“But why did they tear down our power lines?”
It was mid-summer 2008, another hot day in east Baghdad, and that was the sole topic of discussion among the group of Iraqi men who had gathered around our patrol. We were in a small square in Tisa Nissan, the part of the city at which the relative affluence of Karada to the west meets the chaotic, unplanned sprawl that had come to define much of Baghdad al-Jadida and Kamaliya to the east in recent years. This was the place where the sentiments of the technocrats who populated central Baghdad’s secure, walled communities could be contrasted with the complaints of Baghdad’s most marginalized residents—those that inhabited the squatter neighborhoods extending out to Shawra Wa Um Jidir. Today, seemingly for the first time, the feelings expressed by these disparate groups were entirely in harmony.
“But why did they tear down our power lines?”
For the first time in our deployment, the residents of our demographically diverse area of operations were united. They were united against MRAPs—Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected Vehicles. The vehicles, newly arrived in our area of operations, were causing significant property damage. And so the commander of the brigade that my tactical psychological operations (PSYOP) detachment supported asked for my teams’ help with quelling the growing public anger. The lessons we learned while seeking to do so—and indeed the entire fielding of these vehicles—highlight the complexities of materiel procurement, and should inform decision-making today, as military services are preparing to step back from a war footing and organizing and equipping for new challenges.
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A month ago, the memoirs of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates were published. Like many others who served in the wars shaped by his influence, I was eager to read the book. While I admired and appreciated the dogged tenacity with which Gates approached the fielding of equipment that could help troops downrange fulfill their missions, when I read his remembrances of the fight to procure and deploy MRAPs, I found myself…agitated. Only one sentence acknowledged the particular drawback of the vehicles that occupied my mind and the minds of many Baghdad residents when they first appeared on the city’s streets en masse in 2008:
They were so tall that, when going through towns, the antennas could snag electric wires.
One sentence. And the very next sentence suggested that this was perhaps little more than an inconvenient test of the resourcefulness of America’s fighting men and women:
Our ingenious troops simply improvised, using long pieces of plastic pipe to lift the electric wires as they went under.
And indeed they did. Without a doubt, the devices rigged up in motor pools across Iraq helped. But such creative solutions had their limits in Baghdad, where millions of cables had been strung across the city—connecting houses, strung between rooftops, wound around light posts—forming the web of connectivity on which the city relied in the almost complete absence of government services.
More than five years after the American-led invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the government was unable to generate and provide more than a few hours of electricity per day. Privately owned generators compensated for this failure. In some cases, enterprising individuals fronted the money to pay for one and sold power to their neighbors. In others, residents of neighborhoods came together to pool their money to purchase a communal generator. Under both sets of circumstances, wires needed to be hung to transport the electricity. And our MRAPs were tearing these wires down.
Hence the anger of the men who crowded around me that day. And thus the feeling that something needed to be done to head off this rapidly spreading sentiment, an imperative that the brigade commander felt keenly. He was reminded of the deadly consequences of that anger by the memorial board that hung outside his office, on which were hung the photos of soldiers from the unit who had been killed during the current deployment. In this war, heightened popular anger meant a swelling of the ranks of various militant groups, which in turn meant more violence, and more casualties.
And herein lay the paradox of the MRAP. It was so big that it could not travel through east Baghdad’s mahallas without disrupting life, so tall that it tore down power lines, and so heavy that it could damage road surfaces. But the MRAP saved lives. It kept photos of soldiers from being added to the memorial outside the commander’s office.
The MRAP’s V-shaped hull deflected the force of explosions outward from the vehicle. Its thick armor stopped the bulk of conventional IEDs, and provided a degree of protection from explosively formed penetrators that would rip through even the most heavily armoured Humvees. Its clearance from the ground meant that the force of even the strongest under-vehicle explosions was severely dissipated before it reached the MRAP’s body. And its suspended seats protected passengers from the literally spine-shattering energy that they were experiencing in full force all too often in other vehicles.
As soon as the MRAPs began arriving in theatre in significant numbers, the stories of their protective capabilities started making the rounds. The earliest that I remember came from just south of Baghdad. A bomb buried under the surface of a roadway—a deep-buried IED—was detonated while an MRAP drove directly over it. The bomb contained 2,000 pounds of explosives, enough to flip the massive vehicle onto its side. The gunner in the turret suffered a broken arm, and the bones in the passengers’ feet were shattered. But each and every one of them survived and recovered. There is little doubt that, if the IED had struck an M1114 Humvee, in which the vast majority of U.S. forces were traveling at that time, the toll would have been much worse.
This protective capacity was what motivated Secretary Gates when he ordered Pentagon procurement bureaucracy bypassed in order to field as many MRAPs as were needed, as quickly as possible, to the troops in the field. And both his aggressive approach and DoD’s rather surprisingly effective response to it should be commended, for they had the exact impact that the Pentagon’s E-ring wanted: they saved lives. I was witness to countless such saved lives in the months after MRAPs arrived in theatre.
But as I stood in that square in Tisa Nissan, I could feel the other shoe dropping. The same qualities that made MRAPs so valuable as force protection devices virtually ensured that they would be more disruptive to Iraqis than less safe vehicles would be. And this at a time when our operations were meant to revolve around the theme of a “return to normalcy.”
