Corps disputes charge of MRAP foot dragging - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Corps disputes charge of MRAP foot dragging

The Marine Corps did not drag its feet in its search for blast-proof vehicles requested by troops in Iraq, and was initially constrained by industry’s ability to build them, Corps acquisition officials said Wednesday.

The officials were responding to recent media reports that accused the Corps of waiting to address an urgent request from the field made in February 2005. The media reports prompted Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., to publicly call on the Bush administration to make the production of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles a top priority.

“We were told that Marine Corps commanders in Iraq made the first request for mine resistant vehicles on May 21, 2006, for 185 vehicles,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “Now we learn that Marines on the ground in Iraq made an urgent request to their commanders for 1,169 mine resistant vehicles as early as February 2005 — but nothing happened.”

In February 2005, Maj. Gen. Dennis Hejlik was deployed in Iraq as the deputy commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force when he signed off on the urgent request.

“Without MRAP, personnel loss rates are likely to continue at their current rate. Continued casualty accumulation exhibits potential to jeopardize mission success,” the statement said. “MRAP vehicles will protect Marines, reduce casualties, increase mobility and enhance mission success.”

When the request was written, however, “MRAP was a generic term,” and not a specific vehicle, Hejlik said Wednesday.

Marines in Anbar province faced a different insurgent threat in 2005 than they do today, he said. “We were taking the insurgents more head on, obviously, than they are today,” he said. Marines faced different types of roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, he explained.

In response to the Hejlik’s urgent request, then-Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee decided to make the factory up-armored M1114 Humvee the “gold standard” because it was the best readily-available protection against roadside attacks, said Brig Gen. Robert Milstead, director of public affairs for the Marine Corps. “It wasn’t until mid-2006 that we started seeing the vast number of under-the-belly shots,” he said.

M1114 Humvees were already in production for the Army, and could be sent to Iraq quickly, said Thomas Miller, who was the initial program manager for MRAP at Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Va. MRAPs, however, were not available for rapid fielding , and the sole producer of the vehicles at the time, Force Protection, was making about five a month. “All of the other vehicles that are in MRAP candidates today were, in a lot of cases, not in existence,” he said. “That was the best decision at the time given the capabilities available to the Marine Corps,” he said.

“It wasn’t like where they could turn a switch as we are trying to do today and say ‘start producing several hundreds, if not thousands of these a month,” Miller added.

The Corps wants to purchase 3,700 MRAPs, and eight companies are currently under contract to produce them.