Pentagon Balked at Pleas From Officers in Field for Safer Vehicles
By Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Tom Vanden Brook
USA TODAY
Monday 16 July 2007
In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates late last month,
two US senators said the delays cost the lives of an estimated "621
to 742 Americans" who would have survived explosions had they been in
MRAPs, rather than Humvees.
Pfc. Aaron Kincaid, 25, had been joking with buddies just before
their Humvee rolled over the bomb. His wife, Rachel, later learned
that the blast blew Kincaid, a father of two from outside Atlanta,
through the Humvee's metal roof.
Army investigators who reviewed the Sept. 23 attack near Riyadh,
Iraq, wrote in their report that only providence could have saved
Kincaid from dying that day: "There was no way short of not going on
that route at that time (that) this tragedy could have been diverted."
A USA TODAY investigation of the Pentagon's efforts to protect
troops in Iraq suggests otherwise.
Years before the war began, Pentagon officials knew of the
effectiveness of another type of vehicle that better shielded troops
from bombs like those that have killed Kincaid and 1,500 other
soldiers and Marines. But military officials repeatedly balked at
appeals - from commanders on the battlefield and from the Pentagon's
own staff - to provide the life-saving Mine Resistant Ambush
Protected vehicle, or MRAP, for patrols and combat missions, USA
TODAY found.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates late last month,
two U.S. senators said the delays cost the lives of an estimated "621
to 742 Americans" who would have survived explosions had they been in
MRAPs, rather than Humvees.
The letter, from Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Kit Bond, R-Mo.,
assumed the initial calls for MRAPs came in February 2005, when
Marines in Iraq asked the Pentagon for almost 1,200 of the vehicles.
USA TODAY found that the first appeals for the MRAP came much earlier.
As early as December 2003, when the Marines requested their first
27 MRAPs for explosive disposal teams, Pentagon analysts sent
detailed information about the superiority of the vehicles to the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, e-mails obtained by USA TODAY show. Later
pleas came from Iraq, where commanders saw that the approach the
Joint Chiefs embraced - adding armor to the sides of Humvees, the
standard vehicles in the war zone - did little to protect against
blasts beneath the vehicles.
Despite the efforts, the general who chaired the Joint Chiefs
until Oct. 1, 2005, says buying MRAPs "was not on the radar screen
when I was chairman." Air Force general Richard Myers, now retired,
says top military officials dealt with a number of vehicle issues,
including armoring Humvees. The MRAP, however, was "not one of them."
Something related to MRAPs "might have crossed my desk," Myers says,
"but I don't recall it."
Why the issue never received more of a hearing from top officials
early in the war remains a mystery, given the chorus of concern. One
Pentagon analyst complained in an April 29, 2004, e-mail to
colleagues, for instance, that it was "frustrating to see the
pictures of burning Humvees while knowing that there are other
vehicles out there that would provide more protection."
The analyst was referring to the MRAP, whose V-shaped hull puts
the crew more than 3 feet off the ground and deflects explosions. It
was designed to withstand the underbelly bombs that cripple the
lower-riding Humvees. Pentagon officials, civilians and military
alike, had been searching for technologies to guard against
improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The makeshift bombs are the
No. 1 killer of U.S. forces.
The MRAP was not new to the Pentagon. The technology had been
developed in South Africa and Rhodesia in the 1970s, making it older
than Kincaid and most of the other troops killed by homemade bombs.
The Pentagon had tested MRAPs in 2000, purchased fewer than two dozen
and sent some to Iraq. They were used primarily to protect explosive
ordnance disposal teams, not to transport troops or to chase Iraqi
insurgents.
The Goal: Iraqis "Stand Up" so US Can "Stand Down"
Even as the Pentagon balked at buying MRAPs for U.S. troops, USA
TODAY found that the military pushed to buy them for a different
fighting force: the Iraqi army.
