Department of Defense Announces Special Task Force

There have been a lot of comments going around the past few days regarding the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and a lot of them have to do with the fact that production is far behind where it should be.

The Defense Department has issued a statement to Congress that says they are doing everything possible to speed up the delivery of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPS)

The Defense Secretary has established a special task force to push the work faster and he is personally overseeing its progress. John Young is the chairman of the task force and explained the task force and its operations to a joint herring of the House Armed Services Committee's Seapower and Expeditionary and Air and Land Forces subcommittees.

The Secretary went to congress earlier this wekk and asked them to shift another $1.2 billion for other defense prograns to the MRAP saying that this would enable them to get more of the units to Iraq faster.

Gates asked Congress earlier this week for approval to shift an additional $1.2 billion from other defense programs to the MRAP effort. This would bring the department's MRAP budget for 2007 to $5.4 billion and enable it to increase its total MRAP order to 6,415 vehicles. An estimated 3,500 vehicles are expected to be in Iraq by Dec. 31.

The Defense Department said they are helping by, buying enough tires and steel in an attempt to avoid any major shortages, although in a statement earlier in the week, they stated that there was a shortage of tires, getting only 1,000 of the 6,000 special tires they need a month .

Once the manufacturers are done, they are still not ready to shop to Iraq, there is still work to do. The Naval Warfare team has to get to work to install radios, sensors and jammers.

The US Transportation Command is pitching in to help also,
by flying the units to Iraq, saving a lot of time over sending them by ships.

There are problems that have to be overcome such as not enough companies authorized to produce the units and they have stated that there will be continued problems keeping up with the demand not only with the units, but also with spare parts and the required maintenance.