.

So I think you have got precisely the instrument that you need.

So why don’t you take a look at that and get back with us, let us

know what you think about it.

General SORENSON. Will do, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady from San Diego, Ms. Davis.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to all of you for your service and for being here.

I want to follow up for a second the comments just made about

science and technology. As I recall, looking at budgets a while ago,

we saw that those accounts actually have been cut; and I wonder,

have you had a chance to look at those? Do you think that we are

doing what is required and necessary in order to bring about the

results that you just mentioned?

General CATTO. I was the Vice Chief of Naval Research at ONR

in a former life, before I became an acquisition guy. And what I

would tell you is the S&T budgets have declined to some extent.

I think there is a reason for that, because the S&T community in

many respects hasn’t been responsive to what the guys need.

It is very hard to get DARPA and ONR to give you help on specific technologies and transition into the operational forces. And I

think that is the frustration that I personally have, having worked

as the Commanding General of the warfighting lab and the Vice

Chief of Naval Research, and then moved into acquisition. To get

the science and technology guys to work on the kinds of technologies that soldiers and Marines need so that we field them during our lifetimes is very difficult.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest

that perhaps that is something that we need to push on. And I

think that we have tried to change those numbers from time to

time, at least in the relatively short time I have been on the committee, and I don’t know that we have all had that support. So I

would take that under advisement, and I think that is something

that we need to take a look at.
39

I wanted to follow up with my colleague, Congressman Snyder,

for a second on the GAO report. Have you all read that? Have you

had a chance to review that?

General SORENSON. Ma’am, I have just gotten a copy of that. I

have not completely reviewed it. I looked it over very briefly last

night. I believe in some cases some of the information, obviously,

just like any other report, is dated. However, there are some particular nuggets there which probably are worthwhile to go off and

pursue, but I couldn’t give you a complete answer at this point in

time.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I wonder if you just want to comment

on the systemic problems that were identified. And do you think

that the problems are systemic? If you had had an opportunity to

look at the issues, how—perhaps if you haven’t read it, it would be

difficult—but how would you have written that differently? What

particularly would you have identified as the problems?

And we have had a chance to discuss them here, but I am just

wondering if you could respond to the report itself.

General SORENSON. Again, I would have to come back to you

with a better response because, like I said, I have just received a

copy of the report and I have not gone through it in detail.

I guess if you are asking for a personal opinion on what we saw

prior to this with respect to our efforts to armor our vehicles and

things like that, clearly there were some systemic issues with respect to working with industry, defining exactly what the requirement was going to be, how we can begin to move it, accelerate it

and so forth.

I think in many cases, too, as we begin to work on these kits,

you will find that the kits were designed by a host of different

manufacturers—we had Stewart and Stevenson, we had Radian,

we had Armor Holdings—and in many cases they went off and did

the system engineering work to build that kit.

But I will tell you in many cases what we would get back from

industry, specifically the steel industry, is that the plates were cut.

But in one case they were cut 1 foot—or excuse me, 3 feet; next

one was 3.2 feet, next one was 3.3. So in many cases we were really

not working well together to accommodate and put out packages

that, quite frankly, could be used on all of the vehicles.

It goes back to what I said earlier. We are having all the consortiums get together, identify some common parts such that we can

pursue an aggressive strategy to accelerate, as well as have a surge

capability, to accommodate need for armoring different vehicles,

but armoring and giving it force protection with common components, as opposed to everybody has got their unique little thing.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I appreciate that. I mean, it seems

like common sense that you would be working to coordinate in that

regard, and yet sometimes it is difficult to walk in one another’s

shoes and try and get that out there. I appreciate that.

I know, in having met with a number of Marines who have come

back from the field, they certainty speak highly of the plates; they

know that those definitely saved their lives. But they also responded that they were being asked to wear so much armor that

they couldn’t even move any longer. I think that that is a real
40

problem, and when you speak of the technology and the materials

that we use, that is also one to address.

Mr. Chairman, I see that my time is up. I wanted to just ask one

question, which is a really more sensitive question. I certainly

wouldn’t want it to be taken that any of the deaths are any different from one another; these are all men and women who have

given their lives, who are very courageous. But I wonder whether

the families are notified whether—in fact, how, the way in which

they were killed—whether it was necessarily in combat in an uparmored vehicle, IEDs, and whether you think that the public as

a whole should have more information.

Should the Congress have more information? Should we be told?

Should we have some way of knowing the numbers and how those

deaths correspond to the way in which individuals were killed?

Would that spur on any more activity than we already have seen?

I know everyone is working at full capacity here, but I am just

wondering, is that something that we should know more about?

General MATTIS. Ma’am, if I could address that. The family needs

to know everything that we know; that is the bottom line. Now, in

the chaos of the battlefield, there are sometimes legitimate reasons

why we don’t know the specific thing that happened at that moment, there is always going to be information gaps, especially to a

family that is getting the worst possible news.

With that said, at the time we release information in Iraq, you

will notice it is very cursory, and the reason is to keep from reporting back to the enemy, at least in the Al Anbar Province—I am

speaking for the Marines here—what we call battle damage assessment. We don’t want them to know that the mortar rounds that

they fired into Ramadi last night killed a soldier, sailor or Marine.

We will simply say we lost one of our lads in the Al Anbar Province.We don’t want to give the enemy the feedback.

But once it comes down to the family, nothing is kept back.

There are times when there is just legitimate friction and fog of

war that causes problems, but no other restraints whatsoever,

ma’am.

Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady and her—I think her

point is an extremely good one with respect to the analysis of what

is happening, for example, to platforms with the IED threat and

with the other threats that affect them. Because right now we are

in the stages of developing a new generation of systems, and there

is nothing more instructive, probably, to that process than this real

war that is going on right now.

So we have talked—intelligent lady, we have talked about that

with the service leadership and operational leadership, and my understanding is that there is fulsome reporting or analysis going on

with respect to the actual attacks and the damage resulting from

that. That is something that we need to concentrate on.

And also, to the gentlelady, one thing we have done: I think

there is probably nothing more meaningful to a family than to have

the commander of the people—of a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine

who is killed—talking to the parents. And we have managed to get

that done in several places where they don’t have much information, at least initially.
41

But I think General Mattis makes a good point about not announcing to the world what happened in these recent activities.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Shuster.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, I want to thank all of you for your service to this Nation,

especially in the times we are living in and what is going on in the

world. And I also appreciate what General Mattis said to us early

on, reminding us that combat is an ever-changing environment;

and I think some of us, some of the people across this country and

here in this committee forget that fact.

And it is not a new phenomenon, it is something that has been

going on for thousands and thousands of years, as long as wars

have been fought, the enemy figures out a way to overcome your

defenses; and we have got to change, so what is likely today to defend our troops tomorrow may be ineffective.

Could you please, any one of you—I am not sure who to direct

it to—clarify for me the problems with up-armor. Was it a bigger

problem in supplying of steel; or was the problem the capacity to

get the vehicles up-armored the workforce, the number of people

we had out there?

And the second part of that question is, were there any problems

with the weight of the steel on the vehicles, whether it is a

Humvee or it is the Iron Horse? Could you comment on that?

General SORENSON. Yes, Congressman, thank you.

Initially we did have some issues, as was addressed earlier, at

the beginning here, with respect to acquiring the amount of steel

that was necessary. I believe most of those particular issues have

now been overcome, and we are now to the point where at the beginning we had maybe one steel manufacturer that was essentially

providing capability, we are now up to three. Where we had one,

if you will, government organizations more or less working on armoring, we are now eight and nine depots with arsenals. And

where we had but a handful of contractors, three or four, there are

now clearly a dozen-and-a-half, essentially providing capability

here to our forces.

When we first began to embark upon the add-on armor kits specifically for the Humvees, it was a very difficult issue because

many of the vehicles that we have that were committed to the war

are of the variety that we call the A0, the initial deliveries of, if

you will, Humvees that were delivered to the Army and the Marine

Corps years and years ago. And we are talking about the 1980’s.

We had to go through a very deliberate process whereby we analyzed how much armor could we put on this vehicle, and what was

the optimum amount in order to give force protection, but yet not

basically load down the vehicle so that it couldn’t move. And I will

tell you, in some of the first instances when we put one of the kits

on a vehicle and ran it up there at the Aberdeen Test Proving

Grounds, the vehicle came to a basic stop and it shattered the front

shaft.

So we had some difficult challenges we had to go through, the

interim process trying to find out how much weight could we put

on this vehicle, and essentially what will that armor package look

at—and oh, by the way, where would we optimize that armor?
42

We went back to theater, the 8,400 that the chairman spoke of

before, when that first requirement came in, and went through a

detailed analysis of what does that 8,400 break down to in types

of vehicle, so we could begin to identify what armor package could

go on what particular vehicle.

Subsequent to that, as we have talked about now in terms of the

1151 that we are about to go produce, that will be able to accommodate the armor package that essentially is the same as an 1114.

So we have learned a lot by going through this, but initially, you

are right, we had some significant issues with respect to how much

armor can we put on some of those, if you will, Humvees, the older

Humvees that we had in theater.

Mr. SHUSTER. In light of your answer, then, my next question is,

because we had trouble getting the steel and the fact that we don’t

have a significant steelmaking capacity in this country anymore,

and that the weight was a problem, why aren’t we aggressively

pursuing the use of composites?

And I know you mentioned earlier that we are looking at it, but

from what I can find out and gather, we are not putting a whole

lot of money into it. And it just seems to me that composites—

again, from what I understand, you may have different information—composites work. I mean, Boeing is building a new airplane,

jetliner, that is going to fly 35,000 feet up in the air and deliver

a couple hundred passengers around the world. And from what I

understand, it is in testing composites work.

Why aren’t we aggressively—and when I say ‘‘aggressively,’’ why

aren’t we spending money getting composites into the field and

lightening the load on the truck? And not having to depend on foreign countries to get the composites, we can manufacture them

here.

General SORENSON. Sir, we are actually working through that. In

fact, there are several companies, several composite armor makers

that are basically providing that capability. We have talked a lot

with respect to the soldiers giving us feedback in terms of how the

vehicles are being weighed down, the issues respective to the

frame; and as a result of that, we have gone back and really pursued many of the composite makers.

Specifically, as I mentioned before, we have had about—over 300

solutions shot up at Aberdeen. A lot of those were composites, and

in some cases, the composites didn’t give enough protection, so we

had to take the composite and essentially put in, if you will, a

small piece of armor or aluminum or something else to give it the

capability of force protection that we are looking for.

Mr. SHUSTER. Decreasing the load on the truck, though, by using

a combination——

General SORENSON. Yes, but in some cases, there were tradeoffs.

From our test results, our initial test results—again, I go back to

early 2004, late 2003; the results at that point in time with respect

to composites were not to the standard that we needed in terms of

force protection.

I think subsequent to that they have increased substantially, and

I believe the Marines have used some of the composites in their latter designs that have shown us that, as we go forward, even in our
43

1151 forecast, we are going to have some potential composite makers for armor protection.

Mr. SHUSTER. I haven’t heard you talk much about it today, the

composites. We are spending a lot of money on steel. So are we

going to aggressively go after composites to be put on the ones that

are successful?

