"For every month we delay, scores of young Americans are going to die," he said Friday at a Pentagon press conference.

Gates has adopted a decidedly contrary attitude to that of his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, who once told a soldier in Kuwait who complained about the lack of armor on his Humvee that "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have,"

Gates said he was initially told it would take at least 60 days after the vehicles were built to fit them out with communications equipment and ship them to Iraq.

"I basically said that I didn't think that was acceptable," Gates said. "And the way I have put it to everyone is that you have to look outside the normal bureaucratic way of doing things. And so does industry, because lives are at stake."

He said it would be several months before the multiple companies who have been awarded contracts to build versions of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle can begin producing "many hundreds" a month.

"They're working hard to figure out a way to cut the timelines on this, but I think that a significant flow is probably a few months off. But right now, I want them there fast enough that we're actually flying some of these vehicles to Iraq," Gates said.

The U.S. military in Iraq wants more than 17,000 of the vehicles to do a one-for-one replacement of the up-armored Humvee.