On Dec. 22, 2004 - two weeks after President Bush told families
of servicemembers that "we're doing everything we possibly can to
protect your loved ones" - a U.S. Army general solicited ideas for an
armored vehicle for the Iraqis. The Army had an "extreme interest" in
getting troops better armor, then-brigadier general Roger Nadeau told
a subordinate looking at foreign technology, in an e-mail obtained by
USA TODAY.
In a follow-up message, Nadeau clarified his request: "What I
failed to point out in my first message to you folks is that the US
Govt is interested not for US use, but for possible use in fielding
assets to the Iraqi military forces."
In response, Lt. Col. Clay Brown, based in Australia, sent
information on two types of MRAPs manufactured overseas. "By all
accounts, these are some of the best in the world," he wrote. "If I
were fitting out the Iraqi Army, this is where I'd look (wish we had
some!)"
The first contract for what would become the Iraqi Light Armored
Vehicle - virtually identical to the MRAPs sought by U.S. forces then
and now, and made in the United States by BAE Systems - was issued in
May 2006. The vehicles, called Badgers, began arriving in Iraq 90
days later, according to BAE. In September 2006, the Pentagon said it
would provide up to 600 more to Iraqi forces. As of this spring, 400
had been delivered.
The rush to equip the Iraqis stood in stark contrast to the
Pentagon's efforts to protect U.S. troops.
In February 2005, two months after Nadeau solicited ideas for
better armor for the Iraqis and was told MRAPs were an answer, an
urgent-need request for the same type of vehicle came from embattled
Marines in Anbar province. The request, signed by then-brigadier
general Dennis Hejlik, said the Marines "cannot continue to lose Š
serious and grave casualties to IEDs Š at current rates when a
commercial off-the-shelf capability exists to mitigate" them.
Officials at Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va., shelved the
request for 1,169 vehicles. Fifteen months passed before a second
request reached the Joint Chiefs and was approved. Those vehicles
finally began trickling into Anbar in February, two years after the
original request. Because of the delay, the Marines are investigating
how its urgent-need requests are handled.
The long delay infuriates some members of Congress. "Every day,
our troops are being maimed or killed needlessly because we haven't
fielded this soon enough," says Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss. "The costs
are in human lives, in kids who will never have their legs again,
people blind, crippled. That's the real tragedy."
Not until two months ago did the Pentagon champion the MRAP for
all U.S. forces. Gates made MRAPs the military's top priority. The
plan is to build the vehicles as fast as possible until conditions
warrant a change, according to a military official who has direct
knowledge of the program but is not authorized to speak on the
record. Thousands are in the pipeline at a cost so far of about $2.4
billion.
Gates said he was influenced by a press report - originally in
USA TODAY - that disclosed Marine units using MRAPs in Anbar reported
no deaths in about 300 roadside bombings in the past year. His tone
was grave. "For every month we delay," he said, "scores of young
Americans are going to die."
One reason officials put off buying MRAPs in significant
quantities: They never expected the war to last this long. President
Bush set the tone on May 1, 2003, six weeks after the U.S. invasion,
when he declared on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that
"major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq from June 2004 until
February this year, repeatedly said that troop levels in Iraq would
be cut just as soon as Iraqi troops took more responsibility for
security. In March 2005, he predicted "very substantial reductions"
in U.S. troops by early 2006. He said virtually the same thing a year
later.
Casey wasn't the only optimist. In May 2005, Vice President
Cheney declared that the insurgency was "in its last throes."
Given the view that the war would end soon, the Pentagon had
little use for expensive new vehicles such as the MRAP, at least not
in large quantities. The MRAPs ordered for the Iraqis were intended
to speed the day when, to use Bush's words, Iraqi forces could "stand
up" and the United States could "stand down."
Nadeau, who wrote the e-mail that led to MRAPs for the Iraqis,
explains why he did so: "The U.S. government knows that eventually
we're going to get out" of Iraq. The United States wants "to help get
(the Iraqis) in a position to take care of themselves."