General SORENSON. Yes.

Mr. SHUSTER. I would like to—I see my time is up. If you could

give me some kind of report on what you are doing, because as I

said, what I understand is that it is—the money is not being spent

to go after the composites, and they have a great benefit us to.

And I don’t know the cost, but I—can you just quickly comment

on the cost?

General SORENSON. The costs in some cases have been a little bit

more expensive than, obviously, the steel, but there are some

tradeoffs there. And I can certainly give you some more feedback

in terms of the composite companies that we have worked with,

and what we are doing in that regard.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 158.]

Mr. SHUSTER. I would appreciate if you would give me that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for an excellent line of

questioning.

The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt.

Mr. SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for

your testimony and for your service to our country.

About a month before the war began, General Shinseki was in

my office for a briefing on another subject. When we finished, I

took the opportunity to ask him his assessment of the postwar

planning, because I had great concerns about what could happen;

and he gave me a surprising answer. He said, Sir, I haven’t been

briefed.

Now here is the Chief of Staff for the Army whose main responsibility is to take and hold real estate, who had a major—had a primary role in this invasion, this war; and also had experience—he

did—running a multilateral force dealing with a partially Muslim

population, trying to pacify and stabilize Bosnia and Kosovo. This

is a week before he testified that several hundred thousand troops

would be necessary.

He told me, I haven’t been briefed yet, a month before the war

was to begin.

Were there deficiencies, blind spots? I won’t ask you to pass on

General Shinseki’s situation, but were there deficiencies and blind

spots in our planning process that caused us not to foresee what

could have been foreseen in this situation?

I will put that question to anyone.

General MATTIS. Sir, certainly with hindsight we can spot blind

spots. We adapt quickly—probably the U.S. Military adapts more

quickly than any other on earth. But we are certainly subject to a

certain degree of criticism about the post—what you would call the

decisive combat, defeating the enemy’s main forces.
44

Mr. SPRATT. Would it be accurate to say we were unprepared,

surprised, by what has developed with respect to this insurgency,

in particular, the way that they have been able to deploy these improvised weapons?

General MATTIS. Sir, I wouldn’t go that far. The U.S. Navy went

triumphant. It crossed the Pacific coast in World War II and got

to Okinawa, found vehicle-borne IEDs in the form of Kamikazes. I

think we need to be—I need to be slow to characterize as failure

an enemy adaptation.

Our Army, our Marines, our Navy, our Air Force are employable

worldwide. There are numerous situations where these heavily

armed vehicles would have bogged us down and we would not have

made the speed we might have needed; or in certain areas, the

enemy simply wouldn’t have responded this way.

I think in hindsight you can always find areas you could have

planned better because all planning is anticipatory decision-making. And thanks to our professional military education, which must

remain strong, I think we have adapted well.

But there were certain aspects to this fight that were probably

missed. I can tell you that, as a division commander, I have clear

guidance from my MEF commander, then General Hagee, now our

commandant, which anticipated the need to get the electricity

turned on to work with Iraqi security forces; and as I was pulled

out of Baghdad and Tikrit, I had a very clear plan from actually

a year before that General Hagee had given to me—now General

Conway commanding me—that I knew what to do.

Mr. SPRATT. Let me ask you this: I was there, I think it was October of 2003, and the units were beginning to experience the problems that we are having with IEDs, and also with a lack of the latest version of Kevlar vests, body armor, particularly for the units

that had been rear echelon units that were now in places like

Baghdad.

And one young MP from an MP—a National Guard MP company

in the Carolinas, told me, Sir, I can account for at least three people who have been killed in my unit, my company, because they

didn’t have the latest version with the ceramic plates of the Kevlar

vest.

I came back, and I knew some folks at DuPont, so I called them

into my office to see what we could do to facilitate the production

of these things; and I found out that they weren’t the prime, that

somebody else was the prime contractor for us, and that they then

had to let out subcontracts to at least two or three subcontractors

and vendors, and the process was all very onerous and time consuming. And there were through FIT rates that each one of them—

each supplier in the chain was subject to.

I didn’t get the sense then that there was any Herculean effort

to override all of these onerous military procurement processes and

get the deal done, get the Kevlar vests out in the field.

Looking back, would you think that we should have taken more

extraordinary efforts to break through these bottlenecks and speed

up the process to deliver these things that the troops clearly needed?

General MATTIS. Sir, I will defer to the acquisition folks on that,

but let me make one point.
45

I personally did not wear one in OIF–1, and the reason I didn’t

wear it was the speed. They are very heavy, as you know, and anything you can do to lighten one of your Marines, they can move

faster, more agile.

Going back to OIF–2, once I made certain that every sailor and

Marine I had had one—or had two, one in front, one in back, then

I took one, too. The situation had changed.

Mr. SPRATT. This applied before we got that level of supply, did

it not?

General MATTIS. I think we were okay. When we actually decided

we needed them, sir, I was able to give one to every sailor and Marine in my division.

I can only defer to the acquisition people as far as the time line.

I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.

General CATTO. Congressman Spratt, I think some of your criticisms are valid in terms of the process in some of the convoluted

contracting, et cetera, that went on earlier in the conflict.

But the principal problem with SAPI plates in particular,

though, is the raw material for them. There just hasn’t been

enough of the raw material available worldwide for that particular

technology.

I have been to Brazil looking for raw material for those particular things. It is just an issue of there just wasn’t enough around

for the demand, and I think that my counterparts in the Army had

the same problems.

General SORENSON. That is correct. We had the same issue with

respect to—it was essentially the raw material. We had several

producers that could take the raw material and produce the plates,

but it was getting that flow, getting that pipeline to the point that

we could actually develop enough plates to get to theater.

Mr. SPRATT. Thank you for your testimony. My time is up. I appreciate it.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Schwarz.

Dr. SCHWARZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Am I correct in assuming that the Humvees that are being manufactured now by AM General are Level one, the ones that are

coming off the line are Level one Humvees that have the armor

protection, the integrated armor against small arms; is that correct?

General SORENSON. No, sir, not exactly.

What AM General——

Dr. SCHWARZ. Okay.

General SORENSON. Let me just clarify. AM General produces the

frame. They send that frame to Armor Holdings. Armor Holdings

then puts on, if you will, the armor package that we now call the

1114.

So it is a joint—what AM General does, though, is make sure

that that frame can accommodate that armor package.

Dr. SCHWARZ. What I am getting at here is capacity. UAW Local

5 at AM General indicates that they are working 4 days a week

a 10-hour shift, one day a week an 8-hour shift, one Saturday a

month, 28 chassis a week, and they could double that production

if asked to do so.
46

Is there some comment that you would like to make on that? Is

there a reason why if the upgraded Humvees aren’t out there—either the armor maybe doesn’t have the capacity, so it wouldn’t

make any sense to have AM General make any more—or, in fact,

could we go up, as UAW Local 5 says—good folks out in the Midwest, who would be very happy to work the extra hours and

produce twice as many of these chassis a week.

Do any of you gentlemen have a comment on that?

General SORENSON. Sir, I will take that question. Thank you.

As we just talked about with respect to SAPI plates, the flow of

material to make it an armor essentially comes out of AM General.

At this point in time they are not the critical hurdle to get through.

It is to get the armor package put on, which essentially is Armor

Holdings.

Now, as we go into our 1151 production, the intent at some point

in time is to take advantage of the surge capability that AM General has, that have more than one producer, if you will, of the B

kit, the armor package that we can put on these vehicles such that

we can surge the capability, use the additional excess assets that

are there at AM General, and begin to, if you will, deliver systems

much quicker than we are today.

Dr. SCHWARZ. So at the conclusion—I will go very rapidly, Mr.

Chairman.

I can come to the conclusion that, if you could, you would use the

extra capacity AM General quite candidly says they have, and the

holdup is with the armorer?

General SORENSON. That is correct, yes, sir.

Dr. SCHWARZ. Thank you.

I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin.

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony today and for your

service to the country.

I would like to follow up on two things: One, IEDs; and the second will focus on composite materials that one of my colleagues

was actually talking about earlier.

But since we are talking so much about IEDs this morning, I

wanted to also ask if you can give us an update on tracking down

how the insurgents, our enemies, are being resupplied, whether

this material is hidden in country and they are just obtaining it

that way and building IEDs; or if they are being resupplied from

outside the country.

Obviously, we didn’t have much success finding weapons of mass

destruction, so I am not exactly optimistic that we are going to also

be able to track down the source of where the IEDs are coming

from. But if you can give us an update on how robust that effort

is and what the status is, I think that would be helpful.

The other thing that I would like to ask about this morning, with

respect to composite material, clearly our focus has to be protecting

the soldier. It is our concern, it is your primary concern; and I understand that, I hear that from you today.

The other thing that we need to be focused on as a secondary

concern is extending and protecting the service life of the equip-
47

ment, as well. And I am very disturbed about reports I have heard

about how quickly you are running material into the ground and

not doing enough to resupply. We need obviously to be concerned

about the next battle, the next conflict that could arise anywhere

in the world, whether it is the Middle East or other areas; and our

equipment is being severely degraded far faster than what we had

originally intended.

So I would like an update, first of all, on how our equipment is

doing. And then, as a follow-up to that, I have been—I have been

concerned about more rapidly developing composite material.

We have—I have two requests in right now, the defense authorization bill, for lightweight armor for vehicles, $5 million would go

for the armored composite cab program, working with a company

in Rhode Island called TPI. And as we know, composites can provide both alternative and standard armor for tactical vehicles while

extending service life.

The other request is $5 million for lightweight materials for armored vehicles for Brown University, which has worked with the

Army’s Cardek program to research materials that could be the

basis for the next-generation armor.

So my question is—and I do agree we touched on this this morning, so I want to give you an opportunity to expand on it, but what

effect the add-on armor, either a Level two or Level three, is having on the service life of the vehicles? And can you expand upon

the efforts that you are taking to decrease the weight of the armor,

or the vehicles, to ensure sufficient protection without further degradation.

If you can expand on those, I know the committee would consider

it helpful.

General VOTEL. Mr. Congressman, if I could, I will address your

first question that dealt with the enemy and how we are working

with that.

I think a full and complete answer really needs to be done outside the confines of this current setting here, and we would be

more than happy to bring somebody off the IED task force to come

to your office and share that information with you, if you would

like to have them, and give you a full laydown.

In general, however, I think what we see is, IEDs are not a tactic

that is limited to insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan; they are clearly one of the preferred methods which worldwide insurgents use to

make contact with the people whom they are trying to inflict.

And so we do see movement of techniques, of technology, of people and, certainly, materials that cross international borders. And

we see some of that in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I would be more than happy to bring a team member across and

talk with you in specific detail about that.

I am very happy to report, however, that one of the things that

we have done is really starting to take efforts to get after bombmakers and those that would try to plant bombs against our forces

or others. And we have a very robust system in place in theater

now, that has been in place now for several months, and we are

seeing some progress.

Again, I would offer to you that at the same time, we could come

across and update you on that particular effort. We are very proud
48

of it, we think we are making some progress in that particular

area.

Mr. LANGEVIN. I would welcome that update on both of those,

that would be helpful.

