Flatcat. Came across this article in a local paper. Could UA and BI be working on this together?
By Scripps Howard News Service
With the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, the Pentagon is faced with the question of what do with the vast stocks of equipment it built up for those wars, particularly the 26,000 or so fighting vehicles known as MRAPs (mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles).
The Pentagon spent more than $45 billion on them in the last six years to replace the more lightly armored and vulnerable Humvees. A Congressional Research Service report cited by The Washington Post said that from 2009 to 2010 the occupancy death rate from improvised explosive devices was 80 percent in the Humvees, 15 percent in the MRAPs.
The base cost of an MRAP is $500,000 to $1 million, but that can rise to $1.5 million when all the communications and electronic gear is factored in.
Clearly these vehicles are too effective and the investment too great to simply write off. And unlike so much military surplus, these vehicles have no real civilian function.
The answer emerging from the Pentagon is to save the vehicles for the next war, use some for training and preposition the rest where that war is most likely to break out.
The Pentagon is planning to stockpile large numbers of them, enough to equip a heavy brigade, an infantry battalion and support and sustainment units, in the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to a report in The New York Times. The military also plans to store large numbers of MRAPs in Italy for quick deployment in Africa. And there would be other large stockpiles on the East and West coasts that would also include stores for disaster relief.
The Times says that the prepositioning would involve eight ships: two containing ammunition — one in the Mideast, the other in the Pacific; and six more ships, containing enough equipment for an infantry brigade and a sustainment brigade and the equipment necessary to unload them where needed.
We have damaged our military readiness by precipitous post-conflict drawdowns in the past. We could save ourselves some blood and money in any new war by husbanding what we’ve built and learned from the last war.
