The Pentagon is on a crash course to buy thousands of larger and better designed troop-carrying vehicles in hopes of decreasing the mounting death toll from roadside bombs in Iraq.
The Marine Corps command in Iraq sent out an SOS last year for a better armored combat vehicle than the Humvee, which remains vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) despite armor plating.
The military hopes the answer is the MRAP, for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. The MRAP comes in a variety of designs and is produced by more than a half-dozen companies. The government plans to award contracts worth more than $8 billion for nearly 8,000 more MRAPs for the four military services.
Facing a diminishing role as a combat vehicle is the Humvee.
“These new MRAPs were designed specifically to counter any type of land mine or IEDs,” General Dynamics Land Systems spokesman Peter Keating said. “That was not the principal design of the Humvee.”
General Dynamics has teamed with a South Carolina company, Force Protection Industries Inc., to mass produce FPI’s Cougar MRAP.
The Cougar is a few laps ahead of the competition. The brand is already transporting Marines in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Marine Corps Systems Command last month awarded a contract to FPI for 1,000 new Cougars, both the four- and six-wheel models.
What makes the MRAP blast-resistant is mainly its heft. Its 19-ton chassis dwarfs the 3.5-ton armored Humvee.
The MRAP’s critical design improvement is its V-shaped hull.
“The V-hull deflects the force of the blast away from the passengers inside the capsule,” FPI spokesman Jeff Child said. “When you compare that to a flat-bottom vehicle, all of the energy of the explosion has no where to go but up.”
Also, the MRAP stands taller, creating more space for the explosion to spew outward, away from soldiers and Marines.
The move to a bigger vehicle is one of the U.S. command’s most important shifts in the four-year war. The insurgents’ IEDS have killed the lion’s share of the 3,386 Americans service members killed in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has decreed the MRAP his department’s No. 1 acquisition priority, said last week that he asked why the Army was not buying more. Afterward, he said, “The Army has been recalibrating its interest and has substantially increased the number of these vehicles they think they can use.”
The Army said in a statement that it already has 1,100 MRAP vehicles in Iraq, with 600 more on the way. It says it still needs the smaller up-armored Humvees.
“Not all MRAPs are suited for all missions,” the Army said.
The Marines have 80 MRAPs in Iraq.
