Spokesmen for the Marines reject Gayl’s allegation that the corps ignored the initial request. They say the corps convened a special “executive” session of the Marine Requirements Oversight Council to address the MRAP issue but opted instead to order an up-armored version of the Humvee, the M1114. The reason: there was no large-scale production line for MRAPs at the time. The general who signed the February 2005 request—which was called an “urgent universal needs statement”— Maj. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, told reporters at a May briefing that he thinks the Marine Corps made the right decision back then. Hejlik—then deputy commander of the 1 MEF—now says that although his 2005 request specifically asks for the V-shaped MRAP, “the M1114 , at the time, met the needs of the war fighters in theater.”
Gayl says the corps could have ramped up MRAP production had it tried—and says that’s exactly what it’s doing now. Marine Commandant James Conway recently called sending MRAPs into theater—some 7,700 are on rush order—his “highest moral imperative.” MRAPS “could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to IED attack by as much as 80 percent,” Conway told outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace in a letter in March. Sen. Joseph Biden, a 2008 presidential candidate, has taken up Gayl’s cause, calling for an investigation of “how this fell through.” The 2005 request, Biden says, “got lost somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon. We haven’t gotten an explanation back yet of how that happened.”
