Jeremy Greenberg: Enterprise Rent-a-MRAP
Jan 15 2010
Our final day in Balad, we had the great opportunity to tour the MRAP facility. MRAPs are Mine Resistant Ambush Protective Vehicles. They’re perhaps the most bad-ass piece of military equipment I’ve ever seen. Each MRAP weighs about 75,000 pounds each, and are about the length of a Ford Expedition (there are a few different models of MRAP, but that’s an average). By comparison, a fully-loaded eighteen wheeler truck (you know, the really long ones that slowly pull out in front of you when you’re trying to get somewhere) weighs about 80,000 pounds. They even have this thing that sticks out in front of the vehicle, like a long antenna with a plank on it, and it tricks any heat activated explosives into detonating before coming into contact with the vehicle and its crew.
I was so impressed by the technology, design, and thoughtfulness of the MRAP program, that