For U.S. forces, however, the answer was something else: adding
armor to Humvees. Nadeau and others say the choice made sense because
Humvees were already in Iraq and the improvements - adding steel to
the sides, upgrading the windows and replacing the canvas doors -
could be made quickly, and far more cheaply. Adding armor to a Humvee
cost only $14,000; a Humvee armored at the factory cost $191,000;
today, an MRAP costs between $600,000 and $1 million, though some
foreign models cost only about $200,000 in 2004.
The solution to the IED problem in 2003 had to be "immediate,"
says retired vice admiral Gordon Holder, director for logistics for
the Joint Chiefs until mid-2004. "We had to stop the bleeding."
Holder says MRAPs seemed impractical for the immediate need: "We
shouldn't take four years to field something the kids needed
yesterday."
Would it actually have taken four years? That depends upon how
much urgency the Pentagon and Congress attached to speeding
production. Force Protection Inc., the small South Carolina company
that landed the first significant MRAP contracts, was criticized this
month by the Pentagon's inspector general for failing to deliver its
vehicles on time. But bigger defense contractors were available then
- and have secured MRAP contracts in recent weeks that call for
deliveries in as little as four months.
A bigger obstacle might have been philosophical: The MRAP didn't
fit the Pentagon's long-term vision of how the military should be
equipped.
Then-Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld regarded the Iraq war "as
a means to change" the military, "make it lighter, make it more
responsive, make it more agile," Holder says. The MRAP, heavier and
slower than the Humvee, wouldn't have measured up, he says.
The Commander: "My No. 1 Threat"
By June 2004, the military had lost almost 200 U.S. troops to the
homemade bombs. Gen. John Abizaid, then head of U.S. Central Command,
told the Joint Chiefs that "IEDs are my No. 1 threat." He called for
a "mini-Manhattan Project" against IEDs, akin to the task force that
developed the atomic bomb during World War II.
The Pentagon organized a small task force that, two years later,
morphed into a full-fledged agency - the Joint IED Defeat
Organization, or JIEDDO. Its leader, Montgomery Meigs, is a retired
four-star general. Its annual budget totals $4.3 billion. Its
mission: to stop IEDs from killing U.S. troops.
In one of its PowerPoint presentations, JIEDDO made its
priorities clear. First, prevent IEDs from being planted by attacking
the insurgency. Then, if a device is planted, prevent it from
exploding. "When all Else Fails," reads another slide, "Survive the
blast." That put solutions such as the MRAP into the category of last
resorts.
JIEDDO did spend its own money for 122 MRAPs, but it primarily
focused on electronic jammers to prevent bombs from being remotely
detonated, unmanned surveillance aircraft to catch insurgents putting
bombs along roads and better intelligence on who was building and
planting bombs.
The agency has claimed some successes. Insurgents in 2007 had to
plant six times as many bombs as they did in 2004 to inflict the same
number of U.S. casualties, Meigs said in an interview.
But the insurgents - Sunnis loyal to the deposed leader Saddam
Hussein, Shiites who hated the U.S. occupiers and foreigners aligned
with al-Qaeda - often managed to stay one step ahead of JIEDDO. They
changed the kind of explosives they planted and varied the locations
of the devices and the way they detonated them.
When the Pentagon added armor to the sides of Humvees to guard
against bombs planted along roadsides, the insurgents responded by
burying bombs in the roads. The bombs could blast through the
vulnerable underbelly of the Humvees. The insurgents also moved to
larger, more sophisticated bombs, some packed with as much as 100
pounds of explosives.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, the No. 2 official at
the Pentagon, testified on Capitol Hill in June that "as the threat
has evolved, we have evolved. We work very, very hard to be
responsible to our troops."
Taylor, the Democratic congressman from Mississippi, pressed
England about why the Pentagon waited until May to request
substantial numbers of MRAPs. "Are you telling me no one could see
that (need) coming, no one could recognize that the bottom of the
Humvee" didn't protect troops, and "that's why the kids inside are
losing their legs and their lives?" Taylor asked.
"That is too simplistic a description," England replied. "People
have not died needlessly, and we have not left our people without
equipment."
