The insurgents use IEDs (improvised explosive devices) because the materials are readily available and they've been proven effective. I think it was a couple years ago, but even an Israeli main battle tank (they're very tough) was taken out by an IED estimated at 300 pounds of explosives buried in a road. If you can take out a tank that's very heavily armored, what chance does even a hardened Hummer have?

As a result, our forces are improvising to come up with countermeasures. They've experimented with simple jammers to try and prevent remote detonations. They've experimented with sending UAVs ahead of truck routes to look for changes that might indicate a freshly planted IED. They've experimented with mounting sandbags and homemade armor to their vehicles. None of these things has eliminated the problem entirely, so the experimentation continues.

As this article in Reason (and they don't like Rumsfeld at all) accurately states (emphasis added):

Truth is most U.S. military vehicles have required some kind of armor upgrade to withstand the volleys of RPGs and large-munition roadside bombs the Iraq conflict has produced. The Stryker units have what looks like steel grating around them to throw up an anti-RPG "fence," photos of Bradleys show what looks like reactive armor kits in place, and even the mighty Abrams appear to have been modified with extra plating.

So it is just not a case of the bloodless Pentagon stiffing the Guard and Reserves with thin-skinned Humvees, as some of the comments today seem to suggest. Rummy was right, if typically tone-deaf, by telling Wilson he could get blown up in a tank too.

Further, more armor is not a magical solution, never has been. It is represents a trade-off between protection and mobility, just as in the age of knights when if the peasants managed to violently unhorse an up-armored foe, they could go off and have lunch and leave the knight flailing face down in the mud. If he didn't drown, you could always stab him in the eye-slits later.

The preference for less armor can be seen today with at least some Marines in Fallujah. They point out that up-armoring their Humvees reduces the ability to see threats coming. Oh, but they bitch that the regular Army gets all the good stuff anyway, so at least that's square.

Finally, was it a disgrace or outrage that American tankers in Normandy had to cut up German steel obstacles to make hedge-cutting teeth for their tanks? No, it was an inspired response to the insanity of war. Rummy being nuts has very little to do with this sad and eternal fact.

The reference to the hedge-cutters at Normandy is a good one. D-Day was a very carefully planned operation, but when the troops went ashore at Normandy, they had nothing to handle the tough hedgerows in the area. Those hedgerows caused no end of grief until some inventive sergeant figured out how to take scrap metal from German beach defenses and mount it as hedge cutters on the front of tanks. It proved so effective that a crash program was put in place to fit hundreds of tanks with the cutters. That sergeant was rapidly promoted and justly so.

In the Pacific, they were at the low end of the priority pecking order. As a result, they had to innovate to come up with ways to make their weapons more effective. They invented tactics like skip bombing and mounted heavy machine guns and even a 75mm cannon in the nose of B-25 bombers to attack Japanese shipping. These field innovations proved so effective that they were added to new planes coming off the factory assembly lines.

Like the famous line from an otherwise forgettable movie "Heartbreak Ridge", "You improvise, you adapt, you overcome, you're Marines!" That has been true of the American soldier in every war, today is no exception