TAPPED Nails It on MRAP

Geez, this is unusual. I find myself in nearly complete agreement with one of the bloggers at TAPPED, the group blog run by the American Prospect. Robert Farley posts there today with a really insightful take on the hype surrounding the MRAP program, which got a front page spot in USA Today. MRAP is an exciting program, not least because it offers the chance to replace the Humvee on some of Iraq's most dangerous roads long before production begins on the Humvee's real replacement, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

BAE's RG-31 MRAP after being hit with an IED.
Of the five crew members, two received concussions, two sustained minor burns.
Photo by 8th Engineer Support Battalion

Still, there's reason to worry that we might be betting a little to heavily on MRAP. Farley links to Armchair Generalist, who writes:

Let me make a few observations. We're talking about making a multi-billion dollar procurement deal on a system that hasn't been run through any operational tests, to replace a system that cost about a fifth of the armored vehicle, and the military wants to rush production of "low rate initial production" vehicles through five contractors to meet the demand. This is a capability that hasn't been analyzed prior to the decision to go with a material solution, because it would make too much sense to suggest that a non-material solution - say, eliminating the source of the IEDs rather than beefing up the protection requirement - might be a really better idea. No, it's always better to go with the high tech solution than the tougher, but more effective, common sense approach.

I'm not a regular reader of this blog, which is advertised as offering "a progressive view on military affairs," but if this is what progressives are all about, sign me up. "Eliminating the source" is indeed the only way to stop the bleeding. MRAP is a stop-gap measure, and a good one, but the idea that we should replace every Humvee in Iraq with a truck that costs $1 million a copy--at a total cost of nearly $8 billion--may be an expensive mistake. Again, Farley: "The cost is certainly a concern. It's easy to say 'we'll spend whatever we need to protect our troops', but that obviously isn't true, and every new expense takes away from something else."

Farley goes on to point out that "insurgents are going to come up with new methods of attack, and those attacks are going to destroy these extraordinarily expensive new vehicles." They will deploy more powerful (larger) and more lethal (EFPs) devices than they have in the past, just as they did when the Army started up-armoring its fleet of Humvees. EFPs in particular are certainly capable of penetrating the armor on MRAP--they can penetrate the armor on a tank. But the insurgents don't have a silver-bullet in the EFP either. Ceramic armor and reactive armor offer U.S. forces increased protection, but neither is insurgent-proof:

"A multi-slug [EFP] causes a lot of problems," said Vernon Joynt, lead scientist for Force Protection , the South Carolina-based vehicle maker known for the improvised-explosive-device-stopping Buffalo and Cougar [the two most widely used MRAPs]. "It shoots all the slugs like a machine gun in line. Problems arise with certain kinds of ceramics. They defeat the threat but do not remain in place. They are brittle. If you have one slug hitting them it will defeat the slug but shatter in the process, so if you have a multi-slug the rest [of the slugs] will come flying through like through a tunnel."