Better protection promised

Soldiers will get better bomb protection on the roads of Iraq, even if the Army has to use World War II production methods to provide it, the Army’s No. 2 general said last week at Fort Carson.

Gen. Richard Cody, the service’s vice chief of staff, said he’s pushing to get new bomb-resistant trucks to troops by fall. He said he supports using multiple manufacturers to kick out the trucks, a production technique used with great success in World War II.

“We’re going to build and buy as many of these mine-protected vehicles as we can,” Cody said.

The rigs will have V-shape hulls that deflect bomb blasts from occupants. It’s a design that’s been used successfully in Iraq by combat engineers who bought the bomb-resistant vehicles for crews who are tasked with finding roadside explosives.

Anything that would make soldiers safer from bombs would be welcome at Fort Carson, which has lost 94 soldiers in bomb blasts since 2003, including five who died in Baghdad on June 28.

Eventually, Cody wants the bomb-resistant rigs to replace Humvees now used by soldiers in Iraq.

The general said, though, that better trucks with more armor aren’t enough to protect soldiers from bombs, called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, by the Army, that have become the insurgents’ weapon of choice in Iraq.

“The best way to stop an IED is to find and either arrest or kill the person that’s funding it,” he said.

In Colorado as part of a three-state tour of Army bases, Cody pushed for expansion of Fort Carson’s Piñon Canyon maneuver site.

The general said the controversial 418,000-acre addition to the 235,000-acre training site near Trinidad is needed to allow soldiers to fully train with modern electronic equipment. He also said that strains on other Army training areas in California and Louisiana led leaders to decide that Fort Carson needs enough territory to train its troops rather than sending them elsewhere.

“At the end of the day, we need more land for training,” he said.

Ranchers in southeast Colorado have successfully battled the Army’s expansion plans and have gained powerful political support in the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted to block money for expansion studies.

The U.S. Senate could take up the expansion debate as soon as this month.

There could be a big financial incentive for expansion. Cody hinted that the Army will decide where it will locate six new combat brigades based in part on which posts can provide adequate training areas.

“In my mind we want to be good partners with this community,” he said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0240 or tom.roeder@gazette.com