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SPECIAL REPORT LETHAL PROTECTION

Locally produced armored Humvees can take a beating, but added weight poses other threat to soldiers in combat

Butler County plant armors 650 vehicles a month and processes 55 tons of steel per day

By Mike Wagner, Russell Carollo

Staff Writer

WEST CHESTER TWP., Butler County | The charred pile of twisted metal outside the military Humvee manufacturing plant north of Cincinnati once carried five American soldiers through the mountains of Afghanistan.

An exploding land mine lifted the 10,000-pound armored Humvee off the ground, ripped a chunk of metal off of the frame and caved in half of its front end.

But the soldiers inside walked away, and that's why the wreckage sits on the grounds of the Ohio company that puts armor between America's enemies and America's soldiers.

"The armor on that Humvee performed just as we would have hoped," said George Stringer, a vice president of Armor Holdings Aerospace and Defense Group, the company that owns the plant. "It's very important for our workers to see Humvees that have been hit by a bomb or explosives and know that the armor has saved the lives of our soldiers."

The armor has unquestionably saved lives, as evidenced by the plant's prominent display of testimonials from soldiers who survived attacks in their up-armored Humvees. But the Humvee, which was never designed for battle, is vulnerable to another type of danger. The up-armoring, which adds as much as 3,000 pounds to each vehicle, makes the Humvee more difficult to control and more likely to roll over, particularly when driven at high speeds at night on poor roads — conditions routinely encountered in Iraq. The Army has even instituted rollover drills to train soldiers on escaping from harm when the Humvee begins to tip.

"The Humvee, as a vehicle, wasn't originally designed to carry all the extra weight," said U.S. Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield, a member of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee who has been to Iraq four times. "This is not a bad piece of equipment, but it has to be used in the right manner. You have a vehicle and you have to understand how it should be handled.

"Frankly, I don't know how stable a vehicle this is even without armor."

Michael Fox, spokesman for Armor Holdings, said the company works closely with the Army on improvements to the vehicle design.

"We are constantly enhancing and improving these products based on real world performance and input from the users to increase the level of protection and safety they provide and to respond to changes in the environments in which they operate," he said.

Stringer said the Army tests the vehicles at its research laboratory in Maryland before they are put in the field.

"We armor them, develop a solution for the vehicle and they evaluate it there at the testing center," he said.

Armoring cars since the Truman era

The previous owner of the Butler County plant, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, began armoring government vehicles in 1948; it built President Truman's armored car. The company also produces armored sport utility vehicles for federal agencies, heads of state and others who can afford them.

Production has boomed with the demand for military Humvees. The company, which was purchased by the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Armor Holdings Inc. for $53 million in 2001, moved its commercial production down the street because of the influx in military orders.

The military version of the Humvee isn't cheap. Each vehicle costs about $165,000, with the armor alone at $53,000, according to company officials.

The first factory-armored Humvees — the M1114 — rolled off the assembly line in 1998, but the numbers were small — only 159 a year.

"There was never any expectation that it would be any different," Fox said.

Now the factory's 700 workers churn out about 650 vehicles per month, as the Army replaces its older Humvees and some of the ones that were fortified in the field with steel kits. The M1114, currently the workhorse of the Humvee fleet, is slowly being replaced by a new model that has removable armor.

Only 235 of the 8,000 Humvees deployed to Iraq at the beginning of the war were factory-armored, according to government reports. The rest were either unarmored, armored with steel kits or altered with what soldiers call "hillbilly" armor: Soldiers resorting to weld whatever metal they could get their hands on for protection against roadside bombs and artillery shells.

"It makes our guys feel great when they see or hear that we have had a role in saving lives," said Ron Carson, the company's plant manager. "They are a lot of guys in here that have served in the military. Guys who have been overseas and come back. There is no greater pride for them than to know they are helping fellow soldiers."

How Humvees shed their soft skin

The green soft-skinned Humvees that arrive nearly every day from the AM General factory in Mishawaka, Ind., have no doors, no windows and no roofs.

After nearly two days and 41 stops along an assembly line at the O'Gara plant, each vehicle is fully up-armored and ready for testing.

The doors alone weigh as much as an NFL running back, even before the glass is added.

The glass — after it is cut, shaped, molded and layered — is thick enough to stop a bullet.

The gunner's box, which is mounted on top and surrounded by a steel shield, allows for a turret and a variety of automatic weapons.

Workers in the plant's fabrication shop process 55 tons of steel each day — enough steel to build an old-fashioned locomotive.

In many respects, the brown and beige metal building looks like a typical manufacturing facility, except typical manufacturing facilities don't have an in-house firing range.

Before a single piece of steel is attached to any of the Humvees, testers fire on it with the same weapons often used against American forces in Iraq.

"We want to simulate the exact hits that the Humvee could take in (combat)," Stringer said. "We will even test the steel beyond its breaking point to see how much more it can take. We are always looking for ways to make the armored protection better."

The finished armor forms a metal box covering all sides of the vehicle and attached at the wheel wells and underside of the cab. Heavy-duty locks are installed to ensure that explosions don't send the doors flying open. A steel "underbelly" sheet is fitted all the way underneath the driver side, passenger side and the entire back of the Humvee.

"Basically what we do is we protect the crew (soldiers) — front, top, side, rear, bottom," Carson said. "There are layers of protection from all sides. The idea is to protect the people, not the vehicle."

Once the Humvees are fully armored, inspectors take them out for a 10-mile "test run" — a run Armor Holdings' officials declined to describe.

"We make sure they are ready, let's put it that way," Carson said.

The Humvees armored in Ohio are on the ground in Iraq within 30 to 50 days after leaving the factory floor.

Lighter, safer Humvee could be born in the Miami Valley

In Springfield, just an hour's drive from Armor Holdings' plant in West Chester Twp., plans are underway to develop a lighter-weight Humvee that, in theory, would offer soldiers protection from the enemy while reducing the chance of rollover accidents.

But Hobson, who has worked with a Rhode Island-based company that hopes to build a plant in Springfield, admits he is frustrated by the slowness in the Army's procurement process.

Asked if he expects a new lightweight Humvee to be put into operation anytime soon, Hobson said, "No."

TPI Inc., a company headquartered just outside Providence, R.I., was awarded a $4.5 million contract from the Army last year to begin development and design on three prototypes that it expects to unveil early next year.

John Ragan, director of military business for TPI, said the Springfield plant would employ 75 workers initially and as many as 175 within three to five years.

The company wouldn't disclose the location of the proposed manufacturing facility, but Hobson said it would be next to the Springfield-Beckley Municipal airport south of the city.

Ragan said the company will have a Springfield presence even if it doesn't get the Army contract to build a lighter-weight Humvee because it plans to make other military equipment, parts and vehicles there.

"The reduction in weight will be significant compared to the Humvee that is currently out there," said Ragan, declining to give a "weight goal" for the prototype now being designed at an Army research facility in Michigan. "The goal is to provide as lightweight a vehicle as possible but still provide the same protection it does now."

Ragan said Armor Holdings should not be held responsible for rollover accidents involving the Humvees that are armored there.

"(Armor Holdings) is simply putting the armor on after the fact, to protect our personnel in the military," he said. "Those vehicles were never originally designed to do these missions the way they are armoring them today."

RELATED LINKS

Rollover accidents increase with addition of Humvee armor

How armor is added to a Humvee Video

The victims of rollovers Photos

Where armor is added Photos

Soldiers often blamed in Humvee rollovers

Humvee accidents and the Iraq war Graphic

Higher percentages of rollovers in armored Humvees Graphic

Adding protection to the Humvee Animated graphic

Index for this special report