Study: Lack of MRAPs Cost Marine Lives

Study: Lack of MRAPs Cost Marine Lives

AP

Posted: 2008-02-15 16:44:55

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured

by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an

urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant

vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by

The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement"

that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks

for more than two years.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for

the so-called MRAPs, according to the study. Stateside authorities saw

the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as

a fin steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful

explosives planted by insurgents.

An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It

was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of

the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and

grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially

available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June

2004 to February 2005.

Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a

civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development

Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military

vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would

upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was

in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study

contends.

The Marine Corps' acquisition staff didn't give top leaders correct

information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not

told of the gravity of Hejlik's MRAP request and the real reasons it

was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving "inaccurate

and incomplete" information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not

hotly pursued.

The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy,

treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for

equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps' vision

as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee

replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle

for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.

The MRAPs didn't meet this fast-moving standard and so the Combat

Development Command didn't want to buy them, according to Gayl. The

study calls this approach a "Cold War orientation" that suffocates the

ability to react to emergency situations.

The Combat Development Command has managers - some of whom are retired

Marines - who lack adequate technical credentials. They have outdated

views of what works on the battlefield and how the defense industry

operates, Gayl says. Yet they are in position to ignore or overrule

calls from deployed commanders.

An inquiry should be conducted by the Marine Corps inspector general

to determine if any military or government employees are culpable for

failing to rush critical gear to the troops, recommends Gayl, who

prepared the study for the Marine Corps' plans, policies and

operations department.

The study was obtained by the AP from a nongovernment source.

"If the mass procurement and fielding of MRAPs had begun in 2005 in

response to the known and acknowledged threats at that time, as the

(Marine Corps) is doing today, hundreds of deaths and injuries could

have been prevented," writes Gayl, the science and technology adviser

to Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski, who heads the department. "While the

possibility of individual corruption remains undetermined, the

existence of corrupted MRAP processes is likely, and worthy of

(inspector general) investigation."

Gayl, who has clashed with his superiors in the past and filed for

whistle-blower protection last year, uses official Marine Corps

documents, e-mails, briefing charts, memos, congressional testimony,

and news articles to make his case.

He was not allowed to interview or correspond with any employees

connected to the Combat Development Command. The study's cover page

says the views in the study are his own.

Maj. Manuel Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman, called Gayl's study

"predecisional staff work" and said it would be inappropriate to

comment on it. Delarosa said, "It would be inaccurate to state that

Lt. Gen. Natonski has seen or is even aware of" the study.

Last year, the service defended the decision to not buy MRAPs after

receiving the 2005 request. There were too few companies able to make

the vehicles, and armored Humvees were adequate, officials said then.

Hejlik, who is now a major general and heads Marine Corps Special

Operations Command, has cast his 2005 statement as more of a

recommendation than a demand for a specific system.

The term mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle "was very generic"

and intended to guide a broader discussion of what type of truck would

be needed to defend against the changing threats troops in the field

faced, Hejlik told reporters in May 2007. "I don't think there was any

intent by anybody to do anything but the right thing."

The study does not say precisely how many Marine casualties Gayl

thinks occurred due to the lack of MRAPs, which have V-shaped hulls

that deflect blasts out and away from the vehicles.

Gayl cites a March 1, 2007, memo from Conway to Gen. Peter Pace, then

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which Conway said 150

service members were killed and an additional 1,500 were seriously

injured in the prior nine months by IEDs while traveling in vehicles.

The MRAP, Conway told Pace, could reduce IED casualties in vehicles by

80 percent. He told Pace an urgent request for the vehicles was

submitted by a Marine commander in May 2006. No mention is made of

Hejlik's call more than a year before.

Delivering MRAPs to Marines in Iraq, Conway wrote, was his "number one

unfilled warfighting requirement at this time." Overall, he added, the

Marine Corps needed 3,700 of the trucks - more than three times the

number requested by Hejlik in 2005.

More than 3,200 U.S. troops, including 824 Marines, have been killed

in action in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. An additional

29,000 have been wounded, nearly 8,400 of them Marines. The majority

of the deaths and injuries have been caused by explosive devices,

according to the Defense Department.

Congress has provided more than $22 billion for 15,000 MRAPs the

Defense Department plans to acquire, mostly for the Army. Depending on

the size of the vehicle and how it is equipped, the trucks can cost

between $450,000 and $1 million.

As of May 2007, roughly 120 MRAPs were being used by troops from all

the military services, Pentagon records show. Now, more than 2,150 are

in the hands of personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marines have

900 of those.

One section of Gayl's study analyzes a letter Conway sent in late July

2007 to Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Kit Bond, R-Mo., two critics

of delays in sending equipment to Iraq.

More heavily armored Humvees were determined to be the best response

to the 2005 MRAP request, the commandant told the senators. He also

said the industrial capacity to build MRAPs in large numbers "did not

exist" when the request was submitted. Additionally, although the

trucks had been fielded in small numbers, they were not adequately

tested and exhibited reliability problems, the letter said.

The letter to the senators is evidence of the "bad advice" senior

Marine Corps leaders receive, Gayl contends. The letter, he says,

portions of which were probably drafted by the Combat Development

Command, omitted that the urgent 2005 request from the Iraq

battlefield specifically asked for MRAPs - and not more heavily

armored Humvees. It also ignored the Marines' own findings that

armored Humvees wouldn't stop IEDs.

Conway's assertion there was a lack of manufacturing capacity to build

MRAPs is "inexplicable," Gayl says. Manufacturers would have hurried

production if they knew the Marines wanted them and any reliability

issues would have been resolved, he says.

In late November, the Marine Corps announced it would buy 2,300 MRAPs

- 1,400 fewer than planned. Improved security in Iraq, changes in

tactics, and decreasing troop levels allowed for the cut. But Marine

officials also listed several downsides to the MRAP: The vehicles are

too tall and heavy to pursue the enemy down narrow streets, on rough

terrain or across many bridges.

If MRAPs arrived to Iraq late, or proved too bulky for certain

missions, the Marine Corps should have come up with different and

better solutions several years ago when the IED crisis was growing,

Gayl contends.

A former Marine officer, Gayl spent nearly six months in Iraq in 2006

and 2007 as an adviser to leaders of the 1st Marine Expeditionary

Force.

His stinging indictment of the Marine Corps' system for fielding gear

is not a first. He has been an outspoken advocate for non-lethal

weapons, such as a beam gun that stings but doesn't kill and

"dazzlers" that use a powerful light beam to steer unwelcome vehicles

and people from checkpoints and convoys.

The failure to send these alternative weapons to Iraq has led to U.S.

casualties and the deaths of Iraqi civilians, Gayl has said.

Gayl filed for whistle-blower protection in May with the U.S. Office

of Special Counsel. He said he was threatened with disciplinary action

after meeting with congressional staff on Capitol Hill.

Biden and Bond rebuked the Marine Corps in September for "apparent

retaliation" against Gayl.

Associated Press researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report

from New York.

On The Net: http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/homepage?readform

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the

AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise

distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated

Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

02/15/08 16:43 EST