Study: Lack of MRAPs cost Marine lives

Associated Press ^ | Feb 15, 2008 | By RICHARD LARDNER

[Cold Heat]

multiply this with unnecessary death and injuries to the Army and other services and it’s worse than this piece seems. Makes me think of Rumsfelds response to the GI who inquired about safer vehicles.....I don’t care if it was a setup or not.......Humvees or rather their manufacturers and others with a vested beneficial interest in them have a hand in this...........

Oh Yeah! That's it, a frickin plot by Rummy and a few major stock holders to kill soldiers so they can make a buck...Yeah right.......

I think the entire problem of dead soldiers can be solved by not fighting anybody...........

How about safer bullets?????Who is holding that up? Gates??????

The entire premise of this finger pointing exercise is garbage! There is no safe war! Hell, they are killing our indestructible multi-million dollar tanks with cheap Iranian made shape charges. No armor is indestructible for very long on the battlefield. Bigger is not always better, and never lasts the tests.

We are doing more now, than we have ever done before regarding battlefield safety, but in the end, it still takes a better trained soldier with the proper mindset to win any engagement, and building armor to surround him and protect him only makes it more difficult to engage the enemy.

The way you win, is to kill the enemy before he has a chance to kill you. You don't win by letting him blow your equipment up with you inside it. You don't fix that situation by using thicker armor.

Historically, armies of the world have tried this method, time and time again, and it never has worked, not once.

If your goal becomes the reduction of casualties, you have already lost the war.

I am tired of seeing this crap posted, and I suggest people start thinking in terms of winning, and not in terms of being safe. being safe is not the priority, nor should it be.

[BerryDingle]

Yeah, but the point is

No, the point is the Army AND the Marine Corps said they didn't need that many---Period.

[AliVeritas]

It would help if senators wouldn’t go on vacation when they’re waiting for funding everytime as well.

[Carry_Okie]

Looks to me like a bureaucratic pissing contest. The MRAPs may have been the preferred option, but the procurement people didn't want to be responsible for an unproven piece of machinery.

It looks to me like a risk weighted procurement system is in order that allows more trials at an earlier date to find out what works in the field, especially in time of war. Modern manufacturing can keep up with rapid change; it's the testing and procurement paperwork that's in the way.

[Squantos]

yes.......

[MinorityRepublican]

Good thing we replaced Rumsfeld with Gates.

[MinorityRepublican]

Good thing we replaced Rumsfeld with Gates.

[freema]

I understand they didn’t work well for the USMC, too heavy and cumbersome. I’ll say here and now that I think this is nothing more than john murtha with his fingers in the cookie jar AGAIN. Not only are jarheads murdering scum in his mind, they’re stupid murdering scum and he knows better than anyone else what we need on the ground and where it should be placed. If he had his way, Okinawa would be sinking from the weight of MRAPs. As it is, he’d be satisfied if they’d all just be stuck in the MRAPs in that quagmire of sand known to him as Iraq.

The more realistic headline could be any one of these options...
Study: Waste of Tax Dollars to Study Why the World Doesn’t Operate on fat jack’s Agenda
MRAPs Coast Marine Lives
Fat Jack Wants a Massacre

[freema]

References for my last post.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mrap+weight&btnG=Google+Search
http://thehill.com/business—lobby/firm-guards-niche-in-armored-vehicles-2007-07-24.html
http://investingfromtheright.blogspot.com/2007/02/february-18-2007-aero-defense-tidbits.html

Now, get your tin foil ready!!
Dennis J. Hejlik, Commander of MARSOC who publicly took kearney to the woodshed, has a dog in the MRAP fight....maybe he didn’t deliver enough goods to suit john murtha. We all know tha fat jack doesn’t take kindly to those who buck the buck.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:50cLQVkNQcUJ:www.beachblogger.net/bwtm/index.php%3Ftitle%3DHunter%252C_Duncan_Lee+jack+murtha+mrap+contracts&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

If the MRAP's are too heavy and cumbersome, then perhaps the USMC should look at these...

Blackwater Grizzly APC

[SauronOfMordor]

The only vehicles that can shield our troops from roadside bombs, are vehicles that do not require troops inside them

[WhirlwindAttack]

As a father of a Marine KIA due to an IED that was in an unarmored Humvee I'm not pleased that more isn't being done.