Did MRAPs save lives? Absolutely. Was their net effect on the overall war effort positive? I honestly don’t know. There were so many mistakes made, so many actions that cost us valuable popular support, that it’s impossible to measure the effect of a single vehicle’s introduction into the battlespace on public sentiment in any area of operations, much less the entire country. There is also the possibility that diminished casualties after the MRAP’s fielding might have helped sustain sufficient American will to continue the war effort long enough to achieve particular objectives. This also needs to be considered, but evaluating such a hypothetical is similarly an exercise in speculation.
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Defense procurement is a complex process, made more so in the heady and emotional times of war. It needs to be based on the motivations that are bound to dominate in Washington, but also on the experiences of soldiers on the ground. From unmanned aerial platforms to armored vehicles to advanced missile technology, the weapons and equipment our military uses are certainly effective at achieving a specific purpose. But success with respect to a narrowly defined objective is an insufficient metric with which to guide strategic acquisitions decisions.
The brigade commander came to me that day in 2008 because I was a PSYOP officer, trained and in command of teams whose stated purpose is to “influence [a target audience’s] emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately…behavior.” If the residents of our area of operations were angry, we needed to alter the process that led to that anger. We had some success by seeking to place the damage to property in the context of the much more severe threat to civilians’ lives posed by militant groups, but that success was limited. Complaints about the damage continued for the duration of my detachment’s deployment and well beyond.
However, PSYOP officers and soldiers are trained to think in terms of second- and third-order effects, which is what makes a PSYOP perspective of the MRAP’s fielding instructive today. I experienced those derivative effects in the form of Iraqis justifiably angry that, because of these behemoths—protective as they might be of their passengers—some of their refrigerators, televisions, and lamps would go unpowered. Those consequential impacts are important.
We find ourselves now in a period of military transformation. In ten years, the equipment with which our military units are directed to complete their missions will be vastly different than it is today, from the tactical level to the strategic. Decisions regarding the fielding of that new equipment must be based on more than individual considerations—even those as important as force protection. Our future force will be fortunate if such decisions are influenced by civilian leadership as dedicated as Secretary Gates. But procurement and fielding decisions must also be based on an appreciation of the second- and third-order effects that, in the case of the MRAP, were so glaringly obvious on the streets of Tisa Nissan but barely acknowledged in the halls of Washington, DC.
John Amble is the Managing Editor of War on the Rocks. A former United States Army officer, he has been featured in print and broadcast media in the U.S. and Canada. Follow him on Twitter @johnamble.
Photo credit: Minnesota National Guard
Beltway Escapee 
Wes 
Aaron 
g 
This is an important piece because it points out how little real thinking went into the MRAP decision, and how few military professionals, by comparison to the PSYOPS example, are truly “…trained to think in term of second and third order effects…”. Training is only half the matter. The question is also about the types of personalities we recruit and promote. The author could have also discussed how the emphasis on US force protection was executed largely at the expense of successfully executing the counterinsurgency doctrine. Buttoning up in these hulking vehicles, especially within villages and towns, inevitably conveyed the sense that US forces did not feel they had the same skin in the game as the local population. Maybe fielding the MRAPs in the way commanders did was the best our forces could do, because the US never dedicated sufficient forces to have a realistic hope of successfully executing a counterinsurgency strategy (Shinseki testimony anyone?) Hence, preserving one’s own people became the true primary mission. As the author points out, MRAPs helped draw out US involvement longer than it otherwise might have. It also dramatically increased the logistics tail of the US force (including contractors), increasing the soft underbelly of the US force and lining the pockets of the Taliban who got/get a cut of every gallon of fuel supplied to the US and allies. What a travesty. Don’t read this as support for the traditional acquisition process, or a desire to see more US volunteers killed. Far from it. It’s an argument for regaining a much deeper appreciation of the need to staff the national security sector with people willing (and even rewarded) for not going with the flow. Just as strategy development for current operations is stilted by the lack of real consideration of first and second order effects, so is the very deliberative requirements and acquisition process. What’s missing from both is the promotion of nay-sayers, of people who won’t just go along within the Services’ cultures and who present an alternate view, who know how to talk about opportunity cost, geopolitical history, strategy development methodology, and rigorous strategic analysis (not just about combat arms forces). $40B spent on vehicles that did nothing to improve the strategic outcome of a war we have lost. Badly. That’s not counting the wear and tear on our C-5 and C-17s that we can’t afford to recapitalize, on the longer term capability and capacity of the larger force, the global credibility of the US political will to lead politically and/or militarily, etc. Please see this story as describing one important symptom of a much bigger story about the US national security apparatus and it’s loss of the ability to balance thinking like that of Sec. Gates’, who was too morally compromised to make a balanced strategic choice.
