MRAPs Are Number One!

I think my earlier post about the Mine-Resistant Ambush Vehicles (MVAP) was taken out of context,  at least one person (who seems to think I'm deliberately trying to drive down the stock price for Force Protection, Inc). It's true that I don't know much about MVAP, but I do know the defense acquisition community and I do know a little military history. Let me clarify that, while the idea of a vehicle that can absorb a heavy explosive blast is great, the idea of replacing all the HMMWVs with an untested vehicle costing five times as much is still a bad idea (consider the early testing of the Bradley fighting vehicle). Obviously, SecDef Robert Gates disagrees.

Getting the MRAPs is "the highest priority Department of Defense acquisition program," Gates said in a memo last week to the secretaries of the Army and Navy. In that memo, first reported Wednesday by InsideDefense.com, Gates said he was concerned the Marines has ordered 3,700 of the vehicles, while the Army only sought 2,500. The Army has about 100,000 troops in Iraq; the Marines have 25,000.

Gates and other Pentagon officials plan to meet Friday to determine how many more vehicles the military will buy. "My understanding … is that the Army has been recalibrating its interest and has substantially increased the number of these vehicles they think they can use," Gates said.

The new vehicles feature a V-shaped hull that disperses explosions from below. All services have ordered a total of 7,700 MRAPs for $8 billion over the next 18 months, but Gates indicated the Pentagon could buy many more.

First of all, I see that I misread the original Inside Defense article - the current buy is $8 billion. If the Army gets its wish to replace all 17,000 HMMWVs in theater, it will cost nearer to $19 billion for the MRAP buy. Maybe it is time to buy Force Protection stock... Second, interesting that SecDef Gates has raised the importance of the MRAPs over the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Future Combat System, the V-22 Osprey, and the Missile Defense Agency programs. Hmmmmm. Or is his statement empty rhetoric?

I have to echo Rob Farley's concern about the MRAP:

Insurgents in Iraq (and, really, everywhere else) have demonstrated a powerful capacity for tactical and technological innovation in the face of new threats. Indeed, a war characterized by small, atomistic, and often competing insurgent cells may be ideal for such innovation. Building a procurement program around a specific enemy weapon, and particularly an enemy weapon that's susceptible to disguise and modification, is a recipe for disaster. It's simply not the case that the new vehicles are going to stop IED attacks in Iraq; the MRAP may reduce casualties, but insurgents are going to come up with new methods of attack, and those attacks are going to destroy these extraordinarily expensive new vehicles. Thus, the futility of trying to fight a counter-insurgency conflict through reliance on hi-tech innovation.

The insurgents used old artillery shells and plastic explosive to knock out unarmored HMMWVs. When the military up-armored the HMMWVs, the insurgents used bigger bombs and improved the triggering devices. When the military went to armored vehicles and tanks, the insurgents went to Explosively Formed Penetrators. Is there any doubt that they will continue to adapt to our defensive efforts? If you do doubt this, take heed of Arthur Clarke's short story "Superiority":

Perhaps the most fascinating story in the collection is Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority." Even though the story is a half-century old, and the oldest in the collection, it may have the most modern relevance of any story in the book. As in "The Scapegoat," the story is told from the viewpoint of a group finding itself in a war with an enemy of vastly inferior technology. Yet, because of the reliance on such high-tech weaponry, which is hard to produce in mass, and the continual attempt to make the weapons even more high-tech, the superior force ends up losing the war, thus making the reader consider what truly is important in maintaining superiority. While reading the story, it's hard not to think of the U. S. military and its reliance on extremely expensive, high-tech weaponry that takes time to produce. In fact, towards the end of the U. N. military intervention in Bosnia, the U. S. military started to report shortages of the missiles needed to equip our long-range fighters. Maybe the American leaders can find a useful lesson in this story when considering the new missile defense plan.

No, sorry, we don't learn these lessons in the defense acquisition community...

UPDATE: Similar concerns over at DefenseTech - I am not alone...

Comments

[tlg]

Those thousands of IEDs FRPT has encountered includes EFPs. They have been thought of and an upgrade has been made. But why tell the enemy more.