Posted on 02/15/2008 7:28:15 PM PST by Vn_survivor_67-68
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes. ADVERTISEMENT
The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.....cont below
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.
___
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.
the fact that this study was released on a friday evening of a 3 day weekend shows that they know they’re in for a bunch of outrage about it........But I doubt if the “candidates” (manchurian or otherwise) will be able to restrain themselves.......
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
Apparently they are not very popular.
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,157978,00.html
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003577.html
Ping
The Marine Corps said they couldn't use them all.
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.”
______________________________
My thoughts exactly...
You have to go to war with the Secretary of Defense you have, not the Secretary of Defense you want.
Sorry gang. It was a judgement call that proved wrong. There is not infinite funding for any particular program. There are current needs and future needs that are traded off against each other. There are competing defense and non-defense (sometimes un-constitituional) budget demands. Sometimes we make good calls and sometimes we make bad calls. Many of those trashing the administration for not armoring these vehicles would earlier have screamed bloody murder at million dollar troop carriers. What’s important now is to get it right and equip the troops for the known threat.
Correct
And no one seems to have discussed some of the problems with the MRAP ....besides the very high cost, it is very very heavy so it is hard to get to Iraq. Because of its weight, it can’t traverse some of the bridges in Iraq. Because it is so big, it can’t travel down many of the narrow streets.
Ultimately - what would the effect of the various limitations be on using the MRAP in Iraq?
The MRAP would not survive an EFP blast.
Ultimately, if we can’t defeat the terrorist who plants the IEDs or the EFPs ...then they can continually update their processes - such as shifting from the IEDs to the EFPs. If we defeat the terrorists - no IEDs or EFPs ...so any vehicle that allows agility and manueverability might be better.
I recall some of the major discussions several years ago, where there was big time criticism of inadequate armor for soldiers. But many of the soldiers were critical of the increasing weight ...it made them less agile, less mobile, less capable. They felt the added weight was more dangerous than the lighter “less protective” armor that they were using.
Ultimately - I hope that the soldiers and Marines in-country are the ones that can specify what they need - and then they get it!!! (I have a son who is scheduled to go to Iraq in November.)
Yeah, but the point is that the Marines needed them TWO years ago when IEDs were going off left and right and behind the Marines fighting in Anbar, and the USMC procurement bureaucracy let them down in a big way. This is not the first time that Marine procurement has failed in a spectacular way in recent years.
Yeah, but the wrong judgment call was made by mid-level bureaucrats in direct contradiction to the urgent request by a field commander in combat. This is NOT business as usual.
We could supply every troop an Abrams and theyd be 'safe'???...
LFOD...
Ping
Sadly, I think the doctrine of being air-mobile and seaborne capable meant these purely land based and overweight vehicles were only seen as a need now and not a need as a part of fighting doctrine kind of problem.
people die now, and these would be greatly useful for THIS mission, I am surprised they weren’t bought at least in small numbers.
They are way to heavy for helicopter insertions and maybe when loading up landing craft, not sure how many you can carry at a time
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.
No, the point is the Army AND the Marine Corps said they didn't need that many---Period.
It would help if senators wouldn’t go on vacation when they’re waiting for funding everytime as well.
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.
yes.......
Good thing we replaced Rumsfeld with Gates.
Good thing we replaced Rumsfeld with Gates.
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
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
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.
“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.
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.
Absolutely.
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.
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.”
...
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.
You would think that with the $300 BILLION spent on the effort in Iraq that they could squeeze a few hundred million out for these vehicles. Besides, they might get a break on the price if they ordered them in quantity.
Other countries in the world have built good fighting vehicles..Is there anything already developed that is better and cheaper than the MRAP ?...If so, why didn’t the Pentagon buy these?..
Same with other military equipment...Screw the MILSPECS..If another country has a better mousetrap, then buy the thing and get it over to our troops asap...
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...
Or merge it with the Army. But the Marines would be more like "elite infantry".
Bless you for your son’s sacrifice, and prayers up for your family.
Nothing makes me madder than small, bean-counting men deciding against the recommendations of the commanders in the field in order to shave a few dollars off the budget, when it is clear that lives of brave patriots are in the balance. To my mind such small men and the men who aid and abet them are traitors to this country and there ought to be a commensurate penalty paid for all responsible.
Such economic traitors are today making deals with those who would kill us. ChiComs, Muzzie oil barons.
May God give us the strength to find our enemies — both without and within.
That’s a small one.
It’s hard to see how those would have an advantage over a normal vehicle as the chassis just above the drive train is flat like a normal vehicle.
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.
They all look like something out of the Wild, Wild West, or this: http://www.thoroughbredmodels.com/Ironclads.htm
YEah, currently the MRAPs fielded have electrical insulation problems. Some dirt bag contractor has cut corners on price inflating gadgetery.
Those MRAPs do the protecting job but are not all that it is expected.
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