I always felt that there was another drawback to MRAPs. It seemed to me that they raised the barrier to dismounting. You have to lower a ramp like you’re getting out of a Bradley instead of just throwing the doors open and everyone stepping out. And when you’re in the troop compartment, you’re facing inward, not looking out. You really are dismounting, as from an armored vehicle, rather than just stepping out of the truck. Plus when you’re in an MRAP, you feel so safe, why get out? Whereas with a Humvee, you may actually feel safer when you get out! I thought it all combined to make it just a little less likely that when something happened – or before something happened! – the guy in charge would stop and get everybody out of the trucks where they could see things, talk to people, return fire with M4s rather than crew-served weapons, etc.
This first occurred to me in late 2008 when I did embeds with two battalions in Mosul – one, an armored cavalry unit, that mostly drove Humvees into the neighborhoods, keeping Bradleys and Abrams not far away, and the other, a mechanized infantry unit, that exclusively drove MRAPs, because they’d had a catastrophic kill on a Humvee at the beginning of their deployment. The stereotype would’ve been that the cav unit would be less comfortable dismounting, but it was the opposite – seemingly in part because of the Humvee-MRAP divide.
Antennas ripping wires was nothing new. A Humvee was capable of same thing in Mosul, 2003. We ended up folding the antennas forward when on patrol. Problem solved, with little comms distortion. Never had an MRAP, so maybe folding antennas was not an option.
MRAP vehicles, in not purely fiscal but also strategic to tactical points of view, are symptomatic of our absurd attempts to deal with enemy Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTPs). The mindless and reactive nature with which our nation responds to “new” threats like Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) serves to enhance the very methods employed by our enemies. How better to serve those who wish us ill than to respond in a manner which a) aggravates an already heavy financial drain on our country, b) creates a change in tactics which exacerbates military/local population tensions, c) enables defense contractors who, once inoculated with a fat contracts, ensure that “this Genie is out of the bottle and ain’t going back”, and d) change the mindset of the passengers to one of defense and passivity rather than offense and a posture of strength.
Material solutions such as MRAPs cannot be the coup de main to our opponents. New technologies can have the ability to assist those doing the fighting, but we must remember they are at best enablers; we should equip the man, not man the equipment. The latter has become a mantra because headlines which decry our casualties in war. However, a man in my unit who was killed because an Explosive Formed Projectile (EFP) cut through enhanced vehicle armor is just as dead as another member who, in a different event, was killed by a bad guy ramming his explosive-laden vehicle into a HMMV. The critical point here is not to minimize casualties; it is that we must do a cogent assessment of all effects which can/may/will result from employment of new “gee whiz” items like MRAPs. It is important to note that the V-shaped hull is not a recent development with which to deal with IEDs. Regardless, years after its approval for wide distribution we are now cutting them up for scrap metal in Afghanistan because they are too costly to ship back to the states.
Statistics tell us that MRAPs save lives. This is accurate if one reads a post-blast analysis report which compares what might have happened to a HMMV or other vehicle. The story doesn’t end there. The heavy lifting comes from an analysis which considers who emplaced that IED, and examine what circumstances may have motivated him to do so. It is difficult to draw a definitive line between someone in the local populace who may have been neutral with regard to US/al Qaeda/et al and then became hostile to the US. However it is more than speculation that alienating a local population will result in tacit/active support to the opposing side. Our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq depend on local populations; for us to obviate the importance of this concept does result in higher US casualties.
The bloated MRAP is not the sole example of this phenomenon. Since the powers that be gave their nod of approval to the mighty MRAP, and subsequently broke their arms patting themselves on the back, the question must have been asked “what about the poor gunners who are still partially outside the truck? We should button them up as well!” The good idea fairy came fluttering down with the arrival of the Common Remote Operated Weapon Station (CROWS). At last, we can have everyone safely tucked inside the truck so we can ensure there will be absolutely no interaction with the local populace, save for when we come rolling through an area, ripping down utility lines and perhaps peering out through blast windows (while wearing sunglasses!) to ensure our alienation of the local populace is complete. A couple questions popped into my mind on first seeing this system; a) how long is it going to take to get out and clear a malfunction – a remote system is by design more complex, b) what happens if my optics go down either from nefarious efforts or a malfunction? Any Red Team analysis worth its salt should have howled at these two potential weaknesses and it should have been considered in a cost to benefit analysis.
At one point before the wide employment of MRAPs, our ODA was operating in an austere environment where we didn’t often see US military convoys. When we did, what struck us was the posture of the gunners in all of the open-turret vehicles; small as possible. Our nickname of the “turtle” gunners (based upon only thing visible was the top of a helmet) was funny at the time. Some time would pass before I found out that it was not only the timidity of the gunners, it was a FORSCOM training directive. Smaller size is a smaller target – I get that, but the second and third order effects of this is emboldening the enemy and giving him proof that you are intimidated by the mere threat of him. This does not equate to seeking cover while under fire.
Nobody wants to get blown up. Those that survive IED strikes are certainly happy to be able to go home. Technology like the MRAPs and CROWS can be said to make someone more survivable in some scenarios. However, it is linear thinking which decided that this methodology is the best solution to potential enemy contact. As long as we continue to conduct ourselves in a manner where we put the bulk of our faith and efforts into material solutions we will only make the realization of our enemy’s long term goals more achievable. I submit that three dimensional problems cannot be solved in this fashion.