To Pentagon decision-makers, the Humvee seemed able to handle the
threat early in the war - roadside bombs, rather than those buried in
the roads. "If anybody could have guessed in 2003 that we would be
looking at these kind of (high-powered, buried) IEDs that we're
seeing now in 2007, then we would have been looking at something much
longer" term as a solution, Holder says. "But who had the crystal
ball back then?"
Nadeau, now a major general in charge of the Army's Test and
Evaluation Command in Alexandria, Va., also defends the Pentagon's
choices. He says buried IEDs did not become a serious threat to the
armored Humvees until 2006. Critics might say, " 'Why didn't you guys
buy 16,000 MRAPs a decade ago?' " Nadeau says today. "You know, I
didn't need them."
Six officers interviewed by USA TODAY say the threat to the
Humvees surfaced sooner. Lt. Col. Dallas Eubanks, chief of operations
for the Army's 4th Infantry Division in 2003-04, says IEDs became
more menacing before he left Iraq. "We were certainly seeing
underground IEDs by early 2004," he says.
In mid-2005, two top Marines - Gen. William Nyland, assistant
Marine commandant, and Maj. Gen. William Catto, head of Marine Corps
Systems Command - testified before Congress that they were seeing an
"evolving" threat from underbelly blasts. They said at the time that
armored Humvees remained their best defense.
The Congressman: MRAP's "Simple" Advantage
Just after lunch on June 27, 2004, a group of enlisted men parked
a handful of armored vehicles near a cinderblock building at Marine
headquarters in Fallujah, Iraq.
The day had turned sweltering, like every summer afternoon in
central Iraq. But this day was special. A congressional delegation
had arrived, and among the dignitaries was Rep. Duncan Hunter, then
the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter wasn't
just a powerful congressman. He was a Vietnam War veteran, and his
son, then a 27-year-old Marine lieutenant also named Duncan, was
stationed at the base.
More important to most of the Marines, the California Republican
had been instrumental in pushing the Pentagon to get better armor for
them. Humvees with cloth doors - canvas, like the crusher hat that
Hunter wore that day - had been standard issue when the war began.
The fabric worked well to shield the sun; it offered no protection
against explosives.
Then, as now, Hunter was impatient with the pace of procurement
in Iraq. That winter, he had dispatched his staff to steel mills,
where they persuaded managers and union leaders to set aside
commercial orders to expedite steel needed to armor the Humvees. He
also worked with the Army and its contractors to expand production.
In Fallujah, Hunter recognized the Humvees. He couldn't identify
the two vehicles next to them. One was called a Cougar, the other a
Buffalo. Both were MRAPs, made by Force Protection Inc., and both, he
was told, were coveted. They were used by explosives disposal teams,
but combat units "looked at them and said, 'We want those,' " Hunter
recalls.
Throughout most of Iraq, they still haven't arrived.
Despite requests from the field, Pentagon officials decided to
ration the vehicle. In 2003 and 2004, they bought about 55, and only
for explosives disposal units. But they chose a different approach
for protecting the rest of the troops: adding armor to Humvees. The
choice was problematic. The Humvee's flat bottom channels an
explosion through the center of the vehicle, toward the occupants.
Memos and e-mails obtained by USA TODAY show a stream of concerns
about the decision to armor the Humvee. Most went up the chain of
command and withered:
* December 2003: At the direction of then-deputy Defense
secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was troubled by the mounting death toll
from IEDs, the Joint Chiefs began to explore options for giving
troops better armor. Detailed information on the Wer'Wolf, an MRAP
made in the African country of Namibia, was passed from analysts in
the Pentagon to Lt. Col. Steven Ware, an aide collecting information
for the Joint Chiefs.
* March 30, 2004: Gen. Larry Ellis, in charge of U.S. Forces
Command in Atlanta, sent a memo to the Army's chief of staff, Gen.
Peter Schoomaker. He complained that "some Army members and agencies
are still in a peacetime posture." U.S. commanders in Iraq told him
that the armored Humvee "is not providing the solution the Army hoped
to achieve." He didn't recommend MRAPs but rather suggested
accelerating production of a combat vehicle called the Stryker. In
response, the military said new Humvee armor kits would suffice.
