House takes hard line on Humvees

[unhappycamper]

The Army wants to stop buying new Humvees and refurbish older ones instead.


House takes hard line on Humvees
By JEN DIMASCIO | 7/29/10 4:33 AM EDT
Updated: 7/29/10 9:07 AM EDT

Remember up-armored Humvees?

It took massive pressure from Congress early in the Iraq war to ramp up production of the next-generation jeeps. Now the Army has 154,380 in its inventory.

After the threat of improvised explosive devices spiked, the Army poured billions into other Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, which can withstand mine and explosive device blasts better than Humvees.

Now the Army wants to stop buying new Humvees and modernize its older ones.

But halting production has been something of a chore and serves as just one example of how difficult it is for the Pentagon to realize Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s stated goal of “turning off the spigot” of defense spending.

AM General, the Indiana-based company that makes the Humvees, and the company’s congressional backers, argue it would cost nearly as much to refurbish old Humvees as it would to buy new ones.



unhappycamper comment: War Is a Racket. AM General is just one of the many companies benefiting.

[Historic NY]

1. They will be giving them away next year to the highest bidder or local community.

[unhappycamper]

2. They get pretty crappy fuel milage.

These things are more or less useless.