The US Army is in the process of refining a long-term plan for its fleet of 20,000 blast-deflecting, mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, service officials explained.

Some of the MRAPS will be placed in brigade combat team configurations for as needed troop transport and route clearance missions; some will be put in storage facilities and others will be kept for training purposes, according to the Department of the Army G-8 officials.

“The MRAPs were a very successful programme,” said Colonel Mark Barbosa, Chief, Focused Logistics Division, Director of Material, G-8. “The $45-billion investment had Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), oversight, with very strong support in Congress. The platform was rushed to theatre to protect our soldiers and it did very well. In order to meet the timelines we needed to meet, we had to go to multiple vendors and we had to go to very large quantities.”

Now that the war in Iraq is over and plans for an Afghan drawdown are underway, the Army is outlining a long-term plan for the vehicles to place roughly 60 per cent of them in storage or prepositioned stocks, 30 per cent of them with units and about 10 per cent of the fleet for home-based troop training. In addition, a small number will be divested, Barbosa said.

At the same time, the MRAP plans are a key part of the calculus of the Army’s overall fleet strategy which, among the flagship programme, plans to incrementally field the new, next-generation joint light tactical vehicle, or JLTV. The now-in-development JLTV, a new, high-tech light tactical vehicle to begin fielding by 2016, is being engineered with MRAP like protection at a much lighter weight.

“The JLTV will bring the MRAP-level protection that we need, and the on-board power we will need for current and future networks. Also, the JLTV will have an offroad mobility and system reliability that will exceed what we have in MRAPs,” said Tim Goddette, director of sustainment systems for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.

Overall, MRAPs only represent about seven per cent of the army’s wheeled vehicle inventory; by contrast, the army plans to have JLTVs make up roughly one-quarter of its total tactical wheeled vehicle fleet, officials said. In essence, the army plans to acquire as many as 50,000 JLTVs by 2035, they said.