Improvised vehicle armour Information

Improvised vehicle armour is vehicle armour added in the field that was not originally part of the design, in any sort of official up-armour kit, nor centrally planned.

Improvised vehicle armour has appeared on the battlefield for as long as there have been armoured vehicles in existence. In World War II, tank crews of many armies attached spare tracks to the hulls and turrets of their tanks. In the Vietnam War, U.S. "gun trucks" were reinforced with sandbags and locally fabricated steel armor plate.

More recently, U.S. troops in Iraq have armored their Humvees and various military transport vehicles with scrap materials: this came to be known as "hillbilly armor" by the Americans, or sometimes "hajji armor" when installed by Iraqi contractors.

The first armoured cars to see combat were entirely improvised, although this soon changed as the war continued. A few were used by the Belgian army during the German invasion. The British Royal Naval Air Service received reports of this and converted some of their own cars. Improvised conversion continued until December 1914 when the first standardized design entered service.

Most armies involved in the conflict adopted some form of improvised armour at some point. The Home Guard in the United Kingdom equipped itself with a number of vehicles with improvised armour, such as the Bison concrete armoured lorry, intended to be used for defending airfields. Later in 1944, some Cromwell and Churchill tanks had sections of tracks attached to their existing armour to provide yet more extra protection. US M8 Greyhound armoured car crews would sometimes line the floors of their vehicles with sandbags to provide extra protection against landmines.Most US tanks had spare tracks attached to their armour. This was done with the M4 Sherman and Stuart tanks. Besides spare track-links, other improvised armor included wooden logs, armour plating from other destroyed or abandoned tanks and even a thick layer of concrete, the lattermost albeit very rarely.

During the North African Campaign, the German Afrika Korps attached strips of spare tracks to the front of their Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs. Elsewhere, such as on the Eastern Front and in Italy, the German military also relied on add-on plates of armour of varying thickness (including the well-known Schürzen add-on side armour plating), cement and timber to increase the armour of their tracked combat vehicles, especially those with weaker armour like the Marder series of self-propelled anti-tank guns and the StuG III (many of these were given either timber, concrete, additional armour plating or spare tracks to increase their battlefield survivability). Most German vehicles exported to their allies in the war also carried such forms of armour, such as StuG IIIs sent to Finland, which carried both log (on the sides) and concrete (frontally) armour.

In the Vietnam War, U.S. gun trucks were armored with sandbags and locally fabricated steel armor plate.

In the early 1990s, the Provisional IRAs South Armagh Brigade came up with a new strategy to restrict British Army foot patrols near Crossmaglen. They developed two sniper teams to attack British Army and RUC patrols. They fired from an improvised armoured car using a .50 BMG caliber M82 sniper rifle mounted to the back of a Mazda fitted with a metal plate. Signs were put up around South Armagh reading "Sniper at Work". The snipers killed a total of nine members of the security forces: seven soldiers and two police constables. Between 1992 - 1994 they killed eight security forces. The last and ninth member to be killed was British soldier, bombardier Steven Restorick.

In post-invasion Iraq, improvised vehicle armor is colloquially referred to as Hillbilly armor, farmer armor or hajji armor by American troops.

During the occupation that followed the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Husseins regime, insurgent forces deployed roadside bombs, RPG teams, and snipers with small arms to attack military vehicles on supply convoys and other known routes.

To protect themselves from these threats, American troops began reinforcing their Humvees, LMTVs and other vehicles with whatever was available, including scrap metal, kevlar blankets and vests, compromised ballistic glass and plywood. In some cases they relied on Iraqis to assist them in these efforts, and referred to the result as "Hajji" armor. They were also officially advised to line the floors of their Humvees with sandbags to deaden the impact of land mine explosions.

Some officers in Iraq were disciplined over their refusal to carry out missions in what they considered improperly armored vehicles.

Hungarian troops were said to be covering their non-armored Mercedes-Benz G-Class vehicles with ballistic vests on the outside.

The US Army began deploying up-armor kits to better protect military vehicles in August 2003, two years before the Marine Corps would. Three levels of up-armor were implemented:

The process of up-armoring all vehicles was to be complete by mid-2005.

As recently as February 2006, the Army was welding additional armor onto the armored Humvee variant M1114 and 5-ton MTV in Iraq.

The United States Marines developed their own Marine Armor Kit (MAK), consisting of bolt-on armor for the crew compartment, ballistic glass, suspension upgrades, and air conditioning. However, the kit was not fielded until early 2005, and even then only to certain specified units. The armour]]s. Level I armor kits are now phasing out MAKs for MTVRs and M1114 HMMWVs.

The practice of U.S. troops reinforcing their vehicles with improvised armor became well known after a U.S. soldier questioned U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the need to salvage armor from scrap materials on December 8, 2004 at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. The question was met with cheers from fellow troops.

Wilson: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? And why dont we have those resources readily available to us?"

Rumsfeld: "It isnt a matter of money. It isnt a matter on the part of the Army of desire. Its a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, ah, you go to war with the army you have -- not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and (still) be blown up..."

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