National Defense reports:
The Marine Corps and the Army have decided to curtail their orders for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, ostensibly because they foresee fewer roadside bomb attacks in Iraq. But there are other reasons, such as the impracticality of operating these vehicles off-road and in urban areas. A Marine Corps official says the 60,000 to 80,000-pound vehicles create significant logistics impediments that would make them hard to deploy, not just to Iraq, but to almost any other war zone. “Seventy-two percent of the world’s bridges cannot hold the MRAP,” says Brig. Gen. Ronald Johnson, assistant deputy commander for plans, policies and operations. Transporting the vehicles to combat zones also is tough for Marines because the trucks cannot fit aboard the amphibious ships that carry Marine equipment and supplies. “You can’t put an MRAP on a maritime pre-positioning force ship,” Johnson says.
The need for the vehicles has diminished greatly over the last six months, but should that trend be reversed, the MRAP will clearly remain a problematic solution to the IED problem. And it seems clear that the Pentagon has doubts as to whether the vehicles will have any relevance outside of, or after, Iraq. But I’m sure Joe Biden has already thought long and hard about these issues and is prepared to show the military why they’ve got it wrong.
