We've been following for a while now the effort to deploy some 4,100 mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles to Iraq by the end of this year. The Army and Marines only have a couple hundred of the vehicles--which feature a v-shaped hull designed to deflect the force of an IED blast as well as substantially stronger armor than the up-armored Humvee--in Iraq at the moment, but the Navy is currently evaluating nine commercially available MRAPs for the contract.
Megan Scully, writing at National Journal, has the story on a Marine Corps request for an additional $2.7 billion in funding to purchase 2,700 more MRAPs in FY 2008. That request was not included in the Bush administration's budget proposal:
The Marine Corps already has received enough funding for this fiscal year to buy 805 vehicles, known as MRAPs. And service officials have requested enough money in the fiscal 2007 wartime supplemental to buy another 244 vehicles later this year, fulfilling the service's initial MRAP order.
But the Marine Corps requested only two MRAPs in the fiscal 2008 emergency spending request that the Bush administration sent to Congress last week along with next year's base budget proposal.
One of the companies competing for the initial contract is Force Protection, Inc., which has formed a joint ventured with General Dynamics called Force Dynamics, LLC. I spoke with the vice president of Force Protection, Mike Aldrich, not to long ago about what that company is doing to get more of their MRAP vehicles in the field. Aldrich told me that the company has had vehicles in constant delivery since July 2003 and that they "expect to win a major portion" of the new contract at least, though there is a "distinct possibility that [the Pentagon] goes with multiple suppliers." He said the firm would be producing vehicles at a rate of 200 each month by this summer and production would peak at 300 vehicles a month in early 2008.
Aldrich also said that "this is the most important program in Washington right now," because it is "the only program that is going to stop the bleeding" in Iraq. I'm inclined to agree with Aldrich. The MRAP offers the American military a real chance to neutralize the IED threat, which is by far the largest contributor to American casualties in Iraq. Aldrich also said that his company planned to build the vehicles regardless of whether or not they would be deployed to Iraq, saying "they will be used here if not over there." A bit of hyperbole, but Aldrich isn't wrong to say that this is the best chance we have for reducing American casualties in the short-term, so why would the administration, which provided the Joint IED Defeat Organization with a budget of more than $6 billion, short-change the Marine Corps' request for a mere $2 billion to deploy a proven tactical solution to the IED problem?
Here are some pics of the MRAP vehicles made by Force Protection.
Above, The Buffalo Category 3 MRAP; Below, The Cougar 4X4, Category 2 MRAP