* April 28-29, 2004: Duncan Lang, a Pentagon analyst who worked
in acquisition and technology, suggested purchasing the Wer'Wolf, the
MRAP put before the Joint Chiefs in December 2003. In an e-mail to
colleagues and supervisors, Lang said "a number could be sent to Iraq
"as quickly as, or even more quickly than, additional armored
Humvees." He called it "frustrating to see the pictures of burning
Humvees while knowing that there are other vehicles out there that
would provide more protection."
* April 30, 2004: Another Pentagon analyst, Air Force Lt. Col.
Bob Harris, forwarded details about MRAP options to a member of the
IED task force. The list included a variety of MRAPs, among them the
Wer'Wolf and Force Protection's Cougar. "There was no great clarity
as to why they didn't pursue these options," Harris says. "I saw it
as my job to educate." Harris is now an acquisition officer at
Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
Hunter says the advantages the MRAP had on the Humvee were clear.
"It's a simple formula," Hunter says. "A vehicle that's 1 foot off
the ground gets 16 times that (blast) impact that you get in a
vehicle that's 4 feet off the ground," like the MRAP.
Although Hunter favored adding armor to Humvees, he now calls the
military's devotion to that approach a costly mistake. "It's true
that they saved more lives by moving first on up-armoring the
Humvees," he says. "The flaw is that they did nothing on MRAPs. The
up-armoring of Humvees didn't have to be an exclusive operation."
Holder dismisses the idea that the Pentagon could have moved on a
dual track: armoring Humvees while ordering up MRAPs. He doubts
Congress would have funded both at the time. But that's exactly what
Congress is doing now - buying both vehicles.
"We probably should've had the foresight" to start buying MRAPs
earlier, says Ware, the Joint Chiefs aide (now retired) who passed
the information to superiors and counterparts in the Army and
Marines. But "we just couldn't get them there fast enough." Adding
armor to the Humvee, Ware says, "was better than nothing."
The Lieutenant Colonel: "Hope No One Gets Wasted"
A PowerPoint presentation, dated Aug. 25, 2004, shows wounded
troops lying in hospital beds. Most are bandaged. One is bloody. His
left eye is barely open, his injured right is covered by a patch.
Each was maimed by an IED. Each, save one, was in a Humvee.
On another slide: "Numerous vehicles on the market provide far
superior ballistic protection" than the Humvee, wrote then-lieutenant
colonel Jim Hampton, the man who prepared the presentation for the
operations staff of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad.
Safety is a passion for Hampton. He's so concerned with security
that he asks his wife, Kate, to take her pistol when she goes for
walks on their 80 acres in rural Mississippi. When he got to Iraq in
early 2004, he was tasked with looking at armor options to protect
the Corps of Engineers, the agency sent to help with rebuilding
efforts. For weeks, he studied armor options. His conclusion: The
corps should get MRAPs to protect its people, specifically
Wer'Wolves. Hampton says he asked for 53 Wer'Wolves. The corps got
four.
Hampton couldn't have been more opposed to up-armoring the
Humvees and warned his superiors. He even e-mailed his wife from
Iraq. "Hey Babe," his e-mail read. "Just a little aggravated with the
bureaucracy. It is simply beyond my comprehension why we're having to
go through such (an ordeal) to order confounded hard vehicles. I sure
hope no one gets wasted before the powers-that-be get off their
collective fat asses."
Finally, he wrote his congressman, Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss.,
urging him to investigate deaths involving the Humvee. "We would
never consider sending troops" in Humvees "up against armor or
artillery," Hampton wrote, "but this is tantamount to what we're
doing because these vehicles are being engaged with the very ordnance
delivered by artillery in the form of improvised explosive devices."
By November 2004, Pentagon analyst Lang had grown discouraged, an
e-mail shows. "I have found that you can never put the word out too
many times," he wrote on Nov. 17. "I send it on to (the Secretary of
Defense's office), Army and (Marine Corps) contacts I have. Some of
it is getting to the rapid fielding folks and force protection folks
that are looking at Iraq issues. I do not see much action."
