The Rock

In this post, I touched briefly on the sobering number of casualties involving Humvees, and how that vehicle is not an adequate vehicle for the environment in Iraq or Afghanistan. I listed the casualties from Nov 1 through Nov 8 involving Humvees. Here are casualties since then, where Humvees were specified as being involved.

Date	Name	Assigned To	Circumstances
Nov 15	Sgt. 1st Class James Ochsner	3rd SFG	IED detonated near his HMMWV in Afghanistan
Nov 15	Staff Sgt. James Estep Spc. Matthew Holley Spc. Alexis Roman-Cruz Pfc. Travis Grigg	101st AD	IED detonated near their HMMWV
Nov 19	1st Lt. Dennis Zilinski Staff Sgt. Edward Karolasz Cpl. Jonathan Blair Spc. Dominic Hinton	101st AD	IED detonated near their HMMWV
Nov 19	Spc. Michael Idanan	101st AD	IED detonated near his HMMWV
Nov 21	Pfc. John Dearing	125th IR	IED detonated near his HMMWV
Nov 22	Spc. Matthew Steyart	508th IR	IED detonated near his HMMWV in Afghanistan
Nov 24	Staff Sgt. Steven Reynolds Pfc. Marc Delgado	42nd MPB	IED detonated near their HMMWV

This month there was an encouraging report on this front.

A private firm, led by Chris Berman, a Navy SEAL Reservist and former Blackwater USA contractor, is building a vehicle designed to do what the Humvee can't do. Granite Global Services in Kuwait is manufacturing a new armored vehicle designed to fight and survive in the environments of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it has been tested by fire. As W. Thomas Smith says,

On November 25, during an operation in the Baghdad area, one of Granite Global's armored "Rocks" was hit with an improvised explosive device (IED). The vehicle sustained no major damage, and - best of all - no injuries were suffered by passengers or crew.

The new urban warfare vehicle is called The Rock, and it is a big fellow.

The Rock (photo from graniteglobalservices.com)

Built on a Ford 4X4 truck chassis with "street tires," The Rock weighs approximately 15,500 lbs. (depending on an individual vehicle's armor and armament configuration), but it's fast. "It's governed at 94 mph, but – at 15,000 pounds - we can comfortably do 80," says Berman.

The vehicle's armor is comprised of three layers: First is the outer Polyeurea coating. This is followed by the actual armor. Then there is a blanketing insulator. These three layers surround the entire vehicle – roof, sides, front, rear, and below the floorboard. "It is 100 percent armored," says Berman.

Moreover, the outer skin of the vehicle has a "bolt-on" feature that permits additional layers of armor to be attached to the existing armor. An RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) screen may also be added, similar to the screen/cage on the U.S. Army's Stryker.

The Rock can haul a four-man crew and six-to-eight passengers depending on its configuration.

This is the kind of vehicle the US government should have been working on a long time ago. The discouraging element of the story is that being a fairly small private firm, Granite Global is capable of producing only 10 vehicles per month.

Our military deserves the best we can give them, and the inadequacies of the Humvee is not the brightest chapter in the story of this war. We can urge our government to address these concerns, and accelerate the work on a suitable urban combat vehicle.