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New Armored Vehicles Drive Heated Debate
By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel
The Los Angeles Times
Thursday 27 December 2007
Gates insisted on the MRAP vehicles. But they're ill-suited
to Iraq, some say, and may even be counterproductive if troops don't "get
out and walk."
Washington - It was just what American soldiers had been longing for - a patrol
vehicle designed to withstand the powerful roadside bombs that have killed more
service members than any other insurgent weapon in the Iraq war.
But as the Defense Department hits its year-end goal of delivering 1,500 heavily
armored, V-hulled "mine-resistant ambush-protected" trucks to Iraq,
the feeling in the Pentagon is far from elation. Instead, an intense debate
has broken out over whether the vehicle that is saving lives also could undermine
one of the most important lessons of the whole war: how to counter an insurgency.
Though offering needed armor, the MRAP lacks the agility vital to urban warfare.
"It's very heavy; it's relatively large; it's not as maneuverable as you'd
like it to be," Gen. William S. Wallace, the officer in charge of Army
doctrine and training, said recently. "All of those things should be of
concern."
But with nearly 12,000 of the trucks on order in a program that has a projected
cost of more than $17 billion, the MRAP - the most expensive new Army weapons
system acquired since the Sept. 11 attacks - is likely to influence how the
Army fights future wars.
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said MRAPs are an important part
of the military's response to the needs of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
"There is never one silver-bullet solution for all the problems you find
in war," Morrell said. "The key is to find a combination of things
that address the problems."
Support for MRAPs within the Pentagon has weakened recently, in part because
of the decline in military casualties in Iraq. With roadside bombings diminishing,
the military services worry that they will be saddled in the near future with
thousands of large, heavy, expensive trucks that they will no longer need.
But more fundamentally, the MRAP has reignited a debate that has bedeviled
strategists since the war began: Is the best way to save soldiers' lives to
give them tools to survive attacks, or to prevent the attacks?
On one side of the argument are senior officials in Washington, including Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph
R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who have insisted that MRAPs are a moral imperative,
needed to protect vulnerable soldiers from death and dismemberment.
But a growing number of counterinsurgency experts, prodded by an October report
by influential Pentagon consultant Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., have argued that
the hulking vehicles are antithetical to fighting a guerrilla war.
Guerrilla warfare, or counterinsurgency, requires soldiers to mingle with Iraqi
citizens - a task that has been at the center of the strategy implemented by
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the Iraq war commander.
"You've got Dave Petraeus telling his people 'Get out and walk,' because
the long-term solution to reducing our casualties is . . . getting to know the
people, providing security in the neighborhood," Krepinevich said in an
interview. "In a sense, you've got two competing priorities."
Gates Rushes MRAPs In
The decision to make MRAPs the Pentagon's top wartime procurement priority
was one of Gates' first decisions as Defense secretary. Occasionally frustrated
with the department's inability to move quickly, Gates ordered MRAPs flown to
Iraq in scarce cargo planes in an unprecedented logistical effort.
"There was a moral imperative to provide a better way to protect soldiers,"
said Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the Army general in charge of procurement
programs. "That was the driving factor that united all of us in a realization
we had to do something different. Soldier protection was Job One."
Pentagon spokesman Morrell said: "There are tradeoffs. You can't build
a vehicle as protective as this one is without trading off the ability to connect
more directly with the population."
Gates' championing of MRAPs made emerging doubts about the program all the
more remarkable, since they mark one of the first times the uniformed military
has publicly pushed back against the popular Defense secretary.
Earlier this month, Marine Corps officials announced they were cutting the
number of MRAPs they intended to buy, to 2,300 from 3,600, citing the reduced
violence in Iraq and the questionable utility of the vehicles in other missions.
Army officials, who were planning the largest purchases, are considering a
similar move.
Under pressure from both Gates and Capitol Hill, Army officials said earlier
this year that they would replace all Humvees in Iraq with MRAPs, a total of
17,700 vehicles.
