Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle
The U.S Army has fielded more than 7,000 of the 14- to 24-ton vehicles since the program began in late 2006.
"Just yesterday [Sept. 8] we had an MRAP strike and we had four soldiers walk away from it," said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Thurman, deputy chief of staff for operations, G3. "Compared to an up-armored Humvee against the same type of explosive, nine times out of 10 there are no injuries in an MRAP other than bumps, bruises and scrapes. And we're talking about sizable amounts of explosives."
Thurman said the Army has been taking lessons from the MRAP effort to the joint program office.
There have been drawbacks to the fast pace. Soldiers had less time to train on the vehicles, whose height, size and high center of gravity made them prone to rolling over: 24 accidents in Iraq, fewer than 10 in Afghanistan, Thurman said.
"Every one of these things that we have looked at has been a different situation where you've been on a canal or a situation where the road tips over," he said. "We've brought that into the Army resource board and brought rollover training."
Now, the Army is beginning to implement formal MRAP training along with specific tactics, techniques and procedures designed to cut down on rollovers. Army commanders are getting their first surrogate trainers so soldiers can train on MRAPs with the same characteristics they experience in combat, Speakes said.
"The other thing we were faced with is putting MRAPs into the hands of soldiers and not having the time to develop a robust training infrastructure or the ability to put substantial numbers of soldiers through a training operation back home. The maturing of the MRAP fielding concept has led to rollover training. The real risk was the reality that soldiers were dying in combat without the protection," he said.
Pentagon officials sought to reduce rollovers by buying smaller, redesigned MRAPs, a suggestion from commanders in Afghanistan, where rugged terrain was especially difficult to navigate in heavy vehicles. On Sept. 4, officials ordered 822 smaller MRAPs from Navistar. The rugged terrain in Afghanistan requires that MRAPs be more mobile and capable off-road, MRAP program managers said.
Most of the Sept. 4 order is made up of Navistar's 15-ton MaxxPro Dash, a four-wheel-drive that is 2 to 4 tons lighter, 2 feet shorter in height and 8 inches shorter in length than the previous three MaxxPro variants.
But Army leaders say the compromises were worth it as a response to increasing deaths from roadside bombs.
"I think we also have to remember that we knew going in that the ability to design and build a vehicle that would give us this kind of resistance to IED blasts meant that there were going to be trade-offs, which are high weight and high ground clearance," Speakes said. "All of us who know that traditionally what you want is low ground clearance and minimum weight. It is always a question of trade-off."
"The concept of underbody ballistic protection, V-shaped hull and standoff distance from the blast meant that we would have a challenge with off-road stability. Also, in Iraq we don't have a mature road infrastructure. The typical road along a canal is a built-in challenge to military operations from the Humvee on up, so we knew we were operating with a design that was optimized for protection and have given up certain elements of all-around operational capability."
The Army plans a fleet of 12,000 MRAPs, which will in the future be used less as general-purpose combat vehicles and more for missions such as route clearance, counter-IED, and command and control.
JLTV
The success of the MRAPs' armor and hull has influenced the emerging Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program, which aims to build a tougher and higher-tech replacement for the Humvee.
"Our strategy right now requires the Army to have 144,000 [Humvees and JLTVs]. It is obvious that MRAPs will not be a dominant part of our TWV [tactical wheeled vehicle] strategy, but we have learned some very important lessons that we will carry forward into our TWV strategy. such as training and protection," Speakes said.
"What we don't want is a light tactical vehicle that weighs 40,000 pounds. Right now we are paying a high price for the protection side of things so we are trying to balance performance, payload and protection as we move forward to JLTV," Speakes said.
Already, the lightest JLTV variant is slated to weigh 14,000 to 16,000 pounds, several tons heavier than an up-armored Humvee.
"The other thing we want, which is something you don't see in MRAP right now, is scalable armor. We've got a substantial body of lessons learned," he said.
The MRAP program will continue to shape combat vehicle decisions, Speakes and Thurman said.
"What size vehicle will you need in the future? What kind of armor? How do you use composites? What is the nature of the threat that we are going to be facing? What we gotta do is focus on the future security needs of the country. I believe we are going to be involved in this for a while. There are no victory laps," Thurman said. "If you take what's going on in Iraq lately if you look up and you've got a government that is starting to function. The economy is better, violence is down."
The pace and jointness of the MRAP program is influencing procurement practices across the services, Speakes said.
"This was the whole Department of Defense effort," Speakes said. "There was Navy PEO [program executive office] and an OSD [office of the secretary of defense] acquisition authority personally chairing the meetings. Everybody was working on joint distribution and joint concepts. That is so far removed from where we were five years ago,"
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