From MRAP to scrap: U.S. military chops up $1-million vehicles

[unhappycamper]

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-afghanistan-armor-20131227,0,5362453.story



MRAPs are parked at the Sultan Kheyl outpost ini Wardak province, close to Highway 1, a main military supply route for U.S. until recently. At a cost of $1 million dollars each, the U.S. military is chopping up as many as 2,000 MRPs in Afghanistan and selling them as scrap because of the cost of shipping them home.

From MRAP to scrap: U.S. military chops up $1-million vehicles
By David Zucchino
December 27, 2013, 6:00 a.m.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Faced with an epidemic of deadly roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military officials ordered up a fleet of V-hulled 16-ton armored behemoths in 2007 to help protect American soldiers and Marines.

At a cost of $1 million each, the ugly tan beasts known as MRAPS have saved countless lives and absorbed or deflected thousands of insurgent bomb blasts in teeming cities, desert flats and rutted mountain roadways. The lumbering vehicles are so beloved that soldiers have scrawled notes of thanks on their armor.

So why would the U.S. military suddenly start chopping up as many as 2,000 of the vehicles and selling them as scrap? After all, just six years have passed since high-tech MRAPs were developed and 27,000 of them cranked out and shipped in a $50-billion production blitz.

As it turns out, the Pentagon produced a glut of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks. The military brass has now calculated that it's not worth the cost of shipping home damaged, worn or excess MRAPs to bases already deemed oversupplied with the blast-deflecting vehicles.

[JDPriestly]

1. And they want to cut Social Security.

Why do we waste so much of the money budgeted for defense?

[Lifelong Dem]

2. They already are spending $2 billion a week there

What's another $2 billion.

[The Wizard]

3. Everything else gets cut

and the military gets more resources to squander. How many legislators have off shore accounts filled with defense contractor cash?

[Skeeter Barnes]

4. The plane that crashed leaving Bagram was carrying MRAPs. They shifted and brought the plane down.

[Niceguy1]

5. if they are worn and excess

Then why waste money shippong them back? Better to cut your losses. This is a good idea of we want to save money.

[rgbecker]

6. I guess we wouldn't want the governments we have set up to have them?

Or why not park them at one of the hundreds of US bases in the middle east for use in the next war, which is sure to come?

Already we are sending more arms to Iraq to continue the war Bush (W) couldn't restrain himself from starting. Which side are you on? Shiite or Sunni? Did you ever think you'd have to choose a side in that 1200 year old war?

[RC]

8. When we start up the next war over there, you don't really expect to make our troops to use

previously used equipment, left over from our last war, now do you?
The victims of our terrorism can die with the knowledge that we only use the newest and best to kill them. Besides the MIC creates jobs. You wouldn't want to see those people laid off, now would you?
[hr]
The real answer is not to start anymore wars and not to ship all that expensive equipment over there in the first place. Use the steel used in the armor to replace and upgrade our infrastructure in this country, thereby giving jobs to those lost by not making war toys. Put the MIC out of business. Stop this madness of killing people in their own countries, who are no danger to us, US, for fun and profit.

[rgbecker]

11. Exactly.

Thank you. Seems several on this thread are happy to let you know that scraping the things is the most economical way to proceed, Without any thought of WTF we are doing with those trucks on the other side of the planet.

[penndragon69]

7. I can't think of a better definition

of Waste, Fraud and Abuse than this.

[jwirr]

9. They need one of those signs: Your tax dollars at work.

[bigbrother05]

10. Saves not only the shipping cost, but repair costs as well

Keeping them in the inventory while reducing the force structure by tens of thousands would be a boon for Army depots and contractors making the repairs and providing storage space. If they require complete and expensive rehab to bring them up to standards, our allies wouldn't think it was much of a bargain either.

[RC]

12. Making new ones and shipping them over there is so much more economical.