Army Junking Future for New Rides?

For years, the Army has fought tooth and nail to keep its high-tech, high-priced upgrade programs intact -- even though the service is spending a bundle on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now,* Inside Defense *reports, the Army may be willing to junk that future, to pay for today's armored vehicles.

*The Army is looking to slash as much as $10 billion from its procurement accounts to pay for a larger fleet of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, setting off a round of budget drills that could throw its modernization goals into chaos and trigger a wave of program terminations and delays, *

In a bid to find between $8 billion and $10 billion for a down payment on as many as 15,000 additional MRAP vehicles requested by commanders in Iraq, the Army is considering options for financing a sizable portion of
the new armored fleet program within its base budget, according to sources familiar with closely held spending deliberations.

“Everything else we had planned is now second priority,” said a Pentagon official...

“They are going to break the Army further to fund MRAP,” said an industry official familiar with internal budget drills...

Should the Army find funds to buy the entire 17,700 MRAPs now under consideration, the total MRAP program size would more than triple and drive the total price tag to more than $24 billion.

Remember, this is all for a vehicle that's had no operational testing. And one that's had a fairly limited track record in Iraq -- only about 100 or so of the vehicles have gone to Iraq under the MRAP program. In short, this is a Haily Mary, desperation move. But these are Hail Mary, desperation times.

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* Bomb-Proof Vehicles: Why the Delay?
* Iraq's Tricked-Out Armored Cars
* Shortages for New Armored Vehicles?
* Armored Vehicle Demand Blows Up
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* 4,100 More Armored Rides