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Army to buy more MRAPs for Iraq, Afghanistan

The Army’s top civilian leader told lawmakers Wednesday that the service will buy more Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles than planned — exactly the opposite direction of the Marine Corps, which has decided to cut its MRAP inventory.

Testifying before members of the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee, Army Secretary Pete Geren said the Army will field 10,000 heavily armored MRAPs to Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of the year. The Army plans to have 11,500 in theater by mid-February and is considering increasing the fleet to as many as 15,000.

“We are still fine-tuning the final number,” Geren said.

Geren’s comments came after Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, R-Fla., asked if the Army planned to follow the Marine’s recent decision to scale back its MRAP purchases by 40 percent. Geren added that one soldier has been killed in the 48 enemy attacks on MRAPs involving bombs made with explosively formed penetrators.

“The MRAPs have performed very well,” Geren said. “The Army will not drop below the 10,000 we already have programmed; we will likely go above that.”

Wednesday’s hearing focused on the Army’s $141 billion request in the president’s proposed budget for fiscal 2009, but lawmakers questioned Geren and Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey on issues ranging from equipment readiness to the quality of recruits entering service.

Subcommittee members were concerned about equipment readiness as the war in Iraq is about to enter its sixth year.

Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., said he wanted to know what the Army was doing to reduce serious equipment shortfalls, specifically in nondeployed units lacking the equipment they need for training.

Geren said the Army’s repair depots are operating at twice the capacity they did in peacetime.

And while every unit deployed to combat has the equipment it needs, Geren said, many nondeployed units have struggled to get what they need.

“We train in some cases using shared equipment, and in some cases there are items of equipment like up-armored Humvees and now MRAPs that they train on in theater,” Geren said.

Geren added that the $18 billion Congress approved for reset in the fiscal 2008 supplemental bill will help reduce shortages as long as the service receives the money soon.

“In the supplemental you all passed in December, you gave us $10 billion of the $18 billion,” he said. “We are still waiting on seven-plus [billion dollars], and if we get past Memorial Day, that is going to start causing us a problem.”

Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, wanted to know if the Army was lowering its recruiting standards to accept less qualified young people into the service to grow the force to 547,000 by 2010.

“We are getting very committed, very capable men and women,” Casey said, but he conceded that the Army has dropped below its standard of requiring 90 percent of its recruits to have a high school diploma.

“We are taking in less than 90 percent high school diploma graduates, and that is a degradation that I believe is acceptable to increase the size of the force,” he said.