Omaha World Herald March 20, 2011
A bumpier but safer ride
By Joseph Morton and Matthew Hansen
COMBAT OUTPOST DAND PATAN, Afghanistan — Lt. Col. Steve Boesen of Ankeny, Iowa, and his personal security detail recently rumbled away from their forward operating base cocooned in one of the safest vehicles in military history.
The 13-ton MaxxPro MRAP they drove can deflect roadside bombs. It can absorb a massive blast and allow the troops inside to walk away with bruises, scratches and a war story.
Boesen and his Iowa National Guard soldiers didn't drive far before they rediscovered the downside to riding in an MRAP.
After Boesen ordered the vehicle to pull over to allow local traffic past, the MRAP's right tires sank deep into the soft dirt of the road's shoulder. The truck tilted precariously as Boesen and his soldiers clambered to safety.
Soon, they were doing something that has become a regular annoyance for many Nebraskans and Iowans stationed in Afghanistan. They hooked chains to their MRAP and spent half an hour pulling their super-safe vehicle out of the mud.
The guardsmen and military experts alike say MRAPs, increasingly the main form of transportation in Afghanistan, are far safer than the Humvees that proved suspectible to roadside blasts in the early years of the war.
But these MRAPs — the name stands for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected — come with serious liabilities.
They are heavy, some as heavy as 20 to 25 tons. They easily get stuck in the mud, particularly during the thaw of the Afghan spring.
And older models of the MRAP — initially developed for Iraq, which has relatively flat terrain and modern roads — are prone to tipping and rolling over on Afghanistan's rocky countryside, rollovers that military leaders say have claimed at least 13 lives and injured hundreds of troops.
“We crush bridges, we break trucks,” said Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Johnson of Griswold, Iowa. “It's all because of what the Army does to protect us. You lose mobility, you lose speed, you lose comfort. They're great trucks, but when they break, they break pretty good.”
The Iowa Guardsmen in eastern Afghanistan have endured a long streak of bumpy MRAP rides that have sidetracked missions.
Last Monday, the Council Bluffs-based 1-168th Battalion rolled out onto the road, en route to a daylong job helping the Afghan National Army search for enemy weapons stashes.
Instead, the soldiers spent the day pulling out eight vehicles, including two of their own, from roads that turned to muck just a few miles from their forward operating base.
“It was a tough afternoon,” said Sgt. 1st Class Chad Jones of Okoboji, Iowa. “The last one should have tipped. It was getting water inside the door.”
The Iowans have suffered their share of close calls.
Spc. Frank Negless, 23, limped into the battalion aid station at Forward Operating Base Gardez last week, complaining of lingering knee pain from a recent rollover.
Negless, of Mapleton, Iowa, and other members of the mortar team had been out trolling for an unexploded round left near the base during firing practice.
The road gave way under the weight of the vehicle, and the truck tipped over as if in slow motion, he said.
Negless got smacked in the head and knee with ammo cans weighing 20 pounds or more.
The MRAP's problems also frequently force soldiers from the safety of their trucks.
“We had one company that walked (to its mission) instead. We might have to do that instead of driving in the whole way,” said Staff Sgt. Bradley Jefferson, a 29-year-old from Oakland, Iowa, with the 1-168th's Carroll-based Alpha Company.
While securing the area where the first vehicle became stuck, the personal security detail came across old tank ammunition.
The Explosive Ordnance Detail arrived to dispose of it — and promptly got stuck. The soldiers wound up walking several hundred yards before they could detonate the round.
Once soldiers are outside their vehicle, all the armor in the world won't help if bullets start flying.
“We might as well ride in a school bus out there,” Johnson said.
The daily nuisance and occasional danger sometimes obscure the fact that the MRAP has made U.S. troops considerably safer since it was first deployed in 2007.
Just five years ago, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan tended to drive in Humvees, some of which were originally unarmored. Every time a Humvee rolled over an improvised explosive device, an average of more than two troops inside the vehicle were injured or killed, Marine Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, has said.
Now the U.S. Army owns 19,000 heavily armored MRAPs, at a price tag of between $500,000 and $1 million apiece.
The vehicle's V-shaped hull helps to deflect the force of mine and IED explosions away from passengers, said Joseph Trevithick, a defense research analyst for globalsecurity.org.
The MRAP is also generally heavier and equipped with all sorts of armor that the 2003-era Humvee didn't have.
Newer models can go 90 mph and are decked out with interior video cameras and high-powered air guns that can blow the debris off a buried roadside bomb.
Gen. James Conway, the former commandant of the Marine Corps, has estimated riding in an MRAP reduces the chance of injury or death from an IED blast by as much as 80 percent.
“Increased survivability is what is being offered,” Trevithick said.
The balance between safety and drivability might lie in newer-generation MRAPs, sometimes called an M-ATV.
These MRAP all-terrain vehicles are generally lighter and sit lower to the ground. They are easier to maneuver in the mountains and rocky roads of Afghanistan.
The Iowa Guard battalion's Bravo Company, in charge of border Combat Outpost Dand Patan, uses the new-model MRAPs. The Guard praises them, saying they are faster and much easier to maneuver than older versions, while still offering relatively good protection against IED blasts.
But the older models haven't been completely replaced yet.
Sgt. Sean Peterson, 22, of Sioux City, Iowa, remembers riding up a hill at less than 5 mph in an older model MRAP.
The driver turned a little too sharply. The MRAP rolled.
No one was seriously injured, but the truck had to be recovered by a wrecker and has been sitting idle since then.
Bravo Company doesn't use that older model anymore at night, which is fine with Peterson.
“I don't trust them too much,” he said.
World-Herald staff writer Alyssa Schukar contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2011, Omaha World-Herald
