Thursday, February 7, 2008

MRAPS is put out to pasture

Back in October last year, the army was getting ready to buy better than 2000 heavy armored trucks (MRAPS). I posted about it here. These babies were heavy and tough enough to survive running over a land mine (IED in today's jargon). $28 billion dollars (one hellova lotta dough) was appropriated for these behemoths.
Well, now it seems that MRAPS isn't quite so cool, the Marines are scaling back their buy from 3700 to 1300 trucks. The Army is considering a similar cut.
MRAPS is a mine proof version of the hummer. To achieve mine-proofness, MRAPS weighs 16 tons vs the hummer's 3 tons, and requires 330 horsepower vs the hummer's 160 horse. Could it be that MRAPS is just too heavy to be useful?

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