Oxymoron: Military Intelligence

This is something that I simply haven't been able to understand. Why are our troops racing around in Iraq in Hummers? The military acknowleges that a Hummer is not intended to be a front-line vehicle. So instead of using proper armored vehicles, they simply slap some armor on the Hummers. We have thousands of M113 Gavins sitting in Kuwait collecting dust. They've been there since the first Gulf War. The M113 is far superior to the armored version of the Hummer in the protection that they provide. Their cross-country manueverability is superior, and frankly, they're not that much larger. We have massive supplies of parts for these vehicles because they've been in the US inventory since the late 1950's. The M113 was built armored quite unlike the Hummer. When you add the 1½ tons of armour to the Hummer, it has very detrimental effects on the handling, cross-country manueverability and maintainability (they weren't designed to carry that much weight).

The M113's are not the final word in protection. They too are vulnerable to RPG hits, but this could be remedied with the same sort of slat armor that they're using on the Strykers.

What the army needs is a light tank. We've had them before, but with the cold war it was decided that bigger was better and indeed when facing off against the Russians in an open field engagement, heavy tanks were the answer. With the new changing environment that our troops are facing, what is now needed is a light urban assault tank. Something about the size of a World War II Stuart but modernized and specifically designed for urban combat.

This however sounds too much like common sense and instead the army continues to want to make a jeep a tank.