Remember the MRAPs? As we reported last March, US military planners have scaled back plans to acquire stealthy, high-tech jets like the F-35 Lightning so that $5.3 billion could be diverted -- belatedly! -- to buy more of the heavily armored Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles that are so desperately needed by US troops serving in Iraq. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a press conference last June, "For every month we delay, scores of young Americans are going to die."
Well, get ready for more delays.
It seems the big brains at the Pentagon are surprised to learn that you can't just snap your fingers and expect a fleet of MRAPs to appear. Instead of getting 3,900 MRAPs by year-end, as defense planners had originally envisioned, production lead-times are such that they'll actually get only half that number. Stars and Stripes breaks the story:
Fewer than half the projected number of blast-resistant vehicles that the Defense Department hoped would be downrange by the end of this year are now expected to be there, a Defense official said.
The vehicles are known as MRAPs, short for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, which are heavily armored trucks with V-shaped hulls that deflect blasts from underneath.
In July, the head of the Defense Department’s MRAP task force said he expected close to 4,000 of the vehicles to be made by the end of this year.
“We should have 3,900 in hand by the end of the year and some part of that — it’s my estimate — hopefully more than that 3,500 in theater,” said John Young in a July 18 news conference.
But on Tuesday, a Defense official said the department now expects about 3,000 MRAPs to be made by the end of the year, of which about 1,500 should be in Iraq by year’s end.
“Mr. Young’s projections were based on the desire by the task force to try to increase production by bringing more vendors to the table, but the fact is that it looks like the vendor base will stay pretty much the same through the next few months,” the official said.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
LINKS:
MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected)Vehicles (DefenseLink page with articles and photos)
Cougar MRAP (Force Protection Inc. manufacturer's website)
MRAP: Survivable Rides, Start Rolling (Defense Industry Daily procurement summary)
Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles (Globalsecurity.org strategic summary)
PREVIOUSLY:
Uncle Sam Trades Stealth Jets for Armored Trucks
(Image top: A Cougar MRAP undergoes explosives testing, US Army photo via the Wikipedia. Graphic by USA Today)
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