MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform: Institute for National Strategic Studies Occasional Paper 6

Mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles offer an excellent case study for investigating the current debate over the Pentagon's approach to developing and fielding irregular warfare capabilities. MRAPs first gained prominence for their ability to protect U.S. forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and because the Pentagon did not deploy them en masse to Iraq until almost five years of fighting had passed. More recently, following extraordinary efforts to field more than 10,0...