Mattis, Marines balked on MRAPs
Lifesaving combat vehicles delayed for months in Iraq
Retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, under consideration for Defense secretary by President-elect Donald Trump, oversaw a key command in 2005 that failed to field urgently needed combat vehicles to Iraq to protect Marines from roadside bombs.
A 2008 Pentagon inspector general report singled out the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, which Mattis commanded during 2005, for its role in failing to act on an urgent plea for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to replace vulnerable Humvees.
In 2007, USA TODAY reported there was a months-long delay in fielding MRAPs. Those trucks, which have V-shaped hulls that deflect bomb blasts, eventually replaced nearly every Humvee in Iraq and Afghanistan after Defense Secretary Robert Gates made them the Pentagon’s No. 1 priority. Gates did so after reading in USA TODAY about their superior protection over Humvees against roadside bombs.
Instead of acting on the plea from Marines in 2005, the command under Mattis accepted the Marine Corps commandant’s decision to replace its poorly protected Humvees with better armored ones, the inspector general determined. The request for MRAPs languished.
“In reaction, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command stopped processing (the urgent request) for MRAP-type vehicle capability in August 2005,” the inspector general found.
The inspector general’s report did not mention Mattis by name, just that he was head of the Combat Development Command at the time of the request. Mattis, the report said, was asked on March 29, 2005, at a Marine safety board meeting to review the feasibility of acquiring MRAPs, but that review was never conducted.
Command officials failed to develop a course of action for the urgent request for MRAPs, seek funding for them or appeal to another Marine Corps body to field them, the inspector general wrote. Finally, the command “did not, as it could and should have in July 2005,” request that Marine commanders take the re- quest to the Joint Chiefs of Staff “to address an immediate and apparent joint war fighter need for an MRAP-type vehicle capability.”
Mattis said in an interview with the inspector general’s team that he directed that work continue to fulfill the urgent request and that he did not know why the work was not performed.
Pentagon officials knew long before 2005 about the Humvee’s vulnerabilities. Their flat bottoms transmitted the force of blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) buried in roads directly to the troops they carried. Military officials declared them a “death trap” in such attacks as early as 1994. By 2003, Pentagon analysts were writing to the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the superiority of MRAPs to Humvees.
One Pentagon analyst complained April 29, 2004, in an email to colleagues that it was “frustrating to see the pictures of burning Humvees while knowing that there are other vehicles out there that would provide more protection.”
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, IEDs became the insurgents’ weapon of choice and the No. 1 killer of American troops. Officials in the Marines and Army resisted MRAPs, hulking, expensive vehicles. Gates changed that in 2007 and launched a $50 billion program to outfit troops in combat with the superior protection offered by MRAPs.
Mattis declined requests for interviews, according to Marlon Bateman, a spokesman for the Hoover Institution where Mattis is a fellow.
The Marines’ urgent request for MRAPs was submitted in February 2005. “MRAP vehicles will protect Marines, reduce casualties, increase mobility and enhance mission success,” the request read. “Without MRAP, personnel loss rates are likely to continue at their current rate.”
As U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, the value of MRAPs became clear. In 2012, the Pentagon estimated that replacing Humvees with MRAPs saved the lives of as many as 2,000 troops.