In the last month, however, Army officers have said they see a long-term need
for, at most, 10,000 of the MRAPs - which cost $500,000 to $1 million apiece,
depending on the model. Officers in Baghdad and Washington now are reevaluating
whether they should ask Congress for money next year to buy more, or whether
10,000 is already too many.
"We're buying MRAPs based upon what the theater has asked for," said
Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff. "They have since
come back, now that they have MRAPs, and said, 'We are re-looking our number.'
"
Critics of defense budgeting believe the Pentagon and Congress rushed too quickly
to embrace the MRAP as the best fix for the problem of roadside bombs.
"Congress latched onto this to show how pro-soldier and how pro-defense
they were," said Winslow T. Wheeler, a longtime critic of military spending
at the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan think tank. "It is
another example of people thinking the way to address these conflicts is through
technology. But that kind of thinking guarantees defeat in this kind of conflict."
Congressional MRAP advocates have argued that the short-term need to protect
soldiers from roadside bombs far outweighs any long-term concerns about being
stuck with expensive vehicles with limited uses.
"We might be stuck with a lot of these things that don't have a clear
application in the next field of battle," said a Biden aide, who spoke
on condition of anonymity, as is customary for congressional staffers. "But
it doesn't matter. We're fighting the war we're in now, not the war we're going
to fight in five or six years."
Pentagon officials said Gates expressed similar frustration in internal discussions,
and he eventually ordered the Marines and the Army to make the program a priority.
Gates also demanded weekly briefings to make sure they were making progress.
In his first year as Defense secretary, Gates has drawn a sharp contrast with
his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had been criticized as moving too slowly
to improve armor.
According to Francis J. Harvey, who was Army secretary during the early debates,
MRAPs were a chance for Gates to move more decisively.
"I think he saw a way to differentiate himself from Rumsfeld," Harvey
said. Harvey was forced to resign his post in March in the aftermath of revelations
of deficiencies at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman,
said Gates was concerned not about comparisons with Rumsfeld, but about providing
the best possible protection from improvised explosive devices.
"The MRAP program was driven by an urgent desire to protect U.S. forces
from the No. 1 killer in Iraq - IEDs," Morrell said. "That was the
focus of the program."
"A Fundamental Error"
One result of the decision to rush MRAPs to Iraq is that they have not been
thoroughly tested. The vehicle's ability to withstand bombings was extensively
evaluated, but few infantry companies so far have tested its utility in counterinsurgency
missions.
A Pentagon consultant who recently visited Iraq, in part to study the use of
MRAPs, said the trucks protect troops and are useful for bomb disposal teams
and commanders circulating in the battlefields. But the vehicles are not a good
choice for combat infantry companies, the consultant said. They are too heavy
to drive in soft sand and are difficult to turn on narrow streets.
"You have a pretty good anti-mine vehicle that has zero fighting ability,
terrible off-road mobility, and can't turn around in a city," said the
consultant, who was not authorized to discuss the findings and spoke on condition
of anonymity. "The bottom line is that this MRAP is a fundamental error."
The concerns over the MRAP's abilities have increased inside the Pentagon.
Some high-ranking officers worry that the price tag will lead congressional
budgeters to cut funding for other weapons systems the Army believes are more
important for the future.
Those pressures have led the Army to reconsider earlier proposals to replace
all Humvees with MRAPs. Speakes, the Army procurement official, said he now
sees the MRAP as a narrowly focused vehicle that can be used to clear mines
and evacuate injured soldiers.
"We see niche roles for the MRAP, but we don't see that MRAP will ever
be a dominant part of our tactical wheeled-vehicle fleet," Speakes said.
Nonetheless, critics said, the investment in MRAPs is too high and coming too
late for Iraq.
"We went in the wrong direction," said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
who has advised the Bush administration on Iraq policy. "It is the wrong
vehicle, too late, to fit a threat we were actually managing."
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julian.barnes@latimes.com
peter.spiegel@latimes.com
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