By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps does not have an enduring need for all the mine-resistant vehicles it bought for use in Iraq, the head of the Marine Corps said last Friday while describing his desire to shift troops to Afghanistan.
The service has a requirement of approximately 2,300 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), a portion of the 15,000-plus ordered across the Pentagon to shield troops from explosives.
“We won’t need all that we have purchased,” Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “What we have purchased for our requirements in Iraq exceed what we think we will need as a part of our tables of equipment inside the Marine Corps.”
Conway has been frustrated by how the hulking MRAPs have performed in Iraq, where troops had trouble maneuvering them off-road, and a little more than a year ago pared back service’s vehicle order. Now that he is pushing to deploy Marines out of Iraq, he said his service has limited needs for existing MRAPs.
“Now we will have the MRAP, we think, as an engineering vehicle that will see a use in the future, and also for our road-clearance (explosive-ordnance disposal) EOD teams, they now have a way to get to where they have to go that’s protected and gives good mobility and that type of thing,” Conway said.
Yet the commandant noted that “the vehicle does not operate as well off-road as we would like,” and it “kinds of creaks and groans..when you start going on uneven terrain.”
The Marine Corps has tried to buy MRAPs “at the lower end,” Conway noted, referring to the smallest, Category 1 variants. “We think they have more off-road-mobility, more utility perhaps with an expeditionary force,” he said.
The Army and Marine Corps are in the early stages of a follow-on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) program for lighter and more-maneuverable vehicles for use in Afghanistan (Defense Daily, Dec. 3, 2008).
Yet Conway noted the effort to “come up with an Afghan variant of the MRAP” is “principally driven by the Army.”
“We’re a little more frugal than that,” the Marine Corps general said. “We’re looking at, OK, what is the problem with off-road use of our Cat 1s, can we go to independent suspension instead of heavy axles and accomplish the same thing, and again posture ourselves well for the future.”
Conway said the initial tests for this effort “have been somewhat encouraging.”
“When I was in Afghanistan I asked the commanders there, ‘Would you like to do the field testing as opposed to us putting 5,000 miles on this newly designed vehicle somewhere in the American desert, would you be as comfortable using it here?’ And the answer is ‘Yes.’ So we’re looking at how rapidly we can prove the product before we do what would then be a massive overhaul of the numbers of vehicles that we’ve got to get them to Afghanistan and in a good working order.”
Existing MRAPs the Marine Corps does not need likely will be stored at the Marine Corps base in Barstow, Calif., Conway said.
He pointed out the service will continue requiring some “MRAP-type vehicles” as long as troops need protection from improvised-explosive devices.
“So until we find some mechanism that seeks out, isolates, and destroys IEDs at range, we think that that armor protection for our troops…will be necessary,” Conway said.
The commandant said he hopes the anticipated buildup of forces in Afghanistan will entail 20,000 or fewer Marines. He said he became convinced during a trip to Iraq over Christmastime that “the time is right for Marines in general terms to leave Iraq.”
Conway said while much of the work in Iraq is focused on nation-building type activities, the expeditionary focused Marines can be of more use in Afghanistan. He predicted a decision on U.S. force levels in Afghanistan “won’t be long” in coming, noting he believed the Joint Chiefs of Staff would meet this week with newly inaugurated President Obama.
Conway said he expected at least one MV-22 tilt-rotor Osprey squadron to deploy to Afghanistan. The Marine Corps and U.S. Operations Command are putting a belly gun on the Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT]-Boeing [BA] aircraft, which will allow suppressive-fire and self-escort capabilities, he said.
“It’s made for a place like Afghanistan, the speed, the quietness,” he said about the Osprey.
Asked what procurement funding his service requires in the next war supplemental spending bill for the shift to Afghanistan, Conway noted emerging “lighten-the-load” efforts.
He said he looked last Thursday at a new family of protective vests and plates. And the Marine Corps is “one the verge” of being able to give troops a helmet that can stop a 7.62mm ammunition round, he said.
“So there are some of those things that are of a leading-edge kind of personal and protective equipment that I think we’re going to have to take a look at,” Conway said.
Yet in general, he said, the service’s needs for upcoming war funding are tied to equipment sustainment.
“The things that we have put to use in Iraq have general application in Afghanistan,” he said.
“We are in a constant status of degradation, replacement, replenishment, renewal of our vehicles, and that’s not going to change,” he added. “But that’s been somewhat a constant bill really since we got into Iraq in this very static environment. So if you were to ask me to chart it, I don’t see a spike really, except for what it would cost for shipment and transportation and those types of things into a landlocked country 1,000 miles from the closest seaport.”