I Guess Those Million Dollar MRAPs Aren't As Effective As Touted

[unhappycamper]

unhappycamper note: Since the ‘Pentagon’ has ‘requested’ that I only post one paragraph from articles on Army Times, and Airforce Times, I’ve decided to give ya’ll an unhappycamper summary of the article and a link to the OP. To keep in that same (new) tradition, I will also do the same for articles on Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, stripes.com and military.com.To keep in that same (new) tradition, I will also do the same for for articles on Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, stripes.com and military.com.

To read the article in the military's own words, you will need to click the link.

(This space reserved for a legally correct snark dump.) It sure is beginning to smell like fascism.

unhappycamper summary of this article: Back in the bad old days, the MIC and DoD got into a pissing contest about we-gotta-build-those mrap-things-here. At the time, the Puzzle Palace was looking at the South African Buffalo. Fortunately Oshkosh came to the rescue and started building these million dollar dubies to protect our troops from IED blasts.

Unfortunately, MRAPs are too big to fit on ships (Go figure. :crazy:) Guess how we got over 12,000 of them to the sandbox? We air shipped each and every MRAP to the sand box on a fucking airplane. On. A. Fucking. Airplane.

Now we find out they are no longer capable of protecting our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is one clusterfuck after another clusterfuck. Is it time to come home yet?



5 Carson troops killed in August were in MRAP
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Sep 24, 2010 13:41:55 EDT

FORT CARSON, Colo. — Five Fort Carson soldiers who were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan last month were in a single heavily armed vehicle, the Army said.

[w8liftinglady]

1. yeah.To Afghanistan....For another f&cking decade.

[hobbit709]

2. Anything can be taken out with the proper charge.

They designed to resist the basic IEDs, not the shaped charge surprise.

[Name removed]

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[Scuba]

3. It was never time to go.

[madokie]

4. Its a crying ass shame that we, America, is engaging in this occupation

Bring our troops home now and admit defeat and get it the fuck over with. We lost to the Vietnamese and we lost to the Iraqi and now we're losing to the Afghani. Quit killing people is what we need to do right the fuck now. fucking stop it america just fucking stop

[Name removed]

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[Panaconda]

5. K&R n/t

[Name removed]

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[USArmyParatrooper]

9. "Since the ‘Pentagon’ has ‘requested’ that I only post one paragraph"

The military times is privately owned.

There is no armored vehicle in the world that is impervious to any explosive device. Not even Abrams tanks are completely invulnerable, and they rank among the best armor in the world. Hell I don't there's anything made today that can withstand an EFP every time. And by withstand I mean the projectile doesn't penetrate. Those things can go through and engine block like butter, and they will destroy literally anything they hit.

Given the choice I would much rather be inside an MRAP than an uparmored HMMWV, or any general purpose troop carrier for that matter.

The military needs to come up an armor platform that can withstand extreme heat to counteract EFP's. But for withstanding general explosive and projectiles the MRAP is actually a very robust troop carrier.

[Fumesucker]

11. .Well, if we're given choices, I'd rather our troops not be there in the first place..

If they weren't there they wouldn't be blown up by various alphabet bombs.

[madokie]

12. I stand with you

[USArmyParatrooper]

14. "Alphabet bombs"? That was a cute little funny you made.

:thumbsdown:

[Fumesucker]

15. Interesting that you avoid the point of my post.. n/t

[USArmyParatrooper]

16. I get it. You're against the war in Afghanistan.

That wasn't exactly a deep point that required addressing. But making funnies about the bombs killing US troops was frankly disgusting.

[Selatius]

10. I hate to say, but Afghanistan's mountains make the use of wheeled vehicles very difficult.

You have to walk on foot or fly by helicopter or plane in many cases to get somewhere. A tank or humvee or some other vehicle would have a tough time in some of the more rugged parts of Afghanistan, and the noise of the vehicle trying to negotiate over rocks and boulders would be heard a mile away by the enemy. You're going to have to fight the guerrillas on foot or simply bomb them from air.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

13. I think you're right. That's why things like this are getting developed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
The video is pretty amazing.

[Selatius]

20. Figures DARPA is funding such projects.

They've been plugging millions of dollars into robotics research as well as research into neural networks. I can see a day when we simply send out automated tanks and flying drones to do the fighting.

[Bigmack]

17. Excellent! This thread includes some posts....

by Vietghanistan War supporters. I've been looking for some of them.

Maybe one or more of them can tell me what we are there for. What do we have to "win"?

Oh... and please... no "bring light and democracy to the 3rd World" bullshit..... please.

[Warpy]

18. Since they're gas guzzling, usless pieces of junk

that are liabilities in combat and ridiculously expensive to transport, why not just let the Afghans have them when we leave? It's not like they're going to last them or serve them all that well if they get imperial ambitions. Most of them will be stripped and hammered into things the Afghans can use, like roofing material.

I can see cleaning up munitions when we leave a war theater. Some military junk should be left behind, especially the military junk that doesn't work as advertised.

This is also an example of why the Pentagon budget needs to be cut. Instead of allowing contractors to over design and over engineer stuff to the point that it ways several tons more than it should and does not work in the field, they should be designing cheap and dirty stuff that works every time. The only way to get to that point is to force it by giving them less money to squander.

[SoCalDem]

19. Insurgents, Nationalists, Guerrilla fighters will almost ALWAYS

find a way to disable or destroy the most sophisticated/expensive equipment, and kill/wound/capture the attendant soldiers...and do it with the least expensive, most un-sophisticated weaponry.