General SORENSON. Sir, with respect to your other question

about the impact on the vehicles, I can certainly assure you that

we are doing everything we can to take care of the vehicles that

have these armor packages. We, in some cases, modified the

springs that we have deployed to theater and so forth.

But clearly the vehicles that we have put these armor packages

on are the older vehicles, and we have had a number of problems;

we have seen how they react to having that armor, how the soldiers are having to react to driving them, in some cases we have

seen some pictures where they almost looks like a low rider, if you

will, by the time you took the armor and put the package on.

But I can give you—if you will, take a question for the record

and give you a more robust response with respect to our recap and

reset efforts in terms of what we are doing to take these vehicles

and put them back into a condition that they can be reused in the

future.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 157.]

General CATTO. As a side statement, we are using our vehicles

at seven to eight times the normal rate right now. It is going to

be very helpful in the supplemental, with the support that we have

gotten from this body, to replace those vehicles. So I think that you

will find, in the upcoming years we are going to be okay, but it is

not inexpensive. And we are grateful for the help that you have

given us in terms of replacing the equipment that the Marine

Corps has lost.

But if you go back to your composite question for a minute, it is

going to be a great technology when it is mature. The problem we

have is that it is just not ready for prime time. And that is why

I say we need to have greater emphasis placed upon producing a

composite that can take the place of armor, that is durable, that

is lightweight, that is effective, and that becomes a very, very valuable commodity.

Mr. LANGEVIN. Well, gentlemen, thank you. And this committee,

I know, looks forward to working with you to make sure that we

are replacing equipment at the rate at which we need to; and at

the same time, developing the next generation of composite materials to make the vehicles safer and the life of the vehicles last

longer.

So thank you for your testimony.

And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

I think we have just enough time for Mr. Simmons to slip in before we both have one minute left for this vote. We have got about

six minutes right now, I think we may be able to make it.

So Rob, if you want to give it a shot.

Mr. SIMMONS. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the gentlemen.

Almost 30 years ago in Vietnam I was called out to witness a

scene in Fujian Province where I was stationed, which was a quar-
49

ter-ton Jeep that had gone over a mine placed in the highway. And

the Jeep was totally destroyed, the four soldiers in it were all

killed; and in fact, the largest piece of the Jeep that I could find

was a piece of the engine block, which you could virtually lift with

your hand.

And the message from that experience, to me at least, was that

a determined enemy, if they want to blow you up, they are going

to blow you up, and no amount of armor, sandbags, protective

vests, bottom plates—whether flat or V-based—are going to save

your life. You are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, you

are going to die.

And I understand that. But what I don’t understand is what has

happened in this situation over the last several years. I went to

Iraq in October of 2003. I returned back and submitted a four-page

trip report to the Secretary of Defense. He gave it to the Secretary

of the Army. And on 12 November of 2003 I received a four-page

letter back from the Secretary of the Army saying that the movement of up-armor Humvees into the Central Command area of operations is a top priority, quote, ‘‘a top priority.’’

In January of 2004, I wrote him again after three of my constituents had been seriously injured, one nearly fatally, in an

unarmored Humvee. And I said, What can I do as a member of the

House Armed Services Committee to work with you to solve this

problem of getting armor plate and up-armored Humvees into the

theater ASAP, solve the problem ASAP, as soon as possible. I referred back to his reference that this was a top priority.

It was a full 13 months later that the Secretary of the Army established the Armor Task Force, and we still don’t have coverage

on all our vehicles.

As I read your armor summary, there are almost—there are over

5,000 that are not armored because they are not leaving the FOBs.

Well, we hope they are not, but you know, in a battlefield situation,

who knows? Whether you have to hop in that baby and hum out

of there, you just don’t know.

So there are 5,000 still in theater. We have heard it is a problem

of the manufacturers, but when I went out to visit O’Gara-Hess, we

discovered they had tremendous capacity. We hear it is a problem

with, I don’t know, the manufacturer and the UAW, but they have

capacity.

And what I see in here, what I see is the statement that the priority of fielding UAHs to units in Iraq is determined by the commander of the U.S. Forces. And what I see in your testimony is installation of the kits shall commence should commanders request

that these vehicles be equipped with this capability based on their

own individual threat analysis.

So I think that the truth of the matter lies in the commander’s

setting of priorities, and the truth of the matter lies in what my

colleague referred to as the glacial process of deploying equipment

into the field. And that bothers me, and I suspect it bothers you.

It bothers me that this rolled homogenous alloy is produced, I believe, by only one company in America, Coleville, Pennsylvania. It

bothers me that our industrial base is so thin that we can’t produce

this ourselves, we have to buy from the Canadians and the Swedes.

And I wonder if this committee needs to legislate or have oversight
50

hearings on our industrial base when it comes to these issues, and

maybe on our capacity to produce new materials that are lightweight.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me tell my good colleague, who has worked

this issue with a lot of effort, that we are going to work on that

issue, but right now you and I had better work on the issue of getting to the floor. We have got about a minute and a half left, and

they may give us an extra minute or so. We will come back.

And gentlemen, we have got some sandwiches and the best Diet

Coke you can buy available, if you want to grab a bite before we

come back.

We will come back to finish the hearing. But, Rob, we had better

take off right now and come on back; and you will get the rest of

your question.

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Recess.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Simmons gets to finish his questioning. But

we will go to the gentleman from El Paso who has taken 11 trips

now to Afghanistan and Iraq. Is it 11, Mr. Reyes?

Mr. REYES. Five to Iraq and ten to Afghanistan, but we are overdue and we need to go again.

The CHAIRMAN. He is very concerned about these issues and I

thank the gentleman and thank him for being with us on our last

tour in Fallujah. Gentleman from El Paso, Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And as always, thank

you, gentlemen, for being here. I know this morning you have, I

guess, endured some of the frustration by members of this committee; but you know, just to put it in context, when we were going—

when we were in the build-up going into Iraq, we had hearing after

hearing here, and a number of us would ask the questions that we

were being asked for reassurance by the parents and spouses of our

men and women in uniform. And we were always assured there

won’t be a single military person in theater that doesn’t have all

the equipment and hasn’t been properly trained. And that is why

you are hearing a lot of the frustration here, and we know that

there are unexpected challenges that we face in combat. And we

know, at least those of us who have had that kind of experience

know, that you have got to improvise; and sometimes it is a situation that is so fluid that it evolves so fast that you are just not able

to respond any other way except under emergency situations. And

I think that has to be one of the lessons learned.

And before I ask you a question, I wanted to see, Mr. Chairman,

is it—and on the way to vote, I asked you if we were possibly going

to have a hearing on this GAO report that we have referenced here

this morning that I don’t think any of the witnesses have read completely yet. But the reason I think it is a good idea, Mr. Chairman,

for instance, on page 53, it states: To improve visibility over the

adequacy of the Army’s war reserve, something we have been very

concerned about, Congress may wish to consider requiring the Secretary of Defense to provide information that discloses the risks associated with not fully funding the Army war reserve. And there

have been a number of concerns about that.

One bigger concern that I personally have is a statement in here

by GAO that says while DOD agreed with the intent of three rec-
51

ommendations, it did not commit to any specific actions to address

them. And therein lies the concerns that I have and I know a lot

of my colleagues have about the things we have identified. So if we

can have a hearing specifically relevant to the GAO report, I know

I would be very appreciative.

The CHAIRMAN. We are going to have another hearing on force

protection. And what I recommend is why don’t we make the GAO

report and the issues that it raises a part of that, and we will give

that to our witnesses to prepare responses and we will make it a

part of our next hearing. And if the gentleman wants to put it into

the record, we will be happy to do that.

Mr. REYES. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, because I know you

have been—in fact, I have seen firsthand, on the many trips that

we have taken, the concern that you have for giving the troops anything and everything that they need; whether we here officially, or

as one individual, who gave us a list of things that they needed

that you championed right away. I think that is our legitimate role

as members of this committee.

I was going to ask for whoever wants to take this, specifically in

Afghanistan, all our vehicles are armored?

General SORENSON. To address the question with respect to Afghanistan, the answer is in fact no, that is not exactly the case.

There again——

Mr. REYES. Can you tell me the percentage? And the reason I am

asking you this, General—and I know the Chairman has been

there as well—in a recent trip to San Antonio, some of the soldiers

that were recovering there made mention that their armored vehicles are way less—and this is something they get frustrated about,

that they are kind of the forgotten war or forgotten front in this

issue, because they complained about having to go out on these

missions with vehicles that are not armored.

And when I said well, from your viewpoint—and this may not be

accurate, but I want to ask you this—but from your viewpoint—I

am asking the soldiers—what is the percentage that you think is

armored? And they were giving me guesses of 20 to 30 percent. Is

that in the ball park that we have 60, 70 percent of the vehicles

not armored in Afghanistan right now?

General SORENSON. I am not sure that is exactly the right number. And rather than give you a number that I am not confident

of, I would rather give it—if I could take that for the record and

respond back to you.

I will tell you that we have on a weekly basis, in fact every Saturday morning, we have discussions with theater, theater being

both Iraq, Afghanistan. And we conduct a recount, if you will, of

vehicles, exactly what is armored, what is not armored, any

changes. We can provide that information to you, if you will.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 157.]

Mr. REYES. I would appreciate that, because I am concerned that

those that are fighting in Afghanistan somehow feel like they have

been neglected by—certainly by us and in terms of the supplies as

well.

General SORENSON. I am not sure I would say that.
52

Mr. REYES. I am just telling what we are hearing, and that word

was used.

General SORENSON. I think in many cases, there are different

conditions and different environments. And as a result, the commander on the ground there has defined a different requirement

than if you were the commander in Iraq.

Mr. REYES. I appreciate that. Well, my time is out, can you——

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reyes, you have been to theater over to 11

times, you have earned more questions. I don’t believe there are

any votes for awhile.

Mr. REYES. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

One other concern that we have heard is that the predeployment

training, before they deployed specifically to Iraq, the training that

they get on Humvees that are designed to simulate what they

would be driving in theater with all the armor and all, that is dramatically different. They are telling us they are much more sluggish, they react differently. They control way different than anything that they are training on here.

My question is, first of all, you have got to be aware of that,

number one. And number two, what are we doing to address that?

And one of my colleagues was talking about perhaps there may be

some way to modify the training vehicles to respond that way,

whether it is loading them up with the equivalent in weight—I

don’t know how you would do that—but that certainly is something

that the soldiers are concerned about because, regrettably, sometimes when they get in country, they don’t have this ramp-up of

time to get familiarized with the vehicles. They jump in, go out on

a mission, and they get hit. And they don’t have that time to get

familiar with them. So that is very critical in terms of what we are

hearing on that.

General SORENSON. You are absolutely correct. I think to date,

clearly the effort has been to try to move, as much as we can, the

armored packages into theater. This has become an issue as late.

It has been identified by a number of soldiers either returning, as

well as soldiers deploying, and we are now identifying armored

packages to be put on vehicles that can be used clearly here at

home station. But even before they deploy, there is a training

range there at a facility in Kuwait that they get some training on

the vehicle to understand what the environment is, because the

roads are different than what we have here, et cetera. So that actually is occurring.

