The MRAP: was it worth the price?

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin
• Position: Military Vehicles

Mine-resistant ambush vehicles, better known as MRAPs, have been credited with saving thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan--40,000 to be exact, as reported by the Pentagon's Joint Program Office for Mine-Resistant Protected Vehicles.

But recently, the $45 billion MRAP program has come under fire for its high cost, and some have questioned whether less expensive vehicles--such as armored Humvees--would have been just as effective in preventing loss of life.

In a recent Foreign Affairs article titled "The MRAP Boondoggle," authors Chris Rohlfs and Ryan Sullivan, professors of economics at Syracuse University and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, respectively, argued that it was a wasteful program.

"Data from the battlefield does not support the claims that MRAPs are highly effective in decreasing the number of U.S. causalities," said the authors, citing their own study where they used For Official Use Only data supplied by the Defense Department.

"For infantry units, one life was saved for every seven medium vehicles purchased, at a total cost of around $1 million to $2 million per saved life. However, tactical wheeled vehicles with 'heavy' amounts of protection, such as the MRAP ... did not save more lives than medium armored vehicles did, despite their cost of $600,000 apiece--roughly three times as much as the medium-protected vehicles."

The Pentagon got its numbers wrong when they calculated the number of lives saved by the MRAP, Rohlfs and Sullivan said. The problem was that the Defense Department "added up the number of enemy-initiated attacks in which MRAPs were involved, added up the number of troops who were in those MRAPs, and counted each one as a life saved."

But this is a fallacy because it would suggest that if the Army had used up-armored Humvees over the MRAP, all occupants of the vehicles would have died, they wrote.

"What does this mean? For most units, tactical wheeled vehicles with medium amounts of protection are just as effective as heavily protected vehicles at reducing casualties. And they are a fraction of the cost," wrote Rohlfs and Sullivan.

Responding to the criticism, John Urias, president of Oshkosh Defense asked, "How do they value the cost of an American life? ... It's priceless."

James Hasik, a defense industry analyst and defense contractor consultant, disagreed with Rohlfs and Sullivan's findings. Hasik said the study was at times unclear, and the data used was faulty.

For example, Hasik said the...