After Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared the MRAP (pronounced M-rap) the Pentagon's No. 1 acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities.
The vehicles weigh as much as 40 tons and have been effective at protecting American forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents. Only four U.S. troops have been killed by such bombs while riding in MRAPs; three of those deaths occurred in older versions of the vehicles.
The study's author, Franz J. Gayl, catalogs what he says were flawed decisions and missteps by midlevel managers in Marine Corps offices that occurred well before Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld in December 2006.
Among the findings in the Jan. 22 study:
• Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by IEDs in late 2004 and early 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less-sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees, even those with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.
• An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.
Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.
• The Marine Corps' acquisition staff didn't give top leaders correct information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of Hejlik's MRAP request and the real reasons it was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving "inaccurate and incomplete" information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not hotly pursued.
• The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps' vision as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.
The MRAPs didn't meet this fast-moving standard and so the Combat Development Command didn't want to buy them, according to Gayl. The study calls this approach a "Cold War orientation" that suffocates the ability to react to emergency situations.
• The Combat Development Command has managers — some of whom are retired Marines — who lack adequate technical credentials. They have outdated views of what works on the battlefield and how the defense industry operates, Gayl says. Yet they are in position to ignore or overrule calls from deployed commanders.
An inquiry should be conducted by the Marine Corps inspector general to determine if any military or government employees are culpable for failing to rush critical gear to the troops, recommends Gayl, who prepared the study for the Marine Corps' plans, policies and operations department.
The study was obtained by the AP from a nongovernment source.
"If the mass procurement and fielding of MRAPs had begun in 2005 in response to the known and acknowledged threats at that time, as the (Marine Corps) is doing today, hundreds of deaths and injuries could have been prevented," writes Gayl, the science and technology adviser to Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski, who heads the department. "While the possibility of individual corruption remains undetermined, the existence of corrupted MRAP processes is likely, and worthy of (inspector general) investigation."
Gayl, who has clashed with his superiors in the past and filed for whistle-blower protection last year, uses official Marine Corps documents, e-mails, briefing charts, memos, congressional testimony, and news articles to make his case.
He was not allowed to interview or correspond with any employees connected to the Combat Development Command. The study's cover page says the views in the study are his own.
Maj. Manuel Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman, called Gayl's study "predecisional staff work" and said it would be inappropriate to comment on it. Delarosa said, "It would be inaccurate to state that Lt. Gen. Natonski has seen or is even aware of" the study.
Last year, the service defended the decision to not buy MRAPs after receiving the 2005 request. There were too few companies able to make the vehicles, and armored Humvees were adequate, officials said then.
Hejlik, who is now a major general and heads Marine Corps Special Operations Command, has cast his 2005 statement as more of a recommendation than a demand for a specific system.
The term mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle "was very generic" and intended to guide a broader discussion of what type of truck would be needed to defend against the changing threats troops in the field faced, Hejlik told reporters in May 2007. "I don't think there was any intent by anybody to do anything but the right thing."
The study does not say precisely how many Marine casualties Gayl thinks occurred due to the lack of MRAPs, which have V-shaped hulls that deflect blasts out and away from the vehicles.
Gayl cites a March 1, 2007, memo from Conway to Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which Conway said 150 service members were killed and an additional 1,500 were seriously injured in the prior nine months by IEDs while traveling in vehicles.
The MRAP, Conway told Pace, could reduce IED casualties in vehicles by 80 percent. He told Pace an urgent request for the vehicles was submitted by a Marine commander in May 2006. No mention is made of Hejlik's call more than a year before.
Delivering MRAPs to Marines in Iraq, Conway wrote, was his "number one unfilled warfighting requirement at this time." Overall, he added, the Marine Corps needed 3,700 of the trucks — more than three times the number requested by Hejlik in 2005.
More than 3,200 U.S. troops, including 824 Marines, have been killed in action in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. An additional 29,000 have been wounded, nearly 8,400 of them Marines. The majority of the deaths and injuries have been caused by explosive devices, according to the Defense Department.
Congress has provided more than $22 billion for 15,000 MRAPs the Defense Department plans to acquire, mostly for the Army. Depending on the size of the vehicle and how it is equipped, the trucks can cost between $450,000 and $1 million.
As of May 2007, roughly 120 MRAPs were being used by troops from all the military services, Pentagon records show. Now, more than 2,150 are in the hands of personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marines have 900 of those.
One section of Gayl's study analyzes a letter Conway sent in late July 2007 to Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Kit Bond, R-Mo., two critics of delays in sending equipment to Iraq.
More heavily armored Humvees were determined to be the best response to the 2005 MRAP request, the commandant told the senators. He also said the industrial capacity to build MRAPs in large numbers "did not exist" when the request was submitted. Additionally, although the trucks had been fielded in small numbers, they were not adequately tested and exhibited reliability problems, the letter said.
