Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Case Study

1. Purpose. The Army needed a vehicle that would help defeat the on-going threat in the new operational battlefield. Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom called for a vehicle that would be able to absorb the impact of an Improvise Explosive Device (IED) and the Department of Defense did not have a vehicle in their inventory that would fit the needs of the units on the ground. Since the insurgents relied on these IED, their greatest causality producer, without having to actively engage American Forces. It became a necessity to produce a vehicle that would withstand the blast of an IED and protect the crew inside. The Department of Defense conducted a major rapid acquisition program of the MRAP. This acquisition came with little testing and
Background. The large number of vehicle that needed to be produced and supplied to the Soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan were more than anyone supplier could produce. This being the case, the contracts for production of the MRAP were award to multiple manufactures. The call for the MRAP during the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan were at the point where standardized test was not acceptable and the MRAP needed to be pushed out to the Soldiers on the ground. There were three main variants of the MRAP, category I thru III each with their own capabilities and designed functions. At this point in the conflict the reward outweighed the risk, the need for the vehicle to be placed into the operational environment was too high. It was able to produce results in the operational environment, the V shape hull help reduce the number of causalities by 40 to 50 percent in 2009 (Day, 2010). Even though there was a steady decline in the number of successful IED attacks, another statistic was starting to increase. The number of accidents involving the MRAP were on the rise and one big contributing factor was the fact the most Soldiers did not have an understanding of the capabilities of the MRAP