Lang closed the message with a variation on his earlier plea:
"For the life of me, I cannot figure out why we have not taken better
advantage of the sources of such vehicles," he wrote. "We should be
buying 200, not 2, at a time. These things work, they save lives and
they don't cost much, if any, more than what we are using now." At
the time, a basic Wer'Wolf cost about the same as a factory-made
armored Humvee: around $200,000.
In December 2004, at a town hall meeting with troops in Kuwait, a
soldier asked Rumsfeld about the lack of armor on military vehicles.
Rumsfeld explained the situation this way: "You go to war with the
Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at
a later time."
The concerns troops voiced at the meeting might have had an
impact. Within a week, the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico
posted its first notice seeking information on MRAPs from potential
contractors.
Back in Fallujah, the desire for the Cougar had grown. By
February 2005, the Marines were formally asking for more. Field
commanders sent their first large-scale request for MRAPs, seeking
1,169 vehicles with specifications that closely mirrored those of the
Cougar. They no longer envisioned the vehicle as limited to
explosives disposal teams; they wanted MRAPs for combat troops, too.
Roy McGriff III, then a major, drafted the request signed by
Brig. Gen. Hejlik. "MRAP vehicles will protect Marines, reduce
casualties, increase mobility and enhance mission success," the
request read. "Without MRAP, personnel loss rates are likely to
continue at their current rate." In spring 2005, he would have a
chance to argue his case before top generals.
The Marine Major: "Unnecessary" Casualties
They convened March 29-30, 2005, at the Marine Corps Air Station
in Miramar, Calif. The occasion: a safety board meeting, a regular
gathering to address safety issues across the Corps. In attendance:
five three-star generals, four two-stars, seven one-stars and McGriff.
McGriff knew the MRAP's history and the Pentagon's reluctance to
invest in the vehicle. He had learned about the vehicle from a fellow
Marine, Wayne Sinclair. Sinclair, then a captain, wrote in the July
1996 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette that "an affordable answer to
the land mine was developed over 20 years ago. It's time that Marines
at the sharp end shared in. .. this discovery."
Addressing the generals, McGriff recommended analyzing every
incident involving Marine vehicles the same way investigators probe
aircraft crashes. Look at the vehicle for flaws, McGriff recalls
telling the officers, and examine the tactics used to defeat it.
Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, commander of Marine Corps Forces in the
Pacific, and Lt. Gen. James Mattis, leader of the Marine Combat
Development Command, listened and then conferred for a moment.
The room grew quiet. "Then they said, 'OK, what do you want to
do?' " McGriff remembers.
He recited the very plan that the Pentagon, under a new Defense
secretary, would embrace in 2007: "A phased transition. Continue to
armor Humvees. At the same time, as quickly and as expeditiously as
possible, purchase as many MRAPs as possible. Phase out Humvees."
According to McGriff, the room again grew silent. Then, Mattis
finally spoke: "That's exactly what we're going to do." Mattis' words
failed to translate into action. The urgent-need request McGriff
drafted went unfulfilled at Marine headquarters in Quantico. A June
10, 2005, status report on the request indicated the Marine Corps was
holding out for a "future vehicle," presumably the Joint Light
Tactical Vehicle - more mobile than the MRAP, more protective than
the Humvee, and due in 2012. In practical terms, that meant no MRAPs
immediately.
McGriff foresaw some of the turmoil over vehicles in a prophetic
2003 paper for the School for Advanced Warfighting in Quantico.
"Currently, our underprotected vehicles result in casualties that
are politically untenable and militarily unnecessary," his paper
read. "Failure to build a MRAP vehicle fleet produces a deteriorating
cascade of effects that will substantially increase" risks for the
military while "rendering it tactically immobile." Mines and IEDs
will force U.S. troops off the roads, he wrote, and keep them from
aggressively attacking insurgents.