The letter to the senators is evidence of the "bad advice" senior Marine Corps leaders receive, Gayl contends. The letter, he says, portions of which were probably drafted by the Combat Development Command, omitted that the urgent 2005 request from the Iraq battlefield specifically asked for MRAPs — and not more heavily armored Humvees. It also ignored the Marines' own findings that armored Humvees wouldn't stop IEDs.
Conway's assertion there was a lack of manufacturing capacity to build MRAPs is "inexplicable," Gayl says. Manufacturers would have hurried production if they knew the Marines wanted them and any reliability issues would have been resolved, he says.
In late November, the Marine Corps announced it would buy 2,300 MRAPs — 1,400 fewer than planned. Improved security in Iraq, changes in tactics, and decreasing troop levels allowed for the cut. But Marine officials also listed several downsides to the MRAP: The vehicles are too tall and heavy to pursue the enemy down narrow streets, on rough terrain or across many bridges.
If MRAPs arrived to Iraq late, or proved too bulky for certain missions, the Marine Corps should have come up with different and better solutions several years ago when the IED crisis was growing, Gayl contends.
A former Marine officer, Gayl spent nearly six months in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 as an adviser to leaders of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
His stinging indictment of the Marine Corps' system for fielding gear is not a first. He has been an outspoken advocate for non-lethal weapons, such as a beam gun that stings but doesn't kill and "dazzlers" that use a powerful light beam to steer unwelcome vehicles and people from checkpoints and convoys.
The failure to send these alternative weapons to Iraq has led to U.S. casualties and the deaths of Iraqi civilians, Gayl has said.
Gayl filed for whistle-blower protection in May with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. He said he was threatened with disciplinary action after meeting with congressional staff on Capitol Hill.
Biden and Bond rebuked the Marine Corps in September for "apparent retaliation" against Gayl.
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Associated Press researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report from New Yor
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...........
Sacrifice the Marines of today for the Marines of tomorrow?
Regards
Well, that’s bullshit. If money is no object here at home for all these entitlement programs, then there should never be something we can’t afford for the people who protect us.
This story does not surprise me at all. As a consultant to the Federal government, I’ve had direct, first-hand knowledege of how purchasing and planning works. Vested interests of large contractors and the civil service/contractor revolving door ALWAYS overrule doing what is right.
Did you see this? It’s an election year so these stories are returning.
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,153219,00.html
Ping
You have to go to war with the Secretary of Defense you have, not the Secretary of Defense you want.
Ping
It would help if senators wouldn’t go on vacation when they’re waiting for funding everytime as well.
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.
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.
One more thing: Isn’t it time for the USMC to become a branch of the Military separate from the US Navy ?...Marine Corps personnel know what equipment they need and what works, but they still have to go through Navy procurement channels...If that is the government’s way of saving a biuck, it sucks...We spend billions on frivolous turkeys yet we cannot get the proper equipment for our men...This is beyond sad..It is atrocious..
My son was in the USMC in Desert Storm and he said everything they had was hand-me-downs from the US Navy...You could tell: it was marked ‘squid’...everything from clothing to weapons was used...even the ammo was old and many times his cannon shells were old duds...way to fight a war...
When I was in TQ in ‘06 we saw bunches of MRAP’s... used by high risk units - EOD and Engineers.
Heard there were around 300 in country at the time, but don’t know for sure.
The ones I saw were built by Force Protection, and were virtually hand built on a small production line.
Today I am told there are FOUR different MRAP’s in Iraq with design roots from all over the world. Each version has slightly different strengths and weaknesses.
The logistics to support all these variations is proving tough... but they were rushing to get as many into theater as fast as possible, from as many sources as needed.
Now that Force Dynamics (joint Force Protection and General Dynamics company) is ramped up for production - up to 1000 a month - and the number in use in the field are up - the limitations of MRAP’s are becoming apparent.
In 2005 there literally wasn’t anybody in the world who could build the numbers required... and the question of usefulness for the various demands was unclear. It takes time for testing and refining.
In the mean time other measures were taken to address the problems - up armoring hummers, improved jammers, etc.
This provided time to improve the MRAP’s, and to see if they are really needed.
Nothing is foolproof though....
The saddest day of my time in Iraq is when a troop was killed on his way to see us.... and if our equipment had been in place, he wouldn’t have died.
But the day that had the most impact, that told me the value of what we had done - one of those alternative things that were done - was on the flight home when I was talking with a Marine seated in front of me. He had been stationed 2-3 miles from where I was at (a very tough place), he was in a very high risk job, and was just finishing his 3rd tour. On his first two tours his team had lost 15 people. On his third tour his team had lost 1. The difference was what we had done... in fact, he himself would have been dead if it wasn’t for what we had done.
That kind of feedback just overwhelmed me.... it made everything we had gone though worthwhile.
It’s sad anytime we loose one of our troops.... and sometimes it seems like we need to do more - RIGHT NOW - but we also overlook what we have done, and are doing.
So we do the best that we can, and sometimes in hindsight it looks like we should have done something else, but a decision has to be made with what we KNOW NOW and what we PROJECT at the time.