U.S. military buying the RG-33.

biz.yahoo.com...

BAE Systems was awarded an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract Jan. 26 and a first delivery order for two 4x4 and two 6x6 vehicles from the company's RG33 family of vehicles for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) program for testing, with possible delivery orders for up to a total of 4,100 systems.

Following these initial delivery orders, the Government may place additional delivery orders for production of up to 4,100 MRAP vehicles in two categories. The Government has stated its intent to deploy vehicles procured under the MRAP program to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"BAE Systems fully understands that today's survivability requirements pose technical and operational challenges that require the capabilities of an experienced and proven combat vehicle developer," said John Swift, MRAP Program Manager for BAE Systems at its Triangle, Virginia office.

You know, I pretty much hate it when they take so long to put something in Iraq for the Marines and soldiers. Back then the DoD buys a couple of hundred vehicles, like a dozen of this vehicles, or 3 dozen of that vehicles. But now they finally decided to order in the thousands!!!! Taking forever.

We got tons of different vehicles, and no doubt it takes time for the companies to produce them, but in the mean time the lives of the troops is top priority. Order 2,000 Dingos from this company, 2,000 Cougars from that company, 2,000 Buffalos, etc. Thats how we can able to compensate for the shortage of these IED or mine resistant vehicles. As of right now, 70% of the casualties have resulted from mines and IEDs. We are going to wait so long just for one perfect vehicle from one company to produce?

They've been fielding these and other vehicles for several years now. I was over in Iraq several years ago, seeing the V hulled uparmored vehicles. The RG31 is another, that has had great success(maybe one crew killed out of hundreds if not thousands of IED strikes). It's not so much looking for the perfect vehicle, but certain vehicles lend themselves to certain types of missions, and may be completely impractical in certain roles. They have to balance- mobility, range, payload, armor protection, cost, etc.. for the proposed use. I've got a buddy that works in Canada on the RG31, and he explained a lot of the details, and some other buddies who took part in evaluations of vehicles, so I've seen both sides of the issue.

This is 1971-72 all over again.

The democratic call for a vote of no-confidence is merely the way they think to lasso the Republicans onto a 'shared ticket' approach whereby they can force an Iraqi withdrawal, set up their candidates for 2008 by -demanding- such a withdrawal, openly.

And then wag their fingers and say "But you agreed!" at the conservative right if it turns out that leaving Iraq is 'not such a good idea' (duuuh).

Similarly, Cassey's confirmation hearings come down to politics as usual wherein you have a Congress telling a general with jello-balls that 'he's been a baaaaad boy'. And him telling them that if they hire him anyway, he'll be their bleep because "He doesn't believe in the current approach and from within the JCS will be ideally positioned to hamstring, shortchange and 'generally' do an inverse-Marshal approach to making the current administration position fail even quicker!"

Finally, you have the bigger-boom obsessed R&D people seeing all their precious moneys given over to brushfire programs that have absolutely nothing to do with the high intensity warfare systems they have staked a retirement plan. Money that they know will be even harder to replace after another lost war when Congress and America go into a retranchist 'anti-military' stance, just as they did in the 70s.

Finally, you have the near certainty that our failure as a superpower will mean a world in which the USD is no longer the money of choice in selling oil and so all our massive foreign-held debts will be instantly collapsed when our exiting the Gulf as losers further destroys the Greenspan inflated currency value previously buoyed up by the fiat currency rules of OPEC trading.

Against that threat level of corruption at home and vulnerability abroad, assuming that any of these system contracts will last past the first lot or two or that they will find active use in Iraq if they ARE purchased, is childish.

Were it any other way, the Dems would be tooting their own horn with counter suggestions to bulk up their reputation as war _winners_ instead of biding their time quietly until their version of 'rapproachment with the Iranian/Syrian partners for peace' comes down to fleeing the field while the hyenas of terror group representative parties rip Iraq up in bloody chunks, leaving only 'spheres of influence' that come down to private fiefdoms of sectarian and political influence, street by street. Oil field by Oil Field.

If you want to stop this BS, you do it by stripping the Korean and NATO garrisons down completely. Flooding Iraq with another 100K troops on the premise of /never/ rotating home until things settle down. With 500,000 men you can start to lock down entire cities to block-by-block strip the citizen militias of their lethal toys on a field courted death penalty consequence to possession of guns or gun powder residue.

You also remove the privacy of the mosques since these are the center of both the at-home and foreign-piped logistics and planning. If they can't refrain from slaughtering their own priests and blowing their own houses of God up, they certainly have no right to pretend that WE will somehow pollute their sanctity.

I would add similar 'probational basis' restrictions on the privilege of road transport and telecomms. You screw up, you walk. One electronically signalled IED and nobody has phones.

Feeding the people off the backs of trucks like animals if the markets are too ineptly or too corruptly secured then makes them dependent on OUR direct kindness so that they have /no choice/ but to see who's hand safely feeds them. Something which will be necessary as we wean them away from the corruption of a too-soon legitimized national government whose members are ALL terrorist affiliated or influenced.

You further need to set up the equivalent of 'Indian Outsourced Tech Support' as literally thousands of contract Arabic phone translators if not mechanized translation using dual cell phone capability so that you can at least communicate with those in the JSS districts on more than a smile-and-grunt basis as you come knocking down their door to get off the damn streets infested with snipers.

You need to factor-of-ten increase the number of infantry-launched scaled drone with direct video so that nobody, anywhere, can shift weapons or preposition assassination teams or leave IEDs, Day or Night, without a response team (predeployed vehicle columns) on their damn tails inside 2 minutes. Iraq should be a constant game of stake out not 'hide behind the fence at night and then go gladhanding while poking in their closets the next morning'. As an element of this, you need to outlaw public assembly in groups of more than 5-10 people.

Fail to do ALL this and mine protected vehicles are only an incomplete, faster-ambulance, solution seeking to survive the car wreck of a runaway insurgency rather than apply the brakes to stabilize it into the skid and away from the medians of anarchy and totalitarian rule by sectarian split Iraqi government.


KPl.

They are replacing the hummer/Humvee?

I love that 4x4 gas whoring vehicle. If i had the money, I will buy one!

But whatever protects the troops better, buy it.

I like the new German Dingo/Boxer/Fennek vehicles, those are fast and with huge armour. The MG on top can be fired from the onboard display. It also has a thermal image sensor.

But honestly those vehicles and that new US Vehicle can do nothing against roadside bombs. These bombs destroy even Abrams tanks. But those vehicles are good against ambushes with MG,RPG or sniper.