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Army tries new shipping route for M-ATVs

The Army has found a new way to transport its MRAP-All Terrain Vehicles to Afghanistan, according to the service’s top logistician.

Up until a week ago, the Army had been flying the vehicles directly from its integration facility in Charleston, S.C., said Lt. Gen. Mitchell Stevenson, deputy chief of staff for logistics.

On March 8, the Army began a “multimodal concept of operations,” dividing the long trip up using ships and aircraft, Stevenson said.

“We sent 130 M-ATVs by ship,” to a U.S. ally in southwest Asia, said Stevenson, who declined to name the country. Once the vehicles arrive, they will be loaded onto a C-17 aircraft and flown six hours to Afghanistan. The whole trip takes about three weeks and is less expensive, he said.

“The nice part about that concept of operations is that the C-17s can make multiple turns in a day and it’s a lot easier than flying that one leg all the way from the United States,” he said.

Another 170 vehicles will be shipped this way later in March, according to Stevenson.

“We want to get up to 1,000 per month,” he said. Oshkosh, the vehicle manufacturer, produces about 1,000 M-ATVs a month.

“The problem right now is not that we can’t ship 1,000 a month, the problem is they can’t absorb 1,000 a month there,” Stevenson said. “You get the M-ATV into a place like Bagram or Kandahar, that’s fine, but then you’ve got to get it to the soldier who needs it and that takes a little bit of effort.”

It’s also a brand-new vehicle that requires troops to be trained to use and maintain it, he said.

Army logisticians now deliver 500 of the vehicles per month, Stevenson said, and aim to reach 1,000 per month by this summer.

In February, the Army tried shipping 10 M-ATVs through the Pakistani port of Karachi. Many of the supplies needed by forces in Afghanistan come through that port and then travel over land into Afghanistan.

The vehicles arrived without a problem, but because of the speed with which the forces in Afghanistan need M-ATVs, the Army is going to continue flying them in, he said.

The Army has also fitted about 600 of the Cougar variant MRAPs with new suspension systems designed for Afghanistan. The Cougars were pulled out of Afghanistan and brought to Kuwait where there is a maintenance facility, Stevenson said. They have since been shipped back to Afghanistan by air.