Okay so, the ooooold school Hummer H1 was based on the military Hummer. As Cigarette_comedian mentions, the Humvee was originally a scout truck. When we got to Iraq and learned that the Iraqis weren't going to lay down and die and the insurgency started we found out that IEDs and various other weapons were very effective at taking out humvees. Soldiers started welding whatever steel they could find or steal on to the trucks for protection from IEDs, RPGs, machine gun fire, and so forth. Because remember, these were originally just bigger jeeps, they had no armor at all. This, along with the lack of body armor for infantry, caused a scandal in the US and Bush and Cheney had to rush to procure armor kits for the humvees to pretend they cared that soldiers were getting blown up. This resulted in various up-armor kits that could be bolted on to humvees to provide protection against small arms and to a lesser extent RPGs and other explosives. They couldn't really protect against IEDs, though. Insurgents could pack a hundred pounds of high explosives in to a drain pipe, bury it under the road, and weight for a patrol to come by. Boom, no more humvee, dead or injured occupiers, bad press for Bush. The the government started a rapid and sloppy procurement process for MRAPs, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected. Big, top heavy, overweight, underpowered armored trucks with V shaped hulls that would direct thee energy of a mine or blast away from the crew compartment instead of just taking the full force of the blast. These vehicles were relatively well armored against small arms, shrapnel, and in some cases RPGs, but they sucked in every other way. They were too heavy to go off road, they were too top heavy to climb grades, they were slapped together piecemeal by many different companies in a hurry so there were lots of different kinds with incompatible parts. A lot of the armored vehicles that ended up in the hands of US cops were old MRAPs the military didn't want because they were fucking useless if you had to do anything other than drive in a straight line on a sturdy, level road.
So, is the humvee an APC? No, but also it's complicated. There are armored humvees, but they were never designed for that role and the added weight causes them all kinds of problems. And the armored humvees were just a stopgap because the US had no plan for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and kept showing it's whole ass by being totally unprepared.
Okay so, the ooooold school Hummer H1 was based on the military Hummer. As Cigarette_comedian mentions, the Humvee was originally a scout truck. When we got to Iraq and learned that the Iraqis weren't going to lay down and die and the insurgency started we found out that IEDs and various other weapons were very effective at taking out humvees. Soldiers started welding whatever steel they could find or steal on to the trucks for protection from IEDs, RPGs, machine gun fire, and so forth. Because remember, these were originally just bigger jeeps, they had no armor at all. This, along with the lack of body armor for infantry, caused a scandal in the US and Bush and Cheney had to rush to procure armor kits for the humvees to pretend they cared that soldiers were getting blown up. This resulted in various up-armor kits that could be bolted on to humvees to provide protection against small arms and to a lesser extent RPGs and other explosives. They couldn't really protect against IEDs, though. Insurgents could pack a hundred pounds of high explosives in to a drain pipe, bury it under the road, and weight for a patrol to come by. Boom, no more humvee, dead or injured occupiers, bad press for Bush. The the government started a rapid and sloppy procurement process for MRAPs, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected. Big, top heavy, overweight, underpowered armored trucks with V shaped hulls that would direct thee energy of a mine or blast away from the crew compartment instead of just taking the full force of the blast. These vehicles were relatively well armored against small arms, shrapnel, and in some cases RPGs, but they sucked in every other way. They were too heavy to go off road, they were too top heavy to climb grades, they were slapped together piecemeal by many different companies in a hurry so there were lots of different kinds with incompatible parts. A lot of the armored vehicles that ended up in the hands of US cops were old MRAPs the military didn't want because they were fucking useless if you had to do anything other than drive in a straight line on a sturdy, level road.
So, is the humvee an APC? No, but also it's complicated. There are armored humvees, but they were never designed for that role and the added weight causes them all kinds of problems. And the armored humvees were just a stopgap because the US had no plan for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and kept showing it's whole ass by being totally unprepared.