Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicle Program

Variants

The Army and Marines have employed two versions of MRAPs (the Category III Buffalo and the Category II Cougar, respectively) in limited numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, primarily for route clearance and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) operations.

On 27 January 2007 the Navy awarded a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple award contract for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to 7 contractors. 6 of the 7 contractors submitted proposals for both Category I and Category II, while the seventh contractor, General Dynamics Land Systems, submitted an entry only for the Category I vehicle.

The December 2007 contract specified the procurement of 3,126 Category I and II MRAP vehicle. These contracts were issued to 3 of the 7 contractors in the January 2007 contracts, plus a contractor that had previously been contracted for MRAPs following the initial contracts.

As of a March 2008 GAO report, no single variant or pair of variants had been selected as standard, and there was no clear indication of when or if this decision would be made.

In June 2009, Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Service Support published a booklet of the product lines and systems for which there Project Managers, Product Managers and Product Directors were responsible. In it were included 28 MRAP variants (including the new M-ATV program) and subvariants in the 3 categories. Two of these vehicles, the Category I Caiman and Caiman Plus (an EFP protected subvariant) had been assigned formal US Army designations, XM1220 and XM1230 respectively. None of the other 26 variants were listed as having formal nomenclature.