Letter: Add-on armortooheavy for new vehicles

0 Comments | USA TODAY, July, 2007 | by Tom Vanden Brook and Peter Eisler

WASHINGTON -- Armor intended to protect the Pentagon's new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles against the most powerful roadside bombs is too heavy to use, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The add-on armor known as Frag Kit 6 could overwhelm all MRAPs unless they undergo "major redesigns," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., says in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The newly disclosed June 19 letter reveals that the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, issued an urgent request in January to require MRAPs to withstand explosively formed penetrators (EFPs). These weapons use explosives to propel a metal disc, reshaping it into a slug that can penetrate armor. U.S. commanders allege that many of the weapons come...