I'm very bitter about my son's fate. He left behind a wife and daughter he never saw. I am proud of both my sons service in Iraq and Afghanistan. And If I was younger and able would have been happy to serve again.

Radical Islam must be stopped. The animals responsible should be put down like the rabid dogs they are. Until that comes to pass not a single one of us will be safe. If the fight brings itself to my door no quarter will be shown. I will hoist the black flag and eliminate as many as possible before my demise.

[elfman2]

[elfman2]

“As a father of a Marine KIA due to an IED that was in an unarmored Humvee I’m not pleased that more isn’t being done.”

My condolences, and profound respect for your son and family.

I don’t know what’s right here. There’s probably another side to why we don’t roll them out faster. There must be some kind of tipping point where resources devoted to IED defence would save more lives if applied to offense, but I don’t know why expediting 10 thousand more of these million dollar MRAPs wouldn’t make sense. If nothing else, it would revive Detroit.

[Southack]

Tragically, 21 year old Sgt. Corey E. Spates of 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, MND-North was killed on February 10 when his vehicle was struck by an IED in Diyala Province, Iraq. Clearly greater IED protection would have been preferable.

However, in the face of that tragedy is a small silver lining. Sgt. Spates, you see, was the last American killed by hostile action in Iraq. Note the date. February 10.

Due to time zones, it is now February 17 in Iraq.

We’ve therefor gone a week without losing another good American to enemy action. Or put another way, Al Qaeda has become so impotent as to be unable to kill any of us in the entire last week.

Most cities of any appreciable size lose more Americans per week than the above to drunks, or to home fires, or to...drum roll...lightening strikes.

Al Qaeda has been obliterated in Iraq.

[jveritas]

Al Qaeda has been obliterated in Iraq.

Absolutely.

[Texas4ever]

I THINK EVERY STATE OR BUSINESS WHO WANTS TO SUPPORT OUR TEAM SHOULD BUY ONE AND HAVE THEIR STATE MOTTO OR LOGO ON IT.

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE A NASCAR MRAP...ANYTHING IF IT PROTECTS OUR BOYS!!!!

THE LONE STAR MRAP I WOULD CONTRIBUTE.

SORRY CAPS STUCK.

[angkor]

Thank you for your son’s service.

It’s profoundly disturbing that the Pentagon has taken so long to respond to the IED threat, while private companies such as Blackwater (not the only one) have had MRAPs in Iraq since at least 2005 when I was there. Saw them at the Glass Palace at BIAP, at the Anaconda PX, and they were featured in Robert Pelton’s article about Blackwater in the April 2005 Popular Mechanics. Always manned by professional shooters, not soldiers.

Here’s another article from that time, showing that the problem is by no means a new one:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/26/news/armor.php

Road to Iraq proves slow for safer vehicles
Critics assail procurement procedures
By Michael Moss
Published: MONDAY, JUNE 27, 2005

When U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, U.S. military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground.

Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner.

U.S. State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of the U.S. Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound, or five-kilogram, explosives and .50-caliber, or 12.7-millimeter, armor-piercing rounds.

Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon’s vehicle of choice for U.S. troops, the others were designed specifically to withstand bigger attacks in battlefields like Iraq with no safe zones. Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a crater six feet, or two meters, wide. The passengers walked away unscathed.

“I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle,” wrote a U.S. Army captain, the lone military passenger, “the results would have been catastrophically different.”

...

[LS]

Two years ago I got a tour of the GD tank factory in Lima, OH. They were busy up-armoring HUMVEEs and, more important, developing all sorts of gizmos and equipment to detonate IEDs and other such devices.

The first thought is always to try and find a way to improve what you have before you develop something entirely new, and entirely SPECIAL designed JUST to counter on enemy tactic---because as soon as you do that, they will move on to another totally different tactic or technology.

I was told by the Marines at Lejeune that MOST of the deaths associated with IEDs/roadside devices came from, actually, driving too fast to avoid those devices, and that the Marines had made great improvements in the injuries and deaths that followed such an explosion just by changing the driving patterns.