MRAP under fire.

• Author: McCarthy, Brendan
• Position: Readers' Forum - Letter to the editor

* I am writing you to express disappointment with the recent article titled, "The MRAP: Was It Worth the Price?" (Oct. 2012, p.39).

As a former member of the special operations community, I can personally attest to the lifesaving value of the mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicle.

The only valid point of the article is that the Defense Department overestimated the number of lives saved by counting every survived soldier in an IED (improvised explosive device) attack as a saved life. That said, the article constantly compares the price and value of an MRAP to the Humvee. To say that the Humvee would have been purchased and used had the MRAP not existed is a ridiculous notion. There are several other medium to heavy options which would certainly have been fielded before the Humvee. The Rolhfs and Sullivan findings, often referred to in this artide, call this vehicle a medium protection vehicle. The Humvee has always been a light armored vehicle.

The article states that Humvees would have been just as effective in preventing loss of human life. This claim is completely unsupported both in the article and by any reports coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I would ask how you could...