The Humvee at war: Panama, the Gulf, Somalia

1989 – 1995

First combat: The HMMWV first saw combat in Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama, in 1989. It had been designed as a behind-the-lines vehicle — personnel and light cargo transport, in the reference history's plain statement, "not as a front line fighting vehicle," with no armor and no protection against chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear threats in its basic form. Its war record has to be read against that design intent, in 1991 and again, harder, in 2003.

The Gulf War: The vehicle's fame dates from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where it was everywhere the cameras were. By the time of that war more than 72,000 Humvees had been delivered to United States and foreign customers, and the vehicle's desert performance in Operation Desert Storm made it, in the reference accounts, the inspiration for the civilian Hummer that followed within a year. Approximately 100,000 had been built by March 1995, the vehicle's tenth anniversary in service, with another 20,000 ordered by more than forty governments.

Somalia and the armor lesson: The Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, in the reference history's measured account, cost vehicles and crews heavily in urban fighting the vehicle was not designed for — though the same account notes the chassis' survivability brought the majority of those crews home. The Army's answer began there: after Operation Restore Hope, the military recognized the need for a more protected HMMWV, and AM General developed the M1114, an armored derivative built to withstand small-arms fire, in limited production from 1996 and used first in the Balkans. The armored Humvee's full course belongs to the Iraq entry below; its origin is here, in the first war record's hardest lesson.

Sources:

1. Humvee reference history — Panama 1989 as first combat; the behind-the-lines design intent; 72,000 delivered by the 1991 Gulf War; approximately 100,000 by March 1995 with 20,000 more ordered by over forty governments; the Mogadishu account and the M1114's development after Somalia, in limited production from 1996.