The first wave of MRAPs arrived in Iraq in 2007.
Earlier this month, the Marines said they wouldn’t be needing all the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles the corps bought for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, they only want to hold on to 1,200 of the 4,000 heavily-armored behemoths they have. “It is a rather unique vehicle and it does have some limitations on it,” Marine Lieut. General Richard Mills said May 14.
Now comes the Army, which says it wants to hang on to only 8,000 of the 21,000 MRAPs it procured for the two conflicts. It plans to keep 4,000 in operational Army units, with a second 4,000 held in reserve “in case we need them for other contingencies,” General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said last Wednesday.
At a cost of up to $1 million each, that works out to some $15 billion in excess armor.
It’s easy to deride the investment in hindsight, as Battleland’s Alex Rogers reported last fall. But that wasn’t the case back in 2007 when then-defense secretary Robert Gates ordered them built lickety-split – with many flown direct from factory to battlefield – to protect U.S. troops from the growing threat posed by improvised explosive devices in both wars.
“We think it’s the best use of what’s left of our MRAP fleet,” Odierno told a Senate panel. “We can’t afford to sustain 21,000 MRAPs because it would be in addition to all the other equipment that we have to sustain.” He added that he wanted “to thank Congress for everything they did to get” MRAPs to the war zones “so quickly.”
Just not quickly enough for the Odierno family. In 2004, son Tony, an Army lieutenant, was riding along Baghdad’s dangerous Airport Road when a rocket-propelled grenade shredded his door on a less-heavily armored Humvee. The lack of protection cost him his left arm – and his driver his life.