DAYTON, Ohio – Thousands of pounds of armor added to military Humvees, intended to protect U.S. troops, have made the vehicles more likely to roll over, killing and injuring soldiers in Iraq, a newspaper reported.
“I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved,” said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.
The armor – much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati – has shielded soldiers from harm.
But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.
An analysis of the Army’s ground accident database, which includes records from March 2003 through November 2005, found that 60 of the 85 soldiers who died in Humvee accidents in Iraq – or 70 percent – were killed when the vehicle rolled, the newspaper reported. Of the 337 injuries, 149 occurred in rollovers.
“The whole thing is a formula for disaster,” said Badenoch, who is working with the military to design a lighter-armored vehicle to replace the Humvee.
The most vulnerable passenger in a Humvee rollover is the gunner, the soldier who operates the weapon mounted in the vehicle’s top. Gunners were killed in at least 27 of the 93 fatal Humvee accidents since 2001, according to the newspaper’s analysis.
The Army has made safety upgrades to the vehicle, including improved seat restraint belts and a fire suppression system for the crew, Army spokesman John Boyce Jr. said Sunday.
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