DoD buys bulk of MRAPs from other sources then Force Protection

Force Protection won just 1 percent of a contract for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles awarded on Friday. This is a big blow to the company, and they state they have enough current orders to keep going for 8 months. See Bloomberg.com here. This means that Force Protection, which basically arose out of the whole MRAP concept, must seek non-DoD customers to keep going. The MRAP had been used by South African forces for years in Rhodesia and other areas where mines were the biggest threat. Now that Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) are it really in Iraq the US Army and Marines have been buying them like crazy at Congress’s urging.