But we are trying to get more of that training here back at

CONUS so the soldiers will get more familiar with having this

extra armor on and what does that mean with respect to responding to turns, curves, speed, et cetera. And we are working that

right now.

General MATTIS. Congressman, that is also the same for the Marines. We have numerous troops on their second and third tour in

Iraq now. For example, we have 300 men in 3rd Battalion on their

third tour in Iraq, so we are not losing the skills either for all of

our prioritizing the gear going to Iraq first rather than to the training establishment.
53

Mr. REYES. The only follow-up question I would ask is, it is my

understanding, because of limitations in Kuwait, not everyone is

able to do that; is that correct?

General SORENSON. I was going to say, sir, it is not to my understanding. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman and thank him for his attention to this issue.

And, Mr. Simmons, you were part-way through when we had to

make that vote. Go right ahead.

Mr. SIMMONS. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Before we broke for the

vote, I expressed my frustration and concerns about the use of the

words ‘‘top priority’’ by the Secretary of the Army in response to

my concerns back in October of 2003 on this issue. Top priority

seems to me to be just what it says, top priority; and yet the schedule of implementation puzzles me, because it has been so slow and

the reasons given for it has been so diverse.

But let me go to my questions. First and foremost on the armor

summary, it appears over 5,000 vehicles are currently unarmored.

My question is when can we expect these vehicles to be up-armored; or, alternatively, are we being told that the commander in

the field is saying that it is not important to up-armor these

Humvees, these vehicles? That is point one.

Point two, the issue of IEDs. Have we talked to the Israelis

about IEDs? I have been to Israel and have seen what they do in

their border areas. I have seen some of the equipment they deploy

and use on a regular basis. They have been dealing with IEDs for

dozens of years. They have been dealing with the kind of threat

that we are facing in Iraq for many years. How productive have we

been in learning from others who might be willing to cooperate

with us on developing and deploying and getting equipment into

the field as soon as possible?

And then the final question is again, RHA, rolled homogenous

alloy, one company I am aware of in this Continental United States

that produces this in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. We have had to go

to Canada and to Sweden. To what extent is the failure of our industrial base to provide material inhibiting our ability to protect

our men and women in uniform in the field?

General CATTO. I would like to talk directly to your question

about what we have done with the Israelis. We are exchanging

technology with them. One of our key technology things is called

OPAL. I won’t address it anymore in an open forum, but it has

been very successful in helping us identify suicide bombers or folks

who are carrying concealed weapons.

We have also done a program with them for specialized search

dogs that sniff out explosives off leash. And they are trained to go

hundreds of meters forward and they will point out an IED or unattended munition and alert the handlers. We had two instances

in theater with those dogs, and successes for us. And they were

trained with the Israeli help and we have instituted that into our

search dogs. We are talking to the Israelis constantly, and there is

an exchange of information.

General VOTEL. Sir, I would just add with respect to the Israelis,

through the offices of the IED Task Force, we have a well-established relationship with them and we have gone—they have been
54

very open and forthcoming with us. We have brought groups of officers and NCOs, Americans and Israelis to exchange information.

We have gone as far as to ask them for some help in areas which

we may now think we may have some capability gaps, and they

have been forthcoming in identifying things to us and offering

things for us to test and look at. And we are doing some of that

in the next couple of weeks here.

General MATTIS. When we took the First Marine Division back

into Iraq, an Israeli-trained detective on the Los Angeles department was on my staff. The LAPD was helpful to the Marine division going back in as we got ready. This Israeli-trained IED expert

on the LAPD staff conducted training for all of my men going back

in as they rotated through their predeployment training. And he

was with us for the first 45 or 60 days we were in country.

General SORENSON. Just referring back to the armor summary,

I draw your attention to the fact that right now in theater, we have

close to 42,000 vehicles in theater. The requirement has been identified in terms of armoring vehicles somewhere in the neighborhood

of 36,000. So in some cases, the basic difference there, the 5,000

are vehicles that the theater has identified to only occupy missions

on a forward operating base. They are not to deploy outside the

gate without an armored package. And in some cases, they are

doing mail runs. But the determination has been not to put an armored package on these particular vehicles. So consequently, we

probably won’t.

You see here in terms of funding, we are funded right now to basically armor over 37,000 vehicles. So we are going to be well in

advance of what we are planning for with respect to theater requirements.

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And if I could make a quick comment. I am concerned that 5,000

vehicles have not been designated for some form of armor packaging, and my concern is very simple. It is all very fine for the commander in the field to say these vehicles will be operating within

a base and a zone that does not create a current threat, but we do

not know what tomorrow is going to bring. We do not know what

tomorrow’s requirements are going to be and 5,000 vehicles multiplied by three or four soldiers, any one of those could be an emergency situation out there in harm’s way. And I would feel far more

comfortable if I knew if they had some equipment on them.

But I guess this is the commander’s decision. I am not sure it

is a decision I would make, but I guess what you are testifying is

this is the commander’s decision to keep 5,000 vehicles in theater

unarmored.

General SORENSON. I am coming back to the fact that we have

received from CFLCC a requirement document to basically armor

36,000 vehicles. And we do know there are additional vehicles

there, but at this point in time we do not have any plans to armor

them, although we are adding additional armored packages that

could be used, if required to armor some of those vehicles.

The CHAIRMAN. General Sorenson, let me ask you a question on

this. We are trading out level one for level two. And level three is

being, as I understand, virtually traded out in a lot of areas. So you

have got these—a door on a Humvee is simply a steel that is three
55

feet by four feet and it can have a piano hinge where you pull the

standard screws out of the hinges and put a piece of piano hinge

on it in about 20 to 30 minutes, and put a three by four piece of

high hard steel with 8-bolt holes cut in it, and you have got a new

door. And in fact, retired Marine General Terry Paul did it in a

record of about two hours, armored up a Humvee simply by lifting

the hinges off the soft Humvee and putting the old ones on.

The point being that you are getting rid of—as I take it, when

these kits come in, they have everything including the doors. And

the two solid doors on a Humvee, they are each three feet by four

feet. So that is the big package of protection across the side of the

Humvee.

If you are taking the steel doors off—and I presume they are

good steel, high hard steel—you could put those on, and those could

be put on in theater on the soft Humvees, the 5,000 or so that Mr.

Simmons referred to, could they not? It seemed like it would be a

pretty fast changeover because you can change the doors out in a

few minutes?

General SORENSON. Yes, Mr. Chairman. That probably could be

done. There are only 3,000 of these Humvees that aren’t armored.

The Department is working with theater to try to bring some of

these vehicles out of theater, the ones that are not armored, and

bring them back to a reset, recap program so we can get the entire

force reset with respect to what we are going to need in terms vehicles.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand all that. If you have a Humvee sitting there in a forward base—and even a base like Balad where

they take a few rounds of mortar or were taking a few mortar

rounds every couple of days, and now again taking some casualties

there, right. And if they are close to a building, they herd everybody inside, and if you’re not, I presume you get in your vehicle.

If you have got these doors, which represent a large part of the

armor profile in some numbers now, because we have taken them

off and you simply lift those hinges up and pull them out pretty

easily, wouldn’t that be something that commanders could do at

these forward bases if they were so inclined, without prejudice to

any program or any time schedule or anything else?

General SORENSON. Mr. Chairman, you are absolutely right. And

certainly we will convey that back as we work with theater, the

possibility of doing that. But again, I think we are all working to

get, like I said, some of these vehicles that are not armored out of

Iraq, because in many cases the older vehicles have to come back

to be reset. That is why we are trying to get back out of theater

right now.

The CHAIRMAN. This wouldn’t delay for one split second any retrievable vehicles. It would be a matter of using something that

you had that is available when people need it. So why don’t we

scrub that with our operational people and talk to the chiefs about

that and see what they think about it? Looks like to me you are

going to have stuff laying around as these kits come in and you discharge some of the old stuff.

Let me see, the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Ryan, has been waiting patiently.

Mr. RYAN OF OHIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
56

I appreciate everything you gentlemen have done for our country.

This is a difficult endeavor for all of us and I appreciate everything

all you guys do. One of the issues that struck me throughout the

hearing is the research and development. I think it was—General,

you had mentioned that as being an issue. And some of the numbers I have, I think we are spending between 26 and $30 million

on research on armor R&D. And to me it seems like a pretty low

number, given the other side of what happens when we don’t do

the research and don’t get the kind of products that we need. So

I think it is important for, obviously, this panel to state the importance of that and communicate the importance of that to us.

I hope, Mr. Chairman, we can work in the future to try to get

that budget up not only for the military research, but I think overall into the universities. And at Youngstown State where I represent, we have an advanced material science program that is just

getting off the ground. One of the products they are developing is

steel foam that maintains the same strength and character of steel,

but made out of foam which is much lighter, which I think would

achieve some of the goals that you would need in the military.

So I think it is important for us to be committed. And the military research, quite frankly, is in many ways more effective than

research we do at NIH or somewhere else, because it has this practical application in the field. So I want to work with you and share

with you some information that I have, but I would love to participate in trying to help you increase the budget for that purpose.

My main concern prior to the war, and which continues to be reaffirmed throughout these hearings, is that we weren’t prepared for

this kind of long-term struggle; and it is mind-boggling to me to

think that is the case. Given our relationship with the Israeli Government and our cooperative ventures that we have between their

military and our military, was anyone asked before? Because it

seems like these IEDs have been common in what has been going

on in the Middle East for a long time. Were we not using that as

some kind of model to prepare ourselves, not necessarily to the extent it was used in the Middle East, but it would obviously be used

more in Iraq. Was that used as a model for us to say hey, here is

what is happening with IEDs in this particular region, in this particular struggle in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, and we know

that will be used here and we need to prepare for it accordingly?

And maybe if that was used as a model, wouldn’t the response be

we need the armor and we need to be prepared for these IEDs, and

we are not going off in the war until we find ourselves ready?

General VOTEL. I am not sure I can answer your question as to

whether we had studied that prior to the war. But what I can tell

you is that since October of 2003 when I became involved with the

Army IED task force, and now in my role with the joint IED task

force, we have reached out to our international partners, the

Israelis and others who have had experience in dealing with

insurgencies where IEDs were either a major part of the enemy’s

tactic or one of the contributing techniques he has employed. I

think we have done a good job of looking at what others are doing

and how they have approached the problem from training, from an

organization, from intelligence and from a technology standpoint in

trying to bring some of those things forth.
57

General Catto gave you the example of the use of off-leash search

dogs. That is not anything peculiar to the Israelis. Other countries

use it as well. I think that is one small example of how we have

reached out. To the point, quite honestly, within the IED task

force, right now one of my deputies is a U.K. Officer, and he is

there to help bring the experience of their army in dealing with insurgent-type operations into our consideration and make sure that

we are cooperating and coordinating as closely as we can in this

particular fight.

Mr. RYAN OF OHIO. I guess my question isn’t whether or not you

are working with the U.K. Or working with the Israelis, but it was

prior to the war. It seems like we were surprised that they would

sit back and fight a guerilla war and use the IEDs the way they

have. I would just think that there would have to be some preparation in the war-gaming, that one of the scenarios is they sit back

and wait and fight a guerilla war. And I remember we were talking

about it here, using IEDs in an urban setting.

