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Charleston’s SPAWAR marks integration of 10,000th MRAP vehicle
An important new piece of Lowcountry history was made earlier this month, as Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center (SSC) Charleston celebrated the integration of the 10,000th Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. MRAP vehicles, which are specially designed and manufactured to protect troops from IDEs and other treats they face in Iraq, are outfitted with a full complement of communications, computers, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) equipment at SSC Charleston.
Four soldiers who have used MRAP vehicles in Iraq provided first-hand accounts of the vehicles capabilities and offered vivid testimony as to their life-saving role in support of their mission.
While MRAPs are built by many companies around the country, including in Charleston, all of them must come to SPAWAR for final integration to make them ready for the warfighter. And getting them ready requires a full team effort with so many partners, especially Charleston’s 841st Transportation Battalion, Charleston Air Force Base 437th and 315th Airlift Wings, and many commands on¬ the Naval Weapons Station.
I have been proud to support this effort in Congress, working with my colleagues to provide the funding needed to buy these vehicles and get them into the field protecting our troops as soon as possible. However, if the hard working folks in Charleston hadn’t stepped up, they never would have gotten there.
And they certainly did get there – going from inception to full rate production in little over a year. The team generally integrates 5 MRAPs a day, but has completed as many as 69 in one day to make sure they are on the way to protect our troops. Indeed, the Secretary of the Navy has compared the work done at SPAWAR to the work done at the Naval Shipyard more than 65 years ago when we fought a different enemy.
Hats off to these hard working Lowcountry residents – your country owes you a debt of gratitude.
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Posted by Henry E. Brown (08-28-2008, 02:05 PM) filed under
Defense
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