US finds it cheaper to scrap MRAPs than return them from Afghanistan
Faced with an epidemic of deadly roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military officials ordered a fleet of 16-tonne armoured trucks to save American lives.
Built at a cost of US$1 million each, Mraps (mine-resistant armoured patrol vehicles) have saved countless lives and absorbed or deflected thousands of blasts in cities and deserts and on mountain roads.
So why would they start chopping up as many as 2,000 of the vehicles and selling them as scrap, just six years since they were developed? In all, 27,000 were shipped in a US$50 billion production blitz.
As it turns out, the Pentagon produced a glut of the trucks and officials have calculated that it's not worth shipping home damaged, worn or excess Mraps to bases already deemed oversupplied with the blast-deflecting vehicles.
As they are "demilitarised", many of the Mraps are being sold as scrap metal to eager Afghan buyers.
It costs about US$12,000 to scrap a vehicle on site, said Mark Wright, a defence department spokesman. To ship one back to the United States and rebuild it to latest standards would cost up to US$450,000, he said.
Up to October 1, 938 Mraps had been reduced to scrap, according to logistics staff.
