Corps to slash number of MRAPs it will buy

Corps to slash number of MRAPs it will buy
By Kimberly Johnson and Michael Hoffman - Staff writers
Posted : Saturday Dec 1, 2007 7:21:36 EST

The Corps says it doesn’t want to order any more bomb-proof vehicles for Marines, and is slashing by one-third the number of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles it once expected to buy, Marine sources said.

The decision is a sharp reversal in stance for the service — which once envisioned every Marine in Iraq traveling outside the wire in the vehicles — and comes as its top officer openly complains they are weighing the Corps down. The service originally planned to buy as many as 3,700 of the vehicles, a number that will drop by more than 1,000, sources said.

The proposed cuts are in line with the Corps’ original estimate of needed vehicles, said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessment in Washington, D.C.

“As these conditions are changing on the ground and the environment isn’t as lethal from an IED threat, I would not be surprised that they are pulling back on the requirement to an earlier estimate,” he said.

Acquisitions, like the MRAP, should be driven by events on the battlefield, Wood said.

“When you’re engaged in a combat environment and have a deficiency , you’re basing your request on what you think you need to face that threat at that time,” he said.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/marine_mrap_cuts_071129/

The Army is shitting bricks about the lack of an occupation supplemental. Maybe this is a way to save a few billion. :shrug:

They historically operate close to the bone, anyway--they're always the last to get the "Happy Glad" stuff, and the first to get the warfighting equipment. They aren't wasteful types, so I think they're just not spending dough on what they don't need.

Time will tell, I guess!