Статья в NEW YORK TIMES - Хаммер - барахло, Rhino Runner - сила
Краткое резюме - Rhino Runner нужен армии вместо Хамера, да бюрократия не чешется.
Heavy metal days fade for Humvee
U.S. needs stronger vehicles in Iraq But army's bureaucracy slow to respond
MICHAEL MOSS NEW YORK TIMES
When US. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, military officials did not rely on a governmentissued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. They turned to Halliburton, which lent them a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner.
US. State Department officials travelling in Iraq use armoured vehicles that are built with vshaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of Congress favour the Mll17, which can endure 12-pound explosives and .50-calibre armour-piercing rounds.
Unlike the Humvee, the Penta~ gon's vehicle of choice for US. troops, the others were designed specifically to withstand bigger attacks.
Yet more thari two years into the war, efforts by US. military units to obtain large numbers of these stronger vehicles for soldiers have faltered.
Many of the problems stem from a 40-year-old procurement system that cannot acquire new equipment quickly enough to adapt to the demands of a modern insurgency.
The M1117, manufactured by Textron,lost its Pentagon mon
ey just before the invasion, and the manufacturer is now scram: bling to fill rush orders from the. military. Force Protection, the company making one of the Vshaped vehicles, the Cougar, said it had to layoff skilled weld~
ers last year as it waited for the' contract to be completed.
Labock Technologies, which makes the Rhino Runner, could not get through the army's test. ing regime because the compa. ny declined to have one of its $250,000 vehicles blown up.
The army's vehicle-program manager urged the Pentagon in 1996 to move beyond the Humvee, saying it was built for the Cold War. Its flat-bottomed chassis is 25 years old, never intended for combat, and the added armour protects only the
front end from heftier bombs.
As the procurement system stumbled and the defence department resisted allocating money for more expensive vehicles, the military ended up largely dependent on the Hum. vee - the majority of which did not yet have any armour.
About half of the army's 20,000 Humvees have improvised shielding that typically leaves the underside unprotected, while only one in six Humvees used by the US. Marines is armoured at the highest level.
Лiтва! Бацькоускi край, ты як здароўе тое: Не ценiм, маючы, а страцiм залатое
