Quote:
thatguy96 said:
Public outrage led to increased armor with little appreciation for the almost equally dangerous rollover problems it caused when driving the vehicle at high speed.
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There may have been some noise about increased accident rates for up armored HMMWVs but frankly what do you prefer:
a slighty higher chance of a lethal accident, which can be mitigated by appropriate driver training, or being torn to shreds by the first IED you run into?
The increased armor has turned HMMWVs from a vehicle vulnerable to anything from small arms to explosives to one vulnerable only to well placed RPG shots (which can't be fired by nice safe remote control), big/lucky IEDs or EFPs, which are more resource intensive to make.
Note that up armor kits were improvised by soldiers in the field early on and of course bullets/fragments were the reasons APCs were developed in first place.
In a place like Iraq everything must be (and has been for the most part) armored to stop at least bullets/frag, including armored cabs for resupply trucks. This brings a lot of headaches (less payload, substantially more maintenance etc.) but is better than the alternative.
A specialized airborne vehicle has different requirements and lack of armor is an acceptable trade off but anything else designed now should be at least fitted for armor.