My time is up, but the point being is that I hope in future conflicts like this, we scrub this, as the Chairman would like to say,

and make sure that we cover all the different angles here, because

I think a lot of this could have been prevented. I don’t think we

necessarily needed to rush in as quickly as we did without covering

all of our bases.

Thank you very much. And I look forward to helping with the research and development aspect of it and look forward to working

with all of you. So thank you for your contribution in coming before

us today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Jones.

Mr. JONES OF NORTH CAROLINA. Mr. Chairman, thank you very

much. And first I would like to submit and ask unanimous consent

to enter four written questions I submit and get written answers

back, please.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, any written questions you

submit for the record here will request an answer.

Mr. JONES OF NORTH CAROLINA. I am still waiting for those questions from Secretary Rumsfeld, sir, but I don’t want to bring that

up.

The CHAIRMAN. We will try to deliver these in the same batch.

Mr. JONES OF NORTH CAROLINA. Probably will get the same response, but I hope not.

The written questions are for the United States Army and it does

deal with Army issues. But I want to say to my friends, the Marine

Corps, that I am not going to ask you a question, but I might when

I finish this. But for three months, I have been watching an outstanding Marine who was charged with murder. His name is Lieutenant Ilario Pantano. I have had the opportunity to go down and

meet with him. I have met with his lovely wife and have seen his

beautiful boys. And I never met a person in my life that loves the

Marine Corps—let me rephrase that. This man loves the Corps. No

matter what has happened to him, he loves the Corps.

Today I am pleased to report that a Marine corporal who was

videotaped shooting and apparently injured an unarmed Iraqi in a

Fallujah mosque last year will not face court martial, the Marine

Corps announced. And if I mispronounce his name, I do apologize
58

to him, Major General Richard Natonski. And I want to read what

he said:

‘‘Consistent with the established rules of engagement and the

law of armed conflict, he will not be charged and move forward to

a court martial.’’

Last week there was article 32 hearings down in Camp Lejeune.

This was a witness for the prosecution, those who are prosecuting

Lieutenant Pantano who has been being charged with two counts

of premeditated murder. This is Navy medical corpsman George

Gobles. And he was a witness to the prosecution, and his comments

about Pantano, ‘‘a damn good leader,’’ he testified. ‘‘I felt the safest

with, you know, this platoon, because more than anything, because

of Lieutenant Pantano and his leadership.’’

Also Major Brian Neal, the operations officer for Pantano’s battalion, testified that Lieutenant Pantano was one of the finest second lieutenants he had ever known during his 17 years in the

Corps. To me, that is one heck of a compliment. He recalled—Major

Neal recalled the day of the shooting and I quote him: ‘‘to me, it

was a good day. We killed two obvious insurgents.’’

I don’t know how in the world this thing has gotten where a man

who loves the Corps, so talented, would probably—maybe not

now—had made a career of the Marine Corps. A valuable person.

The charges, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, came two-anda-half months after the shooting, when this marine did his job. He

thought he was doing his job as he was trained. Two-and-a-half

months later, a sergeant that he had demoted from a leadership

position to be the radio man, two-and-a-half months later, Mr.

Chairman and Ranking Member, he decides this might have been

a murder. So he tells a fellow marine, and then it works its way

up.

I truthfully do not know, and I pray to God that the hearing officer will recommend to General Huck that this not move forward,

just like this corporal who was doing his job in the battlefield. And

I agree with many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I regret that we are in Iraq. I regret what is happening to our men

and women in uniform. But God bless them, they are doing a great

job.

Many of you at that table, probably all of you have been in a battle. I haven’t. But some of this stuff is common sense. You don’t

have to be in a battle to understand what is happening.

Let me tell you one other thing. I hope that the base commander

or whomever is in charge, I don’t know if the prosecutor for the

Marine Corps was one man or two, but in the courtroom when this

man’s life is at stake for doing his job for this Nation, they were

joking and laughing to the point that they were told to apologize

to Lieutenant Pantano’s mother. And I know you gentlemen at the

table are not responsible for any of this. And my frustration and

my preaching is not at you, I promise you, but I don’t know how

we can ask our men and women, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, to go into this type of situation with an unconventional-type

enemy and no eye-witness to what Pantano did.

Sergeant Coburn, the Corpsman, they said we didn’t see it. This

corporal, and I thank God he is not going to be court-martialed,

they videotaped it. And I hope and pray, Mr. Chairman and Rank-
59

ing Member, that this Lieutenant Pantano is exonerated. And I

have said it on the floor of the House, I pray to the good Lord that

he and his family will be cleared.

And this might be my question, and I will close, that I hope if

he is exonerated and he chooses to stay in the Corps, which he

loves so much, that he would have a future, just like I hope this

corporal, if he decides to stay in—I just don’t think, Mr. Chairman,

we should be second-guessing any of our men and women in uniform when they are in the battlefield. They have an enemy in front

of them, whether armed or unarmed. I don’t think any of us sitting

behind a desk, unless we have been in their shoes, need to be making decisions of such.

I don’t think it is fair for me to ask you, but I will ask if you

have any comments, not so much about Pantano, but maybe tell me

what does happen to a person like the corporal or like Lieutenant

Pantano if they decide to stay in the Marine Corps? Do they have

a future? Give me a yes or no. And I know I have taken Mr. Davis’s

time but I would like to know do they still have a future in the

Corps?

General MATTIS. Congressman Jones, I respect everything you

have said. The lieutenant, the corporal, they absolutely have a future. If they are found to be innocent, they are innocent and they

will be treated as such. But what sets the U.S. military apart often

from other militaries in the world is when we send them around

the world, they represent what President Lincoln called the ‘‘better

angels of our country.’’ we investigate every allegation against our

troops. And as you can see from what you read this morning coming off the West Coast, what General Natonski has decided, there

is no rush to judgment.

In the case on the other coast, in the 2nd Division area, we have

a case that was reported up through the chain. Now I realize the

NCO, there may be issues I can’t address, I don’t know the specifics. But we are always reluctant to ignore the comments of an NCO

in the Marine Corps, of a petty officer in the Navy. By conducting

an investigation and conducting a thorough one—and an article 32,

as you know, is like a civilian grand jury. He is not in front of a

court martial yet. I am not saying he is in an enviable position, and

I respect again what you are saying, but we owe it in the Naval

service where we hold people accountable who are leaders, whether

they are lieutenants, corporal or generals, that we look at the circumstances surrounding something like that. Right now, that is

what is going on, and I have to defer to the investigation itself, sir.

Mr. JONES OF NORTH CAROLINA. Chairman, if I could make one

statement and then I will close. I appreciate your answer, and that

I think is very encouraging, that if they are exonerated both with

will have a future. That will not be held against them.

I would like to talk about Sergeant Coburn. He was demoted

from his leadership position. Everything I have read from the Jacksonville paper, the Wilmington Star—the Wilmington News—and

one thing that I do want to make clear for the record, Sergeant

Coburn, being cross-examined by lawyer Gittins for Pantano and

Marine Stackhouse, also attorney, he responded 50 times by saying

‘‘I don’t know or I can’t remember.’’
60

Again, I hope and pray that we give all the support that we

talked about today as it relates to armor, and we remember that

these men and women are human beings. And maybe if sometimes

you don’t have the luxury of a full second—you have been there,

I haven’t—it is a split-second decision. Let us give them the benefit

of the doubt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman and I thank him for his

attention to this very important area.

Gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Returning

back to the original focus of the hearing, I would like to make some

comments and then ask a specific technical question. I think if one

views military history—and I will speak as a student of military

history—our current military, Army Marine Corps, Navy and Air

Force, especially our forces on the ground in Iraq, are the best

trained, best armored and best protected force in the military history of the world. That is very clear to anybody who I think would

really open the books and get beyond politically motivated comments.

And I would like to take exception with a couple of my colleagues

in the minority and some of the comments that they made earlier

this morning from what I believe is a mischaracterization of the

current situation by constantly resurrecting the events of past—of

nearly two years ago, and now overcome by other events. And my

suggestion would be all of us should be careful in our rhetoric, because the comments by some in this body, indeed though may seem

well-intentioned to those members, do indeed have a contradictory

effect in the culture to encourage and potentially embolden enemies

who would not otherwise engage in destructive activities, and

sends the wrong message, and thus potentially putting our service

members in unnecessary danger and harm.

More correctly, I think what we need to focus on and where we

are focusing is to assure that the material management life cycle

is collapsed, very similar to the competitive models of competitive

American manufacturing in the automotive industry and high-technology industry, which can field a brand-new vehicle in a year in

an environment that contains continuous improvement and adaptation to a fluid and changing marketplace, not unlike the fluid situations you have so well adapted to.

And I make my comment from this perspective, as one who had

delivered a technical paper at the Annual Mine Warfare Conference at the Naval Postgraduate School in 1996. I have to tell

you, with nine years of perspective, I stand absolutely amazed at

the great strides in adaptability of the Marine Corps and the Army

on the ground.

I was in Israel with Chairman Saxton comparing tools and techniques, procedures, tactics that were being used both by Israeli defense forces in dealing with similar tools. They did some things

that were interesting and adaptive based on their unique situations.

I have to say in the context of some of the remarks made by two

minority members this morning, we in many areas are far in advance of where they are. And I think it is a commendation to the

efforts of folks that have reacted well to this situation.
61

That being said, I would like to move into the future and think

strategically as we are moving into a more network-centric and

more adaptive expeditionary-type environment. General Sorenson,

you made a comment that the future vision is to have vehicles that

can be rapidly reconfigured for changing situations. For example,

when we move from the conventional ground combat, the first

phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom and then versus the second

phase, where it became more unconventional, dealing with a

counterinsurgency situation, we have taken immediate steps. But

looking from a standpoint in the long term, does this vision include

the ability to rapidly reconfigure—an area of personal interest to

me—the heavy combat service support vehicles that tend to be the

most vulnerable when they go into countries, the ‘‘Red Ball Express’’ they were called in World War II. If you comment what you

are doing in that area, particularly looking down the road 5, 10,

15 years.

General SORENSON. Thank you for the question. And that is exactly what we are doing. Much similar to what we are doing with

the Humvees, we are doing the same thing with the heavy trucks.

As I mentioned, there is a consortium right now with all the heavy

truck manufacturers, Freightliner, Oshkosh, International. They

are getting together to assemble with respect to their particular vehicles where can we make some common applications of force protection capability, i.e., latches, doors, glass, et cetera, such that we

can begin to find other vendors that can produce these and put

these on different vehicles and make them all fit, so when we will

have a surge capability, as opposed to every particular vehicle having their own unique solution, which is exactly what we have right

now.

So the intent is just like what we have done with the Humvees

in terms of getting the chassis and getting a B kit, if you will, that

we can hang onto that vehicle to make it an armored capability.

We are going to do the same thing with our medium vehicles and

also heavy fleet to identify how we can do the same thing.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Do you see this type of technology—I

wouldn’t call them add-ons correctly, but other parts of their deployment package? Would that be resident with the units or would

that be kept at a logistical location and adapted based on contingencies?

