The 1033 program is a shell game. Who owns the mine resistant ambush protected wheeled vehicle? The Dept. of Defense does not transfer ownership to local PDs. There in lies the answer to your conundrum, "throwing away good gear" is exactly what is not happening.Nuts4hotwheels wrote:I agree, it is crap like his that is creating such a debt in our country.psijac wrote:Army gets to essentially throw away good gear, like they did in Iraq
and the Military industrial Complex and their lobbyist gets to keep selling them the same "stuff" over and over again
The original procurement of the MRAPs, transport to theater, POL, operational maintenance while there and transport back to CONUS was part of the "Overseas Contingency Operations" fund, not a part of the DoD budgets. With the end of operations in Iraq and draw down in Afghanistan the MRAPs costs were going to hit the budget! At low operational tempos maintenance costs exceeded $50k per unit annual. Storage and the resulting degradation of the MRAPs, along with the huge costs in quickly standing them back up was not the answer.
Instead the DoD is "gifting" other governmental departments and municipalities with 13,000 of them. They'll be lovingly maintained, taken out for a ride once in awhile, and should the need arise, swiftly returned to the DoD for re-militarization and on to the battlefield.
Will there be the occasional PD that can't maintain "their" MRAP? Sure, but a huge percentage of them will be returned to depot, upfitted with radios, transponders, vision blocks, a dab of paint, etc. and rolled onto transport.