WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- The number of U.S. troops killed while riding in Humvees has gone up this year, despite newly enhanced armor plating, USA Today reported Wednesday.
The first four months of 2005 saw 27 Humvee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, where insurgents are using increasingly powerful roadside bombs.
That prompted the military to scramble to refit about 50,000 of the vehicles, but numbers for the first four months of 2006 show no apparent benefit, the newspaper said.
This year, Pentagon casualty reports say 67 U.S. troops have died in attacks on their Humvees.
"The enemy adapts to everything we do," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Va. "It's not that we haven't found solutions. It's that the enemy has found ways to work around our solutions."