General SORENSON. I would say both. TRADOC is working to define what the future armor strategy ought to be, what that composition of armor capability ought to be. As we produce these kits,

some of them will be in a warehouse, but in other cases as they

deploy forward, a number of these kits will go forward, such that

as they go from combat operations to sustainment operations, they

can make that adjustment rather rapidly and not require a bunch

of mechanics and welders and so forth to begin to put these kits

on. In many cases, the basic maintenance capability can be put on

immediately.

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. I yield back the balance of my time,

Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Did the Ranking Member have a few comments?

Mr. SKELTON. I know the Chairman and other members of the

committee heard me make reference to this before, but I—and I
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would like to address a question to General Mattis, if I may. It appears that the insurgency guerilla warfare was not anticipated or

not anticipated fully. General, I am not a clairvoyant nor am I a

graduate of any of the war colleges, but my studying of things military over the years as a member of this committee caused me in

September of 2002 to send a letter to the President with copies to

the Pentagon. I have reason to believe they were widely distributed. The letter which, of course, is before the war, which began

in March of 2003, anticipated potential and extensive conflict

against American forces and/or among the Iraqi ethnic and religious groups; in other words, the potential for insurgency.

I did the same a few days before the invasion in March, 2003.

As a result of my first letter, Steven Hadley and Elliot Abrams

came to my office to allay my concerns. Sadly, I was right. Now,

if I can come up with a potential problem, why can’t those of you

who study and live the military anticipate this? I realize at that

time you were just a two-star general and you may say, Congressman, it was above my pay grade. But you are the only one here

to ask that question of. Why was it not anticipated that there

would be an insurgency? And I am not talking about the type of

insurgency, but just an insurgency. General.

General MATTIS. Congressman Skelton, it is not above my pay

grade. It is a very valid question.

Mr. SKELTON. Not above the pay grade now, but as a two-star,

it may have been.

General MATTIS. That is what we are paid to do. Much of the

professional PME, professional military education that we offer to

our military leaders today is thanks, in no small part, to your sustained tenacious drive toward this sort of preparation of our leadership.

I will tell you that General Hagee, when he was the commanding

general of 1 MEF, I was flown out of Afghanistan, if I remember

right, in March of 2002, back to 1 MEF as his deputy. And in April

we went through a war game. He pulled out all of our best planners, earning the ire of some of our gray beards, and said the day

we step across that border, we will be in phase four behind us, so

start putting together the plan. I was not so brilliant. I went to

him and said, can’t we concentrate on winning the war first? He

said no, this is important.

They put together a plan that was so good that when I was sent

down to command First Marine Division for the attack in Iraq, I

took the plan with me. In November of that year, former Commander in Chief of Central Command was the guest of honor at the

First Marine Division birthday ball—and this is November. We deployed, as you know, in January and February. And he said,

‘‘Young men,’’ he said, ‘‘you will destroy the enemy’s army in six

weeks or us old guys are going to disown you.’’ but he said, ‘‘Then

the work begins.’’ I had two generals and a former retired marine

commander of Central Command who warned us that the hard

work would start not when we were fighting the main force of the

enemy.

We had a plan, we executed the plan. I am speaking now as tactical commander, as a division commander. Perhaps it was not on

the national level thoroughly thought through. Certainly with hind-
63

sight, we can see things. Perhaps because of the clarity of your

views and the reading that you have done—I have seen your reading list, as you recall—you were able to identify it. We went five

and a half months, Congressman Skelton, five and a half months

after we pulled out of Tikrit and Baghdad in the southern area,

and I didn’t lose one sailor or marine. We lost about 55 or 60

wounded, some grievously wounded. And the insurgency was growing during this period.

You know, sir, I can’t give you a sufficient answer. I think if instead of 2005 it was 1805 in this room, we would not anticipate

that in 10 years the British Navy would sail up the Chesapeake

and they would burn this building. I think in 1905, we would not

anticipate that in 12 years our Indian fighting armies spread

across the western frontier and would be fighting with machine

guns and barbed wire in the trenches in Europe.

Sir, life is one darn thing after another. It is not a good answer

for you. We anticipated a lot. We had a plan. We knew how to get

the lights turned back on, get the water treatment plants working

so there would be no cholera, to make common cause with the

Iraqis. And in many, many places, it has worked. And when you

look at an election in Iraq where a purple finger could have gotten

your family destroyed, killed, and they had a voter turnout that rivaled what we had in some of our elections, I think we have accomplished a lot.

And it is always easy in hindsight to see where perhaps we fell

short, and I acknowledge and take responsibility for it. But we

have done a lot of things right, sir and that was thanks to the PME

in the anticipation and a lot of work that we have done to try and

get it right. The victories we have had—and they have been significant—have not come by happenstance. And the challenges, yes,

and the losses as heartbreaking as they are, well, it could have

been a lot worse, sir.

Mr. SKELTON. General, I thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlemen.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony, and we still

have a panel to go. So this is a good marathon session, but I think

it is worthwhile.

You know, one thing that I think is—one realization I think most

folks have from looking at the operation in the warfighting theaters, the asymmetric threats that have been carried out fairly effectively by an enemy that is adaptive have reflected, I think, to all

of us that the Humvee is basically a big Jeep. It was a successor

to the Jeep. It was never intended to be a tank or even an armored

vehicle, and yet it has gone—we have used them in tactical situations. We have used them in combat situations. And we have loaded them up and tried to load them up with enough armor to the

point where it is a little bit like the cartoon where you have the

little boy that is ready to go out and play in the snow, and his

mommy is asking why he is not moving, and he says, you have got

so much stuff on me, you have bundled me up so much against the

cold that I can’t move.

You can only do so much with a Humvee. Even if you have the

beefed-up suspension and the increased engine power that we

had—put into the 1114, you still have basically a big Jeep that has
64

to carry a lot of steel. Since—although we are talking about the

armor situation and force protection in theater, what do you think,

General Catto? Where do you think we are going to be going with

the next vehicle? Do you think the Humvee has, in light of this

asymmetric warfare, seen its day and is going to be relegated to

garrison-type situations? Do you think we need to go with another

vehicle that has more suspension, more horses, more protection?

General CATTO. Mr. Chairman, I think we have got a lot of

Humvees for the near term that we are going to use until we die.

Your question really means are we going to develop a vehicle from

the ground up for survivability that we can put armor packages on

or off of, depending upon the requirement. And I think the answer

is that is where we have to go. And it is going to be an issue of

what is the mission you want and what do you want the vehicle

to do and how do we build that? My opinion is we are going to have

to start with a new class vehicle and build it from the tires up.

The CHAIRMAN. General Sorenson, what do you think?

General SORENSON. I think in some cases you are correct. In fact,

right now we have been conducting, if you will, with industry partners, tactical rodeos, just like we did with the Stryker competition.

We are doing a utility vehicle and a medium utility vehicle, and we

are having industry show up and kind of give some ideas in terms

of what we can do; as well as we are trying to leverage other lessons learned from this environment to figure out how we can plan

for improvements in what the soldiers are requiring for utility vehicles and medium utility vehicles in the future.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, gentlemen, thank you. And let me just

leave you with this. We have a schedule to finish out the armor

program. We want to look at this schedule with you and we would

like you to take it back and take a look at it to see if there is any

way we can accelerate the program, and let us know what the long

poles and the tent are. And the committee will work with you to

try to shorten those poles and try to compress the schedule.

We are going to vote in a little bit on this bill, the big supplemental that will have—incidentally, along with the other things

and the jammer funding that is in this and armor funding, we also

have money to try to handle for the first time these mortar rounds

coming into theater. And we have had some tests out at Yuma and

El Paso that have proven fruitful. And we are going to be moving

systems into theater fairly quickly and we would like to have your

feedback on that, and I think we have got some candidate locations

for those first couple of systems. But we do need to scrub with you

this schedule and see if we can’t compress it, accelerate it, and do

whatever it takes to get the program finished.

Thank you very much. We will move to our third panel. And

General Mattis, you have the pleasure of being with us in your first

panel for a long time, so stay where you are at. And you are going

to be joined with Lieutenant Colonel Paul J. Kennedy United

States Marine Corps, former battalion commander, 2nd Battalion,

4th Marine Regiment, First Marine Division, who is now with

Headquarters Battalion, First Marine Division.

General Mattis, if you want to lead in and introduce. And also,

General Kelly, come up to the table. You are welcome, too.
65

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JAMES N. MATTIS, FORMER COMMANDER, FIRST MARINE DIVISION, COMMANDING GENERAL,

MARINE CORPS COMBAT DEVELOPMENT COMMAND, U.S.

MARINE CORPS

General MATTIS. Thank you Mr. Chairman, Lieutenant Paul Kennedy served as the lead First Marine Division planner for OIF

1. Going back into OIF 2, his name had come up on the command

list and he took command of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. This battalion was given the task of holding Ramadi. Ramadi in Al-Anbar

Province is the center of gravity. It is the administrative and legal

center of Al-Anbar Province, which is the heart of the Sunni triangle and it was the critical key terrain that must be held. While

Fallujah received a lot of attention, the place that we could not lose

control of was this town.

Colonel Kennedy served under an Army brigade commander who served under my command. In other words, we have a Marine division with an Army brigade, and inside the Army brigade was the

2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. And that is the command structure he

operated under.

I observed Colonel Kennedy on probably a daily basis in terms of his troops, because that is where my headquarters, was and I

would depart every day through his lines. And I would go down

and see him probably as often as I saw any other battalion commander, every week to ten days or so, maybe two weeks if I was

caught elsewhere.

Colonel Kennedy proved to be one of our more effective combat

leaders in one of our toughest fights that the Marine Corps has

fought since Vietnam. I think that is a sufficient introduction, Mr.

Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, General.

Colonel, the floor is yours, sir.

STATEMENT OF LT. COL. PAUL J. KENNEDY, FORMER BATTALION COMMANDER, 2ND BATTALION, 4TH MARINE REGIMENT,

FIRST MARINE DIVISION, HEADQUARTERS BATTALION,

FIRST MARINE DIVISION, U.S. MARINE CORPS

Colonel KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the

committee——

The CHAIRMAN. Have you got that mike on there? And bring in

pretty close if you can.

Colonel KENNEDY. Yes, sir.

Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, thank

you for this opportunity to address the issues that surround the

force protection of the marines and sailors of 2nd Battalion, 4th

Marines.

It is my distinct privilege to represent the nearly 1,100 marines

and sailors of 2–4 during these proceedings, for after only a short

seven months home, they are forward-deployed as a force in readiness. For this opportunity I am exceptionally thankful.

Over the course of seven months within the City of Ar Ramadi,

Iraq, 2–4 battled a relentless and adaptive enemy for control of this

provincial capital, the heart of the Sunni Triangle. During this period we bore witness to an ever-increasing lethality of attacks that

ranged from simple improvised explosive devices to suicide bombers
66

to full-blown urban combat. This wrought a terrible price for our

service. This is war, and we are committed to winning.

In April, May, and July, we fought full-scale combat on the city

streets of our assigned area, accounted for nearly 1,000 enemy dead

combatants, while maintaining control over the population of

450,000 Iraqi citizens. This success did not come cheaply. In the almost daily fight that defined our lives, 34 young men gave their

lives with the several times that number wounded.

