By Marina Malenic
Defense Department officials knew of the potential risk to U.S. troops from roadside bombs prior to the hostilities in Iraq, but the department did not begin purchasing Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles in a timely manner to prepare for the conflict, the Pentagon inspector general says in a report released yesterday.
“DoD was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in low-intensity conflicts and of the availability of mine-resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003,” a summary of the report on the inspector’s Web site reads.
“Yet DoD did not develop requirements for, fund, or acquire MRAP-type vehicles for low-intensity conflicts that involved mines and IEDs,” the document states. “As a result, the Department entered into operations in Iraq without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines.”
Following the release of an internal report early this year accusing the Marine Corps of “gross mismanagement” of the urgent request for MRAPs, the service in February requested the inspector general’s investigation. The internal study, authored by a retired Marine officer, says that hundreds of Marines died because MRAPs were not fielded in a timely manner.
The inspector general found no “evidence of criminal negligence in the Marine Corps’ processing of the February 2005 MRAP” request. The inspector did find that Marine officials “stopped processing” the urgent request from U.S. commanders in Iraq’s Anbar province. But his report also notes that officials advised Michael Hagee, the Marine commandant at the time, that more heavily armored Humvees were the best option for addressing the threat.
As a result, both the Marines and the Army relied mainly on up-armored Humvees in Iraq until 2007, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates instituted an aggressive effort to acquire MRAPs.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell noted that Gates made MRAP his “top acquisition priority” in May of 2007.
“As the threat has evolved, so have our force protection measures,” Morrell told reporters at a briefing yesterday. “Have we done so with the rapidity [and] efficiency that we would have liked at all times? No, we haven’t.
“But to suggest that there was any sort of neglect or that people were sitting on their hands ignoring the urgent requests of commanders in the field is just not accurate,” he added.
Lawmakers who have overseen the MRAP program said the Pentagon inspector general’s report strengthened their concerns about the Pentagon’s reaction to the theater request for such vehicles.
“DoD’s ‘urgent needs process’ was clearly ineffective, and our forces suffered because of it,” Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee, said in a statement. “I hope this report will press all the military services to improve procedures for supplying such equipment.”
The report’s “most damning conclusion,” according to Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), a defense appropriator, “is that the Pentagon was aware of the threat IED’s posed to our troops prior to our intervention in Iraq and still failed to take the steps to acquire the technology needed to reduce the risk to life and limb.” Bond was an early critic of the speed of the Marine Corps’ response to the urgent vehicle request.
House Armed Services Air Land subcommittee Chairman Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said the Marine Corps made “terrible misjudgments” by not initially prioritizing and ordering enough MRAPs. Yet he said there is a “far deeper and broader” problem with the defense procurement process, which he described as “ponderous and frequently unresponsive to urgent needs.”
“The country cannot afford–in dollars or lives–to allow the Pentagon to continue buying weapons and equipment the way it has,” Abercrombie said in a statement.
A Marine Corps spokesman said yesterday the service is “reviewing the report to ensure that our processes best support the warfighter in theater.”
When the Marine Corps decided to replace Humvees with M1114 up-armored Humvees, “roughly less than five percent of all IED attacks in Multi-National Force-West were underbelly attacks,” spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. The service chose the M1114 because of “its proven capability to protect and its tactical utility; the survivability and mobility demanded by the Marines in theater; and its availability, based on an active, responsive production line,” he said.
The Marine Corps reacted to the audit in written comments that “highlight our areas of agreement and disagreement with the findings and recommendations,” Lapan said.
Those comments are in the final report, which has not been released. The report, labeled “for official use only,” is being redacted, Pentagon inspector general spokesman Gary Comerford said.
To date, some $22 billion has been spent on the effort that has put nearly 12,000 MRAPs into Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates, since taking the helm at the Pentagon, has been a critic of what he sees as the bureaucracy’s tendency to procure expensive weapon systems for potential wars with other advanced nations rather than focusing on the current low-intensity conflicts (Defense Daily, Oct. 1).
Other Pentagon brass, most notably Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have taken up Gates’ “next-war-itis” mantra. Cartwright recently chastised the services for their preoccupation with “exquisite” weapon systems instead of focusing on troops’ current needs.
With attention now shifting to Afghanistan and the roadside bomb threat there, the Pentagon has a plan to bring lighter-weight MRAPs to that theater. The department on Monday released a solicitation for bids to build the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV).
Industry watchers have suggested that some 2,000 of these all-terrain derivations of the MRAP would cost roughly $3 billion (Defense Daily, Dec. 3). The new vehicles are intended to be lighter and more maneuverable than their hulking predecessors, which have had difficulty remaining upright on rough terrain and have destroyed roads with their weight.