Lab scientists help shield soldiers from attack

Livermore-designed kit for Iraq converts standard vehicles into armored weapons carriers

Ian Hoffman
Tri-Valley Herald
July 22, 2005

When the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee comes knocking, government labs jump to deliver — in this case, resurrecting Vietnam War-era gun trucks for Iraq.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, asked Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where his brother John once worked, to dream up new ways to protect soldiers in Iraq as the insurgency grew in late 2003.

Livermore scientists learned that U.S. soldiers were starting down the same path that their predecessors in Vietnam took 40 years ago, hand-building their own heavily armed and armored trucks to escort supply convoys past ambushes.

The old gun trucks put down a hail of machine-gun fire and kept food, fuel and ammo shipments moving in Vietnam's jungles.

"It's the same thing they did in Vietnam," said Livermore materials engineer Steve DeTeresa, detailed as a staffer to Hunter's committee. In Iraq, "they were going through the same evolution."

Livermore scientists made it easier with an armor kit for converting a standard, 5-ton Army truck into an armored weapons carrier. The lab now is overseeing manufacture of 80 gun-truck kits — a bolt-on shell of triple-layer steel and ballistic fiberglass, with three or so heavy machine-gun mounts on the truck bed and bulletproof windows surrounding the gun nests.

The new gun trucks passed live-fire tests with small arms and shrapnel at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. In Iraq, soldiers are fitting the first 31 gun trucks with .50-caliber machine guns and using them to protect convoys and set up checkpoints.

Scientists left a space between the double-steel plating to catch shrapnel and lined the floor and walls with ballistic fiberglass, which looks like regular boat fiberglass but does a good job of capturing shrapnel.

One of the first trucks, nicknamed Iron Horse, hit a roadside bomb recently and was totaled, but its seven-member crew lived to strip off the armor and bolt it on a new truck.

Hunter, himself a Vietnam War vet, was impressed.

"People call them the 'soldiers' choice,' the favorite and say that when they ride through, people get on board and want their pictures taken," DeTeresa said.