Mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles offer an excellent case study for investigating the current debate over the Pentagon's approach to developing and fielding irregular warfare capabilities. MRAPs first gained prominence for their ability to protect U.S. forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and because the Pentagon did not deploy them en masse to Iraq until almost 5 years of fighting had passed. More recently, following extraordinary efforts to field more than 10,000 MRAPs quickly, the program has been criticized as wasteful and unnecessary. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates often cites the slow fielding of MRAPs as a prime example of the Pentagon's institutional resistance to investments in irregular warfare capabilities. Some irregular warfare requirements traditionally bedevil the United States, but quickly producing and fielding vehicles is something the country has done well often in the past. Moreover, the Pentagon assessed MRAPs as 400 percent more effective at protecting U.S. troops than other vehicles, and Congress was eager to pay for them. Thus, the slow fielding of the MRAPs certainly seems like prima facie evidence for the Secretary's claim that the Pentagon does not do a good job of providing irregular warfare capabilities. Yet some analysts now argue that MRAPs are not really useful for irregular warfare and are prohibitively expensive. By the time the vehicles finally flowed into the combat zone, the need for them had diminished because the insurgency and the IED problem in Iraq were on the decline. Now the Pentagon's planned procurement of MRAPs is being slashed, Congress is demanding more accountability for controlling their costs, and the MRAP program is being accused of sidetracking important future acquisition programs such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and the Future Combat System. Both MRAP proponents and detractors view the MRAP saga as an acquisition disaster.


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    MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform

    C. J. Lamb / M. J. Schmidt / B. G. Fitzsimmons | NTIS | 2009


    Irregular Warfare is Warfare

    J. K. Coons / G. M. Harned | NTIS | 2009



    Airpower in Irregular Warfare

    T. A. Markland | NTIS | 2009