This morning’s USA Today has a nice update piece about MRAPs and the slow de-emphasis on these vehicles as the panacea that would solve all the problems of our occupation of Iraq. The article includes some good photos and a short video clip. The perceived lessening of violence in Baghdad has caused the Army and Marine Corps to cancel some of their orders.

In the past few weeks, the Marines have determined they need fewer MRAPs, and the Army has indicated it will probably follow, mostly because violence is down in Iraq and counterinsurgency efforts are taking hold. Where deployed, MRAPs are helping to tamp down IED attacks by making it safe for troops to move deeper into neighborhoods to find IEDs and the insurgents who plant them, officers in the field say. A USA TODAY team embedded with combat units here in early December found that the news from the Pentagon had not dampened the demand for MRAPs on the front lines.

Troops like these vehicles because they feel safe. Further, they are larger than Humvees and Strykers, with more headroom, which provides a better environment for getting into your battle rattle.

These are the vehicles, by the way, that the Pentagon saw no need to expedite until Secretary Gates had replaced the incompetent and disgraced Donald Rumsfeld.

And, despite the recent notices that overall requirements will be cut — as many as 15,000 were once contemplated — Gates' spokesman Geoff Morrell said last week that MRAPs remain a major priority. "As it stands right now, we continue to buy as many MRAPs as can be produced, and that has not changed."

They are not the perfect answer to the resistance of course.

Although proven lifesavers — only a few troops have been killed riding in MRAPs — the vehicles are not failsafe. Armor-penetrating explosives, called explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, have breached them in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, Army deputy chief of staff, says, "Whatever we put a soldier or Marine in, ultimately there is a bigger boom possible, something that can undo that particular design."

No matter how much protection is loaded onto a vehicle, a determined enemy will always find a way to penetrate the armor. I discussed this dynamic at some length back in August.

The real solution is to reduce the threat or remove the challenge that produces the threat. Since we’ve committed the nation’s armed forces to a 40 or 50 year occupation in order to extract Iraq’s oil, we’re probably going to need quite a few of these vehicles in the years to come.

Main & Central Articles on MRAPs

Mine Resistant Vehicles

17,700 MRAPs

Marine MRAPs Mired in Minutiae

A Minor MRAP Problem

The Super-MRAP

The Cougar MRAP

Baby Huey Needs Feeding

What Does the JIEDDO Do?

MRAPs Go Mainstream

MRAPs AirShipped to Iraq

MRAPs Get Bad Press From Pentagon

The Struggle Between Armor and the Projectile

Death of an MRAP

Marines Call For a Mark Time on the MRAP March

Stryking Out For Hearts and Minds

Rethinking MRAPs