The Facts: 8,000 Military Vehicles Without Armor Protection

Some conservative media outlets are attacking the basis of the question posed by the soldier (and planted by a reporter) to Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld about armor for vehicles. The soldier, Specialist Thomas Wilson, said that "vehicles are not armored" and that "We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up . . . picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper . . . vehicles to carry with us north." Brit Hume of Fox News countered that "according to senior Army officers, about 800 of the 830 vehicles in Wilson's Army regiment, the 278th Calvary, had already been up-armored" at the time of his question. But, by this account, that still left 30 vehicles that had not been armored up.

The facts: According to Lieutenant General Steve Whitcomb, commander of Third Army and the Coalition Forces Land Component Command at Camp Arifijan in Kuwait, "We've got about 30,000 wheeled vehicles in our theater -- in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas that CFLCC and Central Command operate.  Of that 30,000 vehicles, around a little less than 8,000 of them do not have some type of armor protection on them -- level one, two or three....".

The criticism of the question ignores the fact that Matt Salmon, a former conservative Republican Congressman and president of ArmorWorks of Tempe, Arizona, told CNN his company, which designs and manufactures high-tech vehicle armor, could double its production from 300 to 600 kits per month. MSNBC said: "Mr. Salmon said the company recently laid off about 15 percent of employees because ArmorWorks contract expires in January. He anticipates more workers will need to be laid off if the contract is not renewed. 'We can step it up,' Mr. Salmon said of production. 'If our (U.S.) goal is really to do it as quickly as possible, why wouldn't you want to employ all your resources?'"

What's more, CNN noted that the Army said that until news reports this week it was unaware that another company, Armor Holdings, based in Jacksonville, could retrofit more vehicles and so it approached the company. "The Army said it thought the company had commitments to other customers, including the Marine Corps," CNN added. MSNBC quoted Armor Holdings spokesman Michael Fox as confirming prior news accounts that the company's capacity is higher. "We can do 50 to 100 more vehicles (a month) and we do 450 now," he said.

On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, Salmon said, " We are producing vehicle armor right now for the Humvee and for other vehicles, and we are not even close to capacity." He added: "We have told them repeatedly that we are only at 50 percent capacity.  We are actually putting 300 kits out a month.  We could be putting out 600. And...it‘s not just about the Humvees.  This is about all the vehicles that are over there.  The security of the soldiers has been compromised.  And we have a solution.  Right now, our technology is a ceramic-based composite, which is far lighter than steel.  Now, the Pentagon has said today one of the reasons we don‘t like the retrofitted stuff is because it‘s too heavy.  Well, our stuff is one-third the weight of steel."