By Marina Malenic
The Pentagon will soon begin using sea routes to deliver new blast-proof trucks to Afghanistan to save on airlift costs, the top military officer in charge of transportation and logistics said yesterday.
To date, 236 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicles (M-ATVs) have been airlifted to theater, said Air Force Gen. Duncan McNabb, the chief of U.S. Transportation Command.
“As soon as we can, we will end up taking some by surface,” McNabb told the Defense Writers Group in Washington. “We’re doing everything by air now, but eventually we would like to get to where we’re taking that as far forward as possible.”
M-ATV production is ahead of schedule at Oshkosh Corp.‘s [OSK] Wisconsin factory and is on track to ramp up to 1,000 vehicles per month this month, defense acquisition officials have said. The need for the new trucks–lighter and more mobile versions of the 16,000 Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles built primarily for Iraq–has grown as U.S. troops in Afghanistan face a burgeoning roadside-bomb threat. M-ATVs will replace up-armored Humvees for U.S. soldiers and Marines stationed there.
McNabb said surface shipping of the armored vehicles would be more cost-effective, and his staff is making every effort to reduce transportation and logistics costs.
“It saves a lot of money, and those C-17s get optimized and so does the shipping,” he said.
McNabb said the Pentagon currently pays approximately $130,000 per vehicle to fly the M-ATVs into theater. He added that it tends to be “ten times more expensive to take stuff by air.”
“If I can find a safe and secure way to get stuff in there without having to do air, it’s saving me a pretty penny,” he said.