In spite of the sacrifice, their spirit readied them for each successive challenge, eager to deny the enemy the chance of victory. They

stood ready to defend the lives of the innocent, but, most importantly, they stood ready to defend the lives of their fellow countrymen, and in this they exceeded all expectations.

In response to Representative Weldon’s earlier questions, I am

also the officer responsible for writing the fitness report concerning

Captain Royer. I would tell you that Kelly Royer is a good and decent man and initially a strong combat leader. In over 90 days of

intense combat, my confidence in his ability to lead eroded to the

point of necessitating his relief. This was my decision and my decision alone. And, sir, I will tell you that it was not an easy one to

take.

The relief was not based upon any complaints that he had forwarded or suggestion of falling out of disfavor. It was strictly a

matter of leadership shortfalls brought about by long-term exposure to combat. I have spoken to the captain in recent months in

his current and demanding assignment as the operations officer for

Headquarters Battalion of the 1st Marine Division.

Sir, beyond these comments and out of respect for Captain

Royer’s personal reputation and that of his family, I would await

a closed hearing to further discuss this particular matter.

I thank the Members of Congress for their support in providing

my marines the best equipment possible to continue this war on

terrorism, and I am grateful for your inquiry as to the welfare and

well-being of the Magnificent Bastards of 2–4. At this time I would

be happy to answer your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Colonel Kennedy, thank you for your very succinct statement, and, in light of your leadership position as the

commanding officer of the battalion, that we should give a lot of

credibility to what you have just said.

You know, one thing in reading the story about E Company, one

thing that it refers to is the—to a lack of equipment, to a delay in

armoring. And that is a thread that is woven throughout this story,

along with the aspect of Captain Royer.

And there has been—it appeared to me, and I think this has

probably been the case throughout the history of this country, that

there is always a disconnect between those of us who are the shopkeepers back in the States, or in the system, whether it is wearing

the uniform or the congressional system or in the civil service or

in industry, that supplies your equipment and the warfighter who

needs it.

And, in fact, I can remember when we were with you, General

Mattis, I was there with Congressman Calvert and Congressman

Reyes last time, and I asked you what you needed, and you said,

I would like to get scopes for my guys and for all the marines,
67

ACOGs. That makes sense because even though it is a little magnification, it gives them added capability, and they are all—marines are good shots above all, and that leverages that capability.

And I came back and I met with the head of SOCOM, and I

called him up and I said, do you have any ACOGs? And he said,

I have a hundred that I can ship tomorrow. And he had a guy in

there at 7 a.m. in the morning in my office, and he rolled out a

blanket—I don’t know how he got through security—and he had

every device known to man that Special Operations had. And he

said, I could send a hundred overnight.

I saw the e-mails after we sent those coming from the marines

about the old Congressmen getting involved in the acquisition system, and all we were doing was sending you what you asked for,

right? No strings attached. So my point is that it appears to me

that there is, and always has been, and probably always will be to

some degree, a disconnect between the guys that need stuff, the

guys in the battlefield, and the system that supplies that stuff. And

what we are trying to do is shorten up that connection and make

that connection one that is more responsive.

So, Colonel Kennedy, if you look at the statements that are in

this, have you read this article that is the subject of a lot of Members’ understanding of the situation?

Colonel KENNEDY. Yes, sir, I have.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. You have read where they talk about having unarmored Humvees and Humvees that were partly armored

and some that were there that appeared to be almost totally soft.

But as I recall when you folks went in, one pledge that the Marines

gave me when you came over, left out of Kuwait, was that all the

Humvees coming in—this is when you came back to Fallujah—

came into Fallujah—that everything that was going to be in operations would have some kind of armor on it, either steel doors, or

that plus something else; so maybe not 1114s and maybe not

kitted, but would have some level of armor.

But from your estimation, your personal estimation, was there

more that could have been done in terms of moving armor to the

guys who were doing the fighting, which was largely this company

and your battalion in particular?

Colonel KENNEDY. Sir, there was a progression of armor protection that started when we got to Kuwait. We had originally embarked about 80 Humvees from Camp Pendleton, none of which

were armored per se. Before we departed in the two-week bloc of

preparation, before we departed, 75 percent of the vehicles that

went forward—I gained some vehicles in that process—75 percent

of those vehicles were armored to some Level three protection.

None of the troops’ carrier Humvees that went forward had anything less than the armored doors, and if they did not have armor

in the back in the actual troop compartments, they went empty.

Echo Company did not make that transit. They flew into Al Assad

and met with us in Ramadi. Every vehicle that went forward either

had the LOGCOM-provided Level three armor or armor that we

procured in Camp Victory from Army units that were departing the

theater.
68

The CHAIRMAN. So you had—the stuff that you brought in from

Kuwait typically would have the two—have the doors armored,

have steel doors?

Colonel KENNEDY. Yes, sir. The original doors, I believe, were

called the Simula doors. They were half doors. We had not seen the

L-shaped armor at that point. We received a number of side armor

panels from the division logistics system and from the Army units

that were depositing that same armor that they had locally fabricated in Kuwait.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. The marines that were killed in that firefight, which I think you had one Humvee that took heavy fire, the

one that is referred to in the article? I think you had, what, seven

or eight marines killed in that particular vehicle? What did that

have on it?

Colonel KENNEDY. Sir, I cannot attest 100 percent. As we—any

armor that would have been on that vehicle was totally destroyed

was pulled off soon thereafter. During that period on the 6th of

April when it was ambushed, that fight continued for three days,

and there was a varying state of breakage of the equipment.

I have pictures from—taken right after those marines were

pulled from those vehicles. They were shot through the windshield

by a 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun. Armor really was not an

issue in protecting or failing to protect those marines. Even if they

had had the 4-inch-thick ballistic glass, from the 100 meters away,

a heavier machine gun is going to defeat any armor.

Six marines died right out. One was manning his machine gun,

so he was standing above the armor that would have afforded him

any protection. And the last marine to have been killed in that ambush, in fact it was a sailor, a corpsman that was treating the marine on the ground. So he was outside of the vehicle. I do not believe that armor in that case would have made a difference, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That machine gun is approximately what caliber? Is that the equivalent of a .50?

Colonel KENNEDY. It is exactly a .50-caliber.

The CHAIRMAN. .50 cal is going to tear up a Humvee fairly quickly.

What about the second vehicle that they speak about in the article that was following that particular Humvee? I think it states

that it had armor. What degree of armor did that have, if you can

recall?

Colonel KENNEDY. Yes, sir. On the 29th of May, Echo Company

was tasked with investigating a parked station wagon that was on

the side of the road. We had not seen vehicle-borne IEDs at that

stage in our time in Iraq, but it seemed suspicious because the

Iraqis do not just leave a vehicle unattended. It would be quickly

stripped.

A convoy of four vehicles was passing that station wagon, passed

within six feet of the vehicle, when it detonated on the last

Humvee. That Humvee was transporting not only the Marines that

were assigned to the Quick Reaction Force, but it was, in fact, carrying additional marines that had been picked up along the road

that had been conducting a patrol. So it was a fairly full vehicle.
69

The armor had again, sir, LOGCOM-provided flank protection. It

had the Foster Miller panels on the backside, and it had L-shaped

doors and the ballistic glass for the windshield.

I was the on scene of that explosion within about five to ten minutes. We surveyed the entire vehicle. There were no perforations or

failures of the armor systems themselves. It was where marines

were exposed above the protection of the armor or through the void

where the L-shaped door is that they were killed by the overpressure.

Ultimately, sir, it appeared to have been four to five .155-millimeter artillery projectiles, plastic explosives and ball bearings that

killed those marines.

The CHAIRMAN. So in that incident, a fully up-armored 1114,

with all of the—with the full suit of armor would not have prevented the deaths? Is that basically your opinion?

Colonel KENNEDY. Sir, we experienced just over 200 IEDs over

the course of the time we were there. Sir, there were times where

I had no rational explanation for why marines survived detonation

of an IED right at their feet. Other times they were as much as

50 meters away and were injured grievously. I do not know if an

up-armored Humvee would have or would not have survived that

level of explosion. It was a big bomb, sir. The station wagon itself

was completely disintegrated. There was a small portion of the engine block left.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. And the first incident you described, the

ambush where you had heavy machine gun fire coming through the

front of the vehicle, that, in your opinion—is there any type of

armor suit that we make for the Humvee today that would have

survived that or would have prevented that or repelled that attack?

Colonel KENNEDY. I don’t believe so, sir. I know that a .50-caliber

machine gun at that range striking any armor, it is going to penetrate anything short of a Bradley fighting vehicle or a tank. It is

going to kill it.

The CHAIRMAN. I don’t think the ballistic glass, any of the species of the ballistic glass that we make is heavy duty enough to

take a hit, much less multiple hits with a .50.

Mr. Skelton.

Mr. SKELTON. Colonel, thank you for your testimony. Regarding

the marine in question of which you spoke, did you write the earlier OER on him?

Colonel KENNEDY. Yes, sir, I did.

Mr. SKELTON. And the subsequent comments that Congressman

Weldon read, did you write those as well?

Colonel KENNEDY. Sir, actually those were—those were comments provided for this report. There was comments provided up

the chain of command. There are procedures to safeguard that officer’s career, reputation, checks and balances. So I believe that is

where those comments were taken from, sir.

Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. General Mattis, let me ask you while we have

got you here—we are going to have a vote very quickly on this supplemental—what is your take on the western AOR right now, the

Fallujah to Syria border? And in particular, if you look at the

standup of the Iraqi forces and the mentoring that we are under-
70

taking now, the embedding of American advisers, if you will, the

ongoing training, we have got a lot of Iraqi forces being stood up

for almost every AOR except that AOR. They are a very small,

dedicated Iraqi group. The implication is that is pretty heavy lifting.

I would like to have your personal opinion as to whether you

think that the Iraqis are going to be able to hold that tough piece

of territory and manage it not to an extremely high level, but to

a basic level of stability?

General MATTIS. Sir, Mr. Chairman, I would like to caveat what

I say, that I have been out of there for a while. With Fallujah no

longer providing a sanctuary due to the victory that we had in November, last November, the border is, as you know, almost impossible to fully control. We have our own challenges on our own

southwest border. This is a very remote and long border, and there

is always going to be some people coming across which impacts on

the security situation there.

The election, however, has changed this dynamic. I think it is

why the enemy is trying to kill so many Iraqis now.

The Iraqi security forces that were out there were penetrated by

the enemy, heavily penetrated by the enemy. Plus they had intense

tribal loyalties. And the current situation that the leadership, Iraqi

and American, has taken charge of shows they have got to bring

in nationally recruited Iraqi security forces. Young guys from the

hometown walking down the street in uniform are too vulnerable.

They know where their families are. They have tribal loyalties.

Troops that are a nationally recruited force living in barracks, operating more on military or paramilitary lines will give us a better

opportunity to allow them to, with American support, American

stiffening, American training, American reaction forces for quite

some time yet—will permit them to do what perhaps the disappointing performance of the previous force could not provide.

The CHAIRMAN. But do you think they are going to be able to do

it? And I agree with you totally that this is going to have to be a

national force. Do you think they are going to be tough enough or

the Iraq situation may evolve to where we can move out of some

of the more lightly traveled areas and some of the less difficult

areas in Iraq? But I can see in my mind’s eye a continuing call

from the Iraq Government for American forces to stabilize that

western AOR, that piece of the triangle.

