LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

Lamb with Franco
surprising that there is tension between the parties. The tension can be healthy
if both sides have an adequate voice in resource allocation decisions and if the
process enables Pentagon leaders to make judicious tradeoffs between the two
sets of priorities. Favoring one or the other too much puts American security
at risk, sooner or later. Secretary Gates argued that it was sooner. He waged a
sustained and public battle against the tendency to favor investments in future
military capabilities at the expense of doing what was necessary to win current
wars, a malady he labeled “next-war-itis.” 286
Secretary Gates reached this conclusion after wrestling with the Pentagon
bureaucracy over a number of equipment issues, but especially tactical intelligence,
reconnaissance, and surveillance (ISR) assets and MRAP vehicles. 287 In
the case of theater ISR, Gates contended with the Air Force. He created Task
Force ODIN (Observe, Detect, Identify, and Neutralize) to press for more ISR
delivered to theater with greater urgency. In the case of MRAPs, Gates confronted
the Army and Marines, and also his own staff. Both equipment issues
preoccupied him, but due to space limitations, we summarize only the MRAP
saga. 288 These large, heavy vehicles were up to 10 times more expensive than
adding armor to Humvees and up to 3 times more expensive than up-armored
Humvees, but they were 400 percent more effective at preventing casualties if
hit by an IED. Commanders in the field wanted them, but senior civilian and
military leaders in the Pentagon did not. As one well-respected flag officer
argued, “It is the wrong vehicle, too late, to fit a threat we were actually managing.”
289
In reality, U.S. casualties from IEDs increased substantially in absolute
numbers from the time requests for MRAPs from commanders in the field
arrived at the Pentagon in mid-2004 until Secretary Gates intervened in May
2007. Gates heard multiple arguments against MRAPs, the most “significant
[being] that no one at a senior level wanted to spend the money to buy them.”
He overrode their objections and made MRAPs the Pentagon’s number-one
acquisition priority. 290 After that, the acquisition system was able to field large
numbers of MRAPs within 18 months—an accomplishment often described as
an industrial feat not seen since World War II. The costs were staggering—$25
billion for the Iraq deployments—but MRAPs quickly made an impact. When
they began to flow to Iraq in November 2007, almost 60 percent of U.S. casualties
were attributed to IEDs. Just a little over a year later with 10,000 MRAPs
232