http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/military_dragge.html
May 22, 2007
Military Dragged Feet on Bomb-Proof Vehicles (Updated)
By Sharon Weinberger
The Marine Corps waited over a year before acting on an "priority 1
urgent" request to send blast-resistant vehicles to Iraq, DANGER ROOM
has learned.
According to a Marine Corps document provided to DANGER ROOM, the
request for over 1,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles
came in February, 2005. http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/MRAP.pdf
A formal call to fulfill that order did not emerge until November,
2006.
"There is an immediate need for an MRAP vehicle capability to increase
survivability and mobility of Marines operating in a hazardous fire
area against known threats," the 2005 "universal need statement"
notes.
Mrap Back then -- as now -- improvised explosive devices, or IEDs --
represented the deadliest threat to American troops in the region.
"The expanded use" of these bombs "requires a more robust family of
vehicle capable of surviving the IED... threat," the document adds.
"MRAP-designed vehicles represent a significant increase in their
survivability baseline over existing motor vehicle equipment and will
mitigate... casualties resulting from IED[s]."
"The [Marines] cannot continue to lose... serious and grave
casualties to IED[s]... when a commercial off the shelf capability
exists to mititgate [against] these threats," the request continues.
Despite the stark language, however, that request was not acted upon.
Instead, the Marine Corps waited until November, 2006 to issue a
formal request for proposals to buy approximately 1,200 MRAPs.
http://www.fbo.gov/spg/DON/USMC/M67854/M6785407R5000/SynopsisP.html
Bill Johnson-Miller, a Marine Corps spokesman, tells DANGER ROOM that
the delay was perfectly justified.
"We can't just take the request from them, and put it out on the
street," he says.
A lack of manufacturing capability kept the Marines from issuing that
request, Johnson-Miller adds.
"There just wasn't anybody that could meet those requirements," he
says.
"The industrial base wasn't there."
Previously, the only American maker of MRAP-style vehicles was Force
Protection, Inc., a small firm from Ladson, South Carolina.
http://www.forceprotection.net/
During the early days of the Iraq insurgency, the firm used a staff of
12 to hand-build a single vehicle per month.
By the fall of 2006, 400 employees were cranking out a vehicle per
day, http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,119517,00.html and the
company had signed partnership agreements with some of the giants of
the defense industry, including General Dynamics and BAE Systems.
Delays in responding to requests from the field are not uncommon in
the Defense Department's often-byzantine bureaucracy for buying
equipment.
But what sets the MRAP request apart is the urgency of the plea -- and
the tremendous stakes involved.
Since the Iraq insurgency began, improvised bombs have been
responsible for 1,373 of the nearly 3,422 American servicemembers
killed in action, according to icasualties.org.
The military, as far back as 2004 had requested industry information
on MRAP vehicles.
And in May, 2006, the Marines asked for a relative handful of the
vehicles -- just 185 in all.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-27-mrap-military_N.htm
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Is this the way the Republican administration supports our troops?
Harry
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