Blast from the past. US Army Sterling T26 8 x 8 12-ton Heavy Truck

The M26 12 ton Truck, has always intrigued me. Here is a truck in the 1940's with a boat like armored hull, steel plates to go over the windows. So this tells me we knew full well the cost of sending unprotected convoys out there. So for the next 75 years we just did with out armor. We came up with gun trucks in Vietnam, Hillbilly Armor , Up Armored Kits, till we started getting factory assembled armored trucks. It only took how many decades, and how many lives?