MRAPs - The military's new weapon in CENTCOM

The US soldiers in Iraq have a new toy: the Buffalo Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles or MRAPs (we love our acronyms).

The MRAPs come in three flavors:

• Category I vehicles are designed for urban combat operations and can transport six people;
• Category II vehicles have multi-mission capabilities, including convoy lead, troop transport, ambulance, explosive ordnance disposal and combat engineering, and can transport up to 10 people;
• Category III vehicles perform mine and IED clearance operations and explosive ordnance disposal and can transport six people, or five with additional equipment.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been pushing the production and delivery of MRAPs, which boast a V-shaped hull that deflects bomb blasts and protects troops inside better than the military's current vehicles. An estimated 3,500 MRAPs are expected to be shipped to Iraq by Dec. 31.

The MRAPs are shipped to Iraq by the 437th Airlift Wing, out of Charleston. The vehicles are part of the 300 tons of cargo the unit moves on a daily basis. It typically takes two days to airlift the MRAPs to Iraq or between 22 and 30 days to ship the vehicles by sea.

As of Aug. 9, Transportation Command had shipped 701 MRAPs and MRAP-like vehicles to the Central Command area.