The words were strong and the conclusions were damning. Rhodesia,
a nation with nothing near the resources of the U.S. military, had
built MRAPs more than a quarter-century earlier that remained "more
survivable than any comparable vehicle produced by the U.S. today,"
McGriff wrote.
Despite his views then, McGriff, now a lieutenant colonel, says
he understands the delays. MRAPs needed to be tested to ensure they
could perform in combat. "Nothing happens fast enough when people are
fighting and dying," he says today. "But amidst the chaos, you still
have to make the right choices. In the end, I think the Marines got
the MRAP capability as quickly and safely as possible."
Others disagree.
Marine Maj. Franz Gayl, now retired, was science adviser to the
1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. He saw how Marines were still
being killed or maimed in Anbar in the fall of 2006. If the Marine
Corps had decided MRAPs were a top priority, he says, it could and
should have pursued them with the same urgency the Pentagon is now
showing.
"The ramp-up of industry capacity was delayed by over 11Ž2
years," Gayl says, "until it became the dire emergency that it is
today."
Bureaucrats didn't want the MRAP sooner "because it would compete
against" armored Humvees and "many other favored programs" for
funding, Gayl says. Gayl, who works as a civilian for the Marines at
the Pentagon, has filed for federal whistle-blower protection because
he fears retaliation for speaking out about the failure to get MRAPs
sooner.
Defense Secretary Gates: "Lives Are at Stake"
After McGriff addressed the generals in March 2005, another 15
months passed. Then the Marines in Iraq reiterated the request for
MRAPs. This time, they sent the request directly to the Joint Chiefs.
This time they were successful.
In December 2006, after insurgent bombs had killed almost 1,200
U.S. troops in Iraq, the Joint Chiefs validated requests from Iraq
for 4,060 MRAPs, and the formal MRAP program was launched.
By March 2007, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway called the
vehicle his "No. 1 unfilled warfighting requirement."
In part, that's because he saw it save lives in Anbar province.
Brig. Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of coalition forces there,
says the Marines tracked attacks on MRAPs since January 2006. The
finding: Marines in armored Humvees are twice as likely to be badly
wounded in an IED attack as those in MRAPs.
Perhaps more convincing: No Marines have been killed in more than
300 attacks on MRAPs there.
The news, revealed in USA TODAY on April 19, drew the attention
of Defense Secretary Gates, four months into his job at the Pentagon.
He was traveling in Iraq and read about the MRAP's success in the
Pentagon's daily news roundup. Weeks later, at a news conference,
Gates said the Pentagon would rush MRAPs to Iraq "as best we can."
Late last month, top Pentagon officials approved an Army strategy
for buying as many as 17,700 MRAPs, allowing a one-for-one swap for
its armored Humvees. About 5,200 MRAPs had been approved for the
other services. Now, Pentagon officials decline to say exactly how
many MRAPs they need.
One official says they'll build MRAPs as fast as possible, then
recalibrate the military's needs as they assess operations in Iraq, a
tacit acknowledgment that they may need fewer MRAPs as U.S. troops
are withdrawn.
During another news conference late last month, Gates worried
that the companies building the MRAP - not only Force Protection but
BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Oshkosh Truck, Armor Holdings,
International Military and Government and Protected Vehicles - won't
be able to get the vehicles to Iraq fast enough.
"I didn't think that was acceptable," Gates said. "Lives are at
stake."
The Young Lieutenant: "Safest Vehicle Ever"
As the sun began to bake the Iraqi countryside last month, Marine
2nd Lt. George Saenz headed back to his base on the outskirts in
Fallujah. He felt oddly joyful.
Saenz had just spent hours leading his platoon through one of the
most excruciating battlefield jobs - inching a convoy along the
crumbling streets of Fallujah, searching for homemade bombs planted
in the asphalt or dirt.
The night before had proved dangerous. Two bombs had blown up
underneath Saenz's convoy, including one beneath his vehicle.
As Saenz turned through the gray blast walls protecting the base,
he says he couldn't help but think: If I had been riding a Humvee, I
wouldn't be here right now.
