By Jen DiMascio
The Marines need Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles–and the time to spell out the number they need and the best way to use them, a Marine officer said yesterday.
“Relax. We don’t know exactly how many we need,” said Col. Lawrence Nicholson, deputy commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, during a Capitol Hill panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
“Let us get a few more in, let us work it out a little bit, develop some [tactics, techniques and procedures] and figure this out,” said Nicholson, who has been selected for promotion to brigadier general.
The discussion comes as Congress and the Pentagon are trying to provide funding and ramp up production of MRAPs as fast as possible to better protect soldiers from the threat of Improvised Explosive Devices, which are currently responsible for two-thirds of deaths among U.S. soldiers and Marines.
Thus far, that effort has been driven more by emotional appeals than by thorough analysis, according to a study released yesterday by CSBA.
Calls to replace the Humvee fleet would require the purchase of roughly 20,000 vehicles at the cost of $25 billion, they said.
That same level of investment could purchase about 10 Virginia-class submarines, half of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) fleet, 100 C-17 airlifters and an entire Marine fleet of Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles, said Dakota Wood, a senior fellow with CSBA.
The long-term effects of MRAP in the fleet need to be more thoroughly discussed, said Andrew Krepinevich, president of CSBA. Those include the fact that the vehicle will not perform well off-road, is heavy and will require separate sets of spare parts. Most importantly are the logistics associated with vehicles that achieve one half to one third of the fuel economy of a Humvee.
Meanwhile, the Army has not yet spelled out how the vehicle fits into its long-term plan, but service officials have said that they continue to be focused on the next- generation JLTV.
Options for the future of the vehicle after Iraq would be to dispose of them, distribute them to foreign militaries or use them in an expeditionary era, according to Wood.
A panel of current and retired members of the military stressed that said forces in Iraq need the MRAP now and added that the vehicle has a place in the future.
“We have an urgent need to field these vehicles and an urgent program is needed,” retired Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, a former commander of Marines in the Pacific. “We can’t afford to just admire the problem.”
The most likely use for MRAPs in the future is by foreign militaries, said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a former special forces leader. In the future, the United States will likely project its power by through other militaries around the globe.
Besides, Nicholson said, the threat from improvised explosive devices is likely to remain. “That toothpaste is out of the tube. It’s not going back in,” he said.