Delay in armored trucks blamed for U.S. deaths

Gayl used official Marine Corps documents, e-mails, briefing charts, memos, congressional testimony and news articles to make his case.

He was not allowed to interview or correspond with any employees connected to the Combat Development Command. The study's cover page says the views in the study are his own.

Maj. Manuel Delarosa, a Marine Corps spokesman, called Gayl's study "predecisional staff work" and said it would be inappropriate to comment on it. Delarosa said, "It would be inaccurate to state that Lt. Gen. Natonski has seen or is even aware of" the study.

Last year, the service defended the decision to not buy MRAPs after receiving the 2005 request. There were too few companies able to make the vehicles, and armored Humvees were adequate, officials said then.

Hejlik, who is now a major general and heads Marine Corps Special Operations Command, has cast his 2005 statement as more of a recommendation than a demand for a specific system.

The term mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle "was very generic" and intended to guide a broader discussion of what type of truck would be needed to defend against the changing threats troops in the field faced, Hejlik told reporters in May 2007. "I don't think there was any intent by anybody to do anything but the right thing."

The study does not say precisely how many Marine casualties Gayl thinks occurred because of the lack of MRAPs, which have V-shaped hulls that deflect blasts out and away from the vehicles.

Could the deaths be prevented?
Gayl cites a March 1, 2007, memo from Conway to Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which Conway said 150 service members were killed and 1,500 were seriously injured in the prior nine months by bombs while traveling in vehicles.

The MRAP, Conway told Pace, could reduce bomb casualties in vehicles by 80 percent. He told Pace an urgent request for the vehicles was submitted by a Marine commander in May 2006. No mention is made of Hejlik's call more than a year before.

Delivering MRAPs to Marines in Iraq, Conway wrote, was his "number one unfilled warfighting requirement at this time." Overall, he added, the Marine Corps needed 3,700 of the trucks — more than three times the number requested by Hejlik in 2005.

More than 3,200 U.S. troops, including 824 Marines, have been killed in action in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. An additional 29,000 have been wounded, nearly 8,400 of them Marines. The majority of the deaths and injuries have been caused by explosive devices, according to the Defense Department.

Money made available
Congress has provided more than $22 billion for 15,000 MRAPs the Defense Department plans to acquire, mostly for the Army. Depending on the size of the vehicle and how it is equipped, the trucks can cost between $450,000 and $1 million.

As of May 2007, roughly 120 MRAPs were being used by troops from all the military services, Pentagon records show. Now, more than 2,150 are in the hands of personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marines have 900 of those.

One section of Gayl's study analyzes a letter Conway sent in late July 2007 to Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Kit Bond, R-Mo., two critics of delays in sending equipment to Iraq.

More heavily armored Humvees were determined to be the best response to the 2005 MRAP request, the commandant told the senators. He also said the industrial capacity to build MRAPs in large numbers "did not exist" when the request was submitted. Additionally, although the trucks had been fielded in small numbers, they were not adequately tested and exhibited reliability problems, the letter said.

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