Saenz knew why he was alive. His platoon in the 6th Marine
Regiment Combat Team had replaced its Humvees with MRAPs. The two
blasts produced just one injury, a Marine whose concussion put him on
light duty for a week.
"We're probably in the safest vehicle ever designed for military
use," Saenz says, recalling his platoon's record: Three months.
Eleven bomb attacks. No one dead.
MRAPs have become legendary in Anbar since Marines began using
them on dangerous missions clearing roadside bombs. Tank commanders,
radio operators and others drop by Saenz's platoon every day to do
what Rep. Hunter had done three years earlier - inspect the small
fleet of MRAPs, knock on the armor, sometimes crawl inside.
Scores of MRAPs are scheduled to arrive in Anbar this summer.
That means they'll be available for the first time to the Marines for
tasks other than clearing IEDs, says Marine Col. Mike Rudolph,
logistics officer for U.S. forces in western Iraq. No one has decided
how MRAPs will be used, but "everybody wants one," Rudolph says.
To be sure, the vehicle isn't perfect. Saenz's team warns that
MRAPs drive like trucks, plodding and heavy. Some models are so bulky
they leave blind spots for troops peering over the boxy hood and so
noisy a driver has to shout at someone 2 feet away.
"They're just so heavy," Sgt. Randall Miller says. "These are
virtually designed off a semi-truck platform."
After substantial testing, the military also has concluded that
MRAPs are vulnerable to explosively formed projectiles, the newest
and most devastating variation of the IED. More armor has been
developed for the MRAPs the Pentagon ordered this spring.
Miller isn't complaining. On his first tour in Iraq in 2004-05,
Miller searched for land mines in a Humvee. His detection technique
was simple: "Go real slow, cross your fingers." He still drives
slowly but feels safer knowing the MRAP's V-shaped hull will deflect
a bomb blast. "I've seen our guys get hit and walk away," Miller
says. "They're awesome, awesome vehicles."
The Widow: "They Should've Done It" Sooner
Whom or what is to blame for the delay in getting safer vehicles
for the 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq?
Jim Hampton, now a retired colonel, questions why the Pentagon
and Congress didn't do more to keep the troops safe. "I have
colleagues who say people need to go to jail over this, and in my
mind they do," Hampton says.
Hunter, now running for President, blames the Pentagon
bureaucracy, which he says "doesn't move fast enough to meet the
needs of the war fighter. We have a system in which the warfighting
requirements are requested from the field and the acquisition people
say, 'We'll get to it on our schedule.' "
Other members of Congress blame Rumsfeld and his vision of
transforming the military into a leaner, faster fighting force.
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., wonders if Rumsfeld's forceful
personality silenced some of the generals. "Rumsfeld so intimidated
the military that I've lost confidence in them telling us what they
really need" in Iraq, Murtha says.
"They all knew the Rumsfeld rule: Your career is over if you say
anything contrary" to his policies, Murtha says. "It's much better
now that Rumsfeld is gone. The military is being much more honest."
If the Pentagon "had just listened to the guys in the field" who
wanted MRAPs, Murtha says, "we'd have them in Iraq right now."
USA TODAY could not determine what role, if any, Rumsfeld played
in MRAP deliberations. A spokesman for Rumsfeld, now running a
foundation in Washington, said last week that the former Defense
secretary would not comment.
Aaron Kincaid's widow, Rachel, doesn't know who should be held
accountable. She is haunted by whether getting MRAPs to Iraq earlier
might have saved her husband's life. The bomb that blew apart his
Humvee lay along the path he and his unit took, and no one noticed.
Today, she wonders: Was his death really about the path that he
took, or about the path the Pentagon spent years avoiding, the path
that, in May, finally led them to the vehicle that might have saved
her husband's life?
"You think there is always something that could've been done to
prevent it," Rachel Kincaid says of her husband's death.
"If that's been around for that many years," she says of the
MRAP, "why hasn't it been used? They should've done it at the
beginning of the war. They should've done it three years ago, four
years ago."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/071607S.shtml
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get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.
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