U.S. military chops up $1 million vehicles

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2013/12/us-military-chops-1-million-vehicles

U.S. military chops up $1 million vehicles
By David Zucchino
McClatchy/Tribune
© December 30, 2013

BAGRAM, Afghanistan

Faced with an epidemic of deadly roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military officials ordered up a fleet of V-hulled 16-ton armored behemoths in 2007 to help protect American soldiers and Marines. At a cost of $1 million each, the ugly tan beasts known as MRAPS have saved countless lives and absorbed or deflected thousands of insurgent bomb blasts in teeming cities, desert flats and rutted mountain roadways. The lumbering vehicles are so beloved that soldiers have scrawled notes of thanks on their armor.

So why would the U.S. military suddenly start chopping up as many as 2,000 of the vehicles and selling them as scrap? After all, just six years have passed since high-tech MRAPs were developed and 27,000 of them cranked out and shipped in a $50 billion production blitz.

As it turns out, the Pentagon produced a glut of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks. The military brass has now calculated that it’s not worth the cost of shipping home damaged, worn or excess MRAPs to bases already deemed oversupplied with the blast-deflecting vehicles.

As they are “demilitarized,” many of the MRAPs are sold as scrap metal to eager Afghan buyers.

[Turbineguy]

1. And the scrap

when cut into small pieces makes great IED's!

[rock]

2. Yes, the amount of money the US pours down the MIC shit-hole

shows us how insane politics can be.