In a similar saga to the 'Snatch' Land Rover, the US Humvee was found critically vulnerable during the early days of the Iraq Insurgency
In 2004 I was working as a private security contractor based in Baghdad during the height of the insurgency in Iraq. There were bombings and rocket attacks daily. Walking through the Green Zone one day, I noticed a convoy of US Humvees, each one fitted with bolt-on steel armour and mounting a .5 Browning heavy machine gun (HMG)
These improvised gunships were the answer to the deadly threat posed by the insurgents. Roadside bombs and small arms attacks had been causing increasing casualties among crews manning these soft-skinned vehicles. In a saga similar to the British Snatch Land Rover, the Humvee had been found tragically vulnerable to both enemy fire and IEDs.
The alloy skin of a standard Humvee would not even stop the 7.62 round from an AK and US troops in the theatre were relying on sandbags, plywood and cannibalised armour for protection.