General MATTIS. Sir, since I am no longer over there, I always

look a little askance at Washington, D.C., generals talking authoritatively about things a long ways away, or New York reporters

writing about Ramadi when they have never been there. But it is

trending in that way, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I would be interested in your take on that. And

thank you for your service. You have a great reputation as a

warfighter, and you did a great job handling our people. And, Colonel, thank you for your description of this tough area, this difficult

area. You know, it is—the Marines have a very disciplined process,

which is quite a personal process. And I know when my son was

going through TBS, I remember him, he was writing his reports

one day, because they get all the young—all the new officers end

up—are placed in leadership positions, and they have to rate some-
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times their best friend; right? The rest of their peers. And their

peers in turn rate them, and that means you have to sit down, look

somebody in the eye, and tell them that they failed. And that is

a difficult thing, but it is one that is necessary for the development

of marines. And I don’t think there is any substitute.

And so I think the committee has got to take your statement as

one that is—one that is made with honor, with insight and obviously an understanding of the situation that we do not have.

So you certainly—I think you have served the committee well in

giving us your take, straightforward, on this situation. And beyond

that, I think it has been good, General Mattis, to have you here

with us also listening to the armor discussion, because you are a

consumer. And we are going to have to change this system. We are

going to have to get a system developed. We are going to have to

develop more response. This system is largely a product of Washington, D.C., to some degree, a product of Congress. It is a product

of $600 hammers that nobody ever wanted to see again.

So we have a system that can say no 35 times before it says yes

to anything. Even the new Jammer, this license that the Secretary

signed out to use, a license we have given them to buy equipment

for the combat theater, waiving all laws, there was enormous resistance, I can tell you, to utilizing that for something as basic as

a Jammer. So hopefully we have trotted this one out, and we will

use that as a model to follow.

So let’s work together and try to get this—try to work out this

disconnect that has always existed to some degree between the

field and the suppliers and serve our people well. So thanks a lot

to your endurance, all parties involved. And thank you, General

Kelly, for your helping to escort this august body, and thanks for

your service to the country as well.

This hearing is concluded. Let’s get back together in three or four

weeks, and let’s sit down and see where we are.

[Whereupon, at 1:34 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

MAY 5, 2005

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

MAY 5, 2005

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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

MAY 5, 2005

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. REYES

Mr. REYES. What is the percentage that you think is armored? Is that in the ball

park that we have 60, 70 percent of the vehicles not armored in Afghanistan right

now?

General SORENSON. [The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 153.]

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN

Mr. LANGEVIN. I would like an update, first of all, on how our equipment is doing.

And then, as a follow-up to that, I have been concerned about more rapidly developing composite material.

What effect the add-on armor, either a Level two or Level three, is having on the

service life of the vehicles? And can you expand upon the efforts that you are taking

to decrease the weight of the armor, or the vehicles, to ensure sufficient protection

without further degradation.

If you can expand on those, I know the committee would consider it helpful.

General SORENSON.

PURPOSE: To provide Congress with an update of the HMMWV Recapitalization

Program.

FACTS:

a. Recapitalization is an important on-going element of the TWV strategy that has

proven effective. It is adding new capabilities such as engines, chassis, and transmissions, which enhances a program where existing equipment is aging.

b. The Light Tactical Vehicle Fleet (HMMWVs) represents 50% of the total tactical truck fleet, approximately 115,000 systems. The major portion approximately

86,000 vehicles are AO models. The fleet average age is 13.9 years against a EUL

of 15-years. The HMMWV program is a Tri-service program, supporting Army, Marine Corps and Air Force requirements. Approximately 12,600 HMMWVs (12% of

Fleet) are supporting OIF and are experiencing a 6:1 OPTEMPO [putting 6,000

miles in a war time one year period vs. 1,000 miles under a normal peace time

OPTEMPO]. The M998 HMMWV variants are unable to accept add-on armor to

achieve a 360-degree protection. These operational gaps necessitated the procurement of additional Up-Armored HMMWVs (UAHs) and 13,000 Add-on Armor kits

to provide force protection for soldiers. Production lines have now been changed and

we are currently producing only M1114’s (UAHs), M1151 and M1152 platforms to

accommodate the force protection requirements.

c. The VCSA approved and revised the HMMWV Recapitalization Program, which

is essential to the aging fleet. A selected number of the M998A0 vehicles from the

HMMWV fleet will be modified to meet the M1097R1 vehicle standard. The

M1097R1 vehicle is more capable, reliable, and maintainable and can accept Addon Armor for force protection. The result of this Recapitalization effort is a vehicle

with an extended service life that is ‘‘like new’’ in appearance, 1900lbs increase payload, improved suspension components, increased electrical capacity, and is force

protection compliant.

d. To meet Army demands, a third Recap production source, Maine Military Authority, has been added to the program to augment Red River Army Depot (RRAD)

and Letterkenny Army Depot (LEAD) production capacity. The Army budget currently has programmed 697 vehicles in FY06 and 800 vehicles in FY07. However,

the TWV Strategy and OSD Stress Study support quantities of 4000 in each of the

program years. Funding strategy is to fund through supplementals. Additionally, a

Re-power Program is underway to increase the horsepower and introduce an EPA

compliant power train for both the HMMWV Recap and new production lines.
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. At some point there is a sea change. We go from having 200 and

some of these armored vehicles to rushing to get ourselves over 10,000. Frankly, the

track record in the months at the end of calendar 2003 is not bad. You have ramped

up 8,000-and-something right now. But I am less interested in the industrial production than I am the paradigm shift in people’s thinking. Who was it that came

to you and said, you know, we need a lot more of these things in a hurry; and when

did that happen?

General SORENSON.

THE ARMY POSITION:

• The Army is meeting the CENTCOM Combatant Commander’s increased requirements for Up-Armored HMMWVs with increased production, diverting current production, and redirecting assets in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom

(OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

• The current requirement for Up-Armored HMMWVs is 10,079.

• There are approximately 7,991 Up-Armored vehicles currently available to, or

directed to, the theater Area of Responsibility (AOR). This number includes approximately 2,725 Up-Armored vehicles obtained from units deployed and those

diverted from production or redistributed from other units not currently identified for deployment.

• All Up-Armored HMMWVs deployed to theater will remain in theater, whether

organic to units or in fulfillment to CENTCOM requirement to protect Soldiers’

lives and to ensure we have enough armored vehicles required to perform the

military mission.

TALKING POINTS

• The initial theater request for Up-Armored vehicle requirement was received in

May 2003 for 235 vehicles. This requirement was fulfilled with vehicles coming

directly from the production line (originally scheduled for other units) and a redistribution of vehicles assigned to Forces Command and U.S. Army Europe.

• In Aug. 2003, CFLCC requested an increase in Up-Armored vehicles from 235

to 1,233.

• By Aug. 2003, CFLCC further refined the requirement to 1,407 vehicles.

• On 3 Oct. 2003, the request increased to 2,957 to include Military Police requirements for OIF.

• Additional requirements for OEF were approved in Oct. 2003, bringing the total

to 3,142.

• From Dec. 2003 to Jan. 2004 Up-Armored vehicle requirements increased by

more than 1,000 vehicles bringing the total to 4,149.

• On 15 Mar. 2004, the Vice Chief of Staff, Army, approved additional increases

bringing the requirement to 4,388.

• By Apr. 2004 additional Up-Armored vehicle requirements for OIF/OEF were

approved by the VCSA increasing the requirement to 4,454.

• On 29 June 2004, the VCSA approved further requirements, bringing the total

requirement to 6,223.

• On 14 Aug. 2004, the VCSA approved additional requirements to bring the total

required to 8,105.

• On 23 Dec. 04, the VCSA approved additional Up-Armored vehicles requirement

for OEF increasing the requirement to 8,275.

• On 11 Mar. 05, the VCSA approved additional Up-Armored vehicles requirement for OEF increasing the requirement to 10,079.

[A chart of the UAH Requirements can be found in the Appendix on page 154.]

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SHUSTER

Mr. SHUSTER. If you could give me some kind of report on what you are doing,

because as I said, what I understand is that it is—the money is not being spent

to go after the composites, and they have a great benefit to us.

General SORENSON.

PURPOSE: To provide information on S&T efforts for composite armor

FACTS:

a. The Army’s S&T program continues to focus on developing lighter weight, improved protective armor technology for both vehicles and personnel to include advanced composite concepts/designs, active protection systems, and enhanced predictive models.
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b. U.S. Army Research and Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM)

has developed key advances in fibers and materials that have contributed to the

success of the Interceptor Body Armor. Additional efforts have focused on systems

for increased extremity protection, such as the Deltoid Axillary Protection system.

c. RDECOM is researching high-strength fibers such as M5 and Zylon, along with

post-processing treatments, which could improve the fragmentation protection of

soft armor systems. In addition, new methods of production and innovative architectures for protective materials (e.g., non-woven, unidirectional layers; backing materials; flexible resin impregnated fabrics) are being assessed.

d. RDECOM has been working toward lighter and more affordable solutions for

the entire spectrum of Army vehicles. Combat System and Tactical Wheeled Vehicle

armors have had considerable success in using ballistic-grade composites such as

the family of Kevlar and ‘‘S2-glass’’ composite materials. The fiber reinforced composite materials are often combined with various metals or ceramics to form ‘‘hybrid’’ composite armors.

e. Hybrid armors come in three basic variants.

a. Metal-composite designs are approximately 30% lighter than monolithic

steel. In general, the purpose of composites in these various hybrid constructions is

to provide backing stiffness to the structure that is critical to the function of the

armor design.

i. Metal-Composite armor: Used in the Low Signature Armor Cab, the

M1114, and other vehicles in development

b. Hybrid ceramic-composite laminate designs are approximately 66% lighter

than monolithic steel. In these designs the composite materials support the ceramic

tiles and catch residual projectile debris resulting from an impact. These designs

have a higher cost and maintenance burden, but they are significantly lighter than

metal-composite armor systems.

i. Ceramic-Composite Monocoque armor: Demonstrated in a mobile platform, the Composite Armored Vehicle technology demonstration, including maintenance and repair technologies.

ii. Advanced Ceramic-Composite Structural armor: Higher efficiency armor

technologies evolved for the Future Combat Systems Program.

c. Composite hybrid armor panels can be constructed from a variety of composite materials and metals. The relationship governing the performance of composite

hybrid armors is governed by interactions between the layers of material used. As

there are multiple layers of materials, changing constituent materials will affect

total system performance. Numerical models have been coupled to ballistic experiments to provide an assessment process and a limited predictive capability to understand the influence of armor recipe changes.

i. Ceramic-Metal-Composite applique ́ armors: Used in the M1117 Armored

Security Vehicle, the STRYKER, and can be applied to the fleet of tactical wheeled

vehicles.

FY05 FY06 FY07 FY08 FY09 Total

Soldier Ballistic Protection 3.0 2.5 1.5 2.6 2.7 12.3

Adv Lighteweight Armor for Vehicles 4.5 10.3 10.9 13.5 13.9 53.1

Æ