Report: Red tape blocks Marines' gear requestsDeployed Marine units get less than 10 percent of what they request, report saysOf more than 100 requests from deployed Marine units between February 2006 and February 2007, less than 10 percent have been fulfilled, the document says.
Among the items held up were a mine-resistant vehicle and a hand-held laser system.
The document's claims run counter to the public description of a process intended to cut through the layers of red tape that frequently slow the military's procurement process.
In a briefing Wednesday, Marine Corps officials hailed their "Urgent Universal Need Statement" system as a way to give Marines in combat a greater say in weapons-buying decisions.
The document lists 24 examples of equipment urgently needed by Marines in Iraq's Anbar province. One, the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, has received attention as a promising way to protect troops from roadside blasts, the leading killer of U.S. forces in Iraq.
After receiving a February 2005 urgent request approved by Hejlik for nearly 1,200 of the vehicles, the Marine Corps instead purchased improved versions of the ubiquitous Humvee.
The industrial capacity did not exist to quickly build the new mine-resistant vehicles and the more heavily armored Humvees were viewed as a suitable solution, Marine Corps officials said.
That proved not to be the case, as insurgent elements in Iraq developed more powerful bombs that could penetrate the Humvees. The mine-resistant vehicles are now a top priority for all the military branches, which plan to buy 7,774 of the carriers at a cost of $8.4 billion.
A second example cited is the compact high power laser dazzler, an inexpensive, nonlethal tool for steering unwelcome vehicles away from U.S. checkpoints in Iraq. The dazzler emits a powerful stream of green light that stops or redirects oncoming traffic by temporarily impairing the driver's vision.
In June 2005, Marines stationed in western Iraq filed an urgent request for several hundred of the dazzlers, which are built by LE Systems, a small company in Hartford, Connecticut. The request was repeated nearly a year later.
"Timely purchase and employment of all systems bureaucratically stymied," the document states.
Separate documents indicate the deployed Marines became so frustrated at the delays they bypassed normal acquisition procedures and used money from their own budget to buy 28 of the dazzlers directly from LE Systems.
But because the lasers had not passed a safety review process, stateside authorities barred the Marines from using them.
In January, nearly 18 months after the first request, the Marines received a less powerful laser built by a different company. -
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"Support Our Troops" seems more and more like lip service. Couple this with (once again) recent reports of less than top-of-the-line body armor that are standard issue and the picture of words being more important than deeds becomes very clear. After all, talk really
is cheap, much cheaper than actually paying for what is needed.
