Military Discovers new Armored Vehicles can't Stop Newest Bombs; Spending Billions on them Anyway

[demobabe]

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Two interesting stories were reported on Thursday:

1. The Marines have ordered 1,200 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles for $623 million
2. MRAPs have been found to be too weak to withstand the latest type of bombs used by insurgents

That's right - the military decided to make a bulk order of equipment it had just realized doesn’t work.

How could such a debacle happen? Here's a clue: The contract was announced by the offices of Mississippi members of Congress, including Republican Sen. Trent Lott. Mississippi just happens to be the location of the new 200,000 square-foot facility where the vehicles will be produced.

It gets worse. A Marine general filed an "urgent request" in February 2005 to supply his troops with MRAPs to guard against IEDs in the deadly Anbar province. More than two years passed before the Marine commandant "declared getting new armored vehicles his top priority," and even now the pipeline is embarrassingly slow.

Full article here: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alerts/251

[wakeme2008]

1. Pentagon BS

these are GREAT vehicles.

BUT the Pentagon did not design them and if left up to them, they would not be ready until 2012. So these will save 90% of the lives lost to IEDs. The military needs them now.

[demobabe]

4. Here is the USA Today article

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-05-31-mrap-insurgents_N.htm?csp=34

They say they have the same issue as the biggest problem with the Humvees: not enough armor.

[whistle]

6. It looks like a Wells Fargo Armored truck....

...when was the last time Wells Fargo armored vehicle get hit by a roadside bomb or rocket grenade?

[demobabe]

11. I thought it looked like one of those bank armored vehicles, too

Those have to be made to withstand some kind of explosion, I'm sure...

[ben_meyers]

2. SNAFU

SOP for the military. Anybody remember in Nam when we used to dump any ordinance from Federal Cartridge in Arden Hills MN., because is was all crap?

[whistle]

3. Why did the military ever believe that vehicles built for the American

...consummer market could ever provide troop protection and safety in a war zone? These vehicles were built for speed and mobility not to take direct hits or survive rocket attacks and roadside bomb detonations :wtf:

Armored tanks stupid!

[DS1]

5. The military HMMWV was in use years before anyone made a civilian version

Either way, it was designed with the cold war in mind, where vehicle mounted weapons systems would take out enemy installations from far away.

[Disturbed]

7. The MIC must be fed.

Troops are expendable.

[sofa king]

8. You know what's resistant to a six-inch shell? A battleship.

Seriously. Most of the U.S. Navy isn't resistant to the types of IEDs being employed in Iraq.

Most of the IEDs in Iraq are still based on the 250,000 tons of explosives stolen from Iraqi stores in the wake of the U.S. invasion. There weren't enough American troops to guard or destroy the ammo dumps. People will still be using that supply twenty years from now; it will never be entirely recovered.

Prominently missing amongst the stolen ordnance were myriads of six-inch (155mm) artillery shells, the same caliber and sometimes the very same types of shells used by light cruisers in navies around the world.

Those shells pack enough explosive power to sink ships. They can split tanks in two. And they'll sure as hell keep blowing the crap out of any four-or-six-wheeled road vehicle unlucky enough to come within twenty feet of one.

It's unrealistic to expect any vehicle to survive attacks with such devices, and the fact that people are surviving these attacks at all--albeit with traumatic brain injury--is amazing to me.

It's also unrealistic to expect the explosives to become less deadly or numerous in the future--there is an effectively unlimited supply, thanks to Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld.

My point is that no matter what, no matter what money is spent trying to prevent it, no matter how many patrols and metal-detecting expeditions soldiers go on, no matter how many caches are discovered and destroyed, those six-inch shells are going to continue killing soldiers and Marines in Iraq until the very day that the last one leaves.

The best way to prevent our kids from being killed by them is to get them the fuck out of there, NOW! End of story.

[demobabe]

14. Yep, you hit the nail on the head.

All of this in the name of corporate profits with our troops being used as consumable venture capital. We have no business being there.

[bamacrat]

9. Good by dollar, when will we adopt the Euro.

[gravity]

10. The vehicle doesn't have to be perfect

as long as it's significantly better than what we have now. If it would save more lives, then it is a good decision.

[Decruiter]

12. What company has the contract for supply? Where is the money?

Look for the links in the military/industrial complex.

We can, (we the people, yes, we the people), we can bring our troops home.

It is really rather simple, we have to convince our "representatives" that they work for us, not the other way around.

"Our" representatives in Washington have become confused. They don't know who they are working for and they can't remember how they got to DC in the first place.

"We the people", we need to help them.

Peace.

[dEMOK]

13. Welcome to the (Cheney/Bush) Bridge to the "20th" Century...

GAK!!!

[sanskritwarrior]

15. An MRAP is better than a Armored Hummer

and so far EFP's are limited to Diyala province near the Iranian border and Shia controlled areas in Baghdad. Seems no one wants to share EFP's with the Sunni Arabs.......I'd spend the money you have a chance of survival in an MRAP hit by an EFP, almost no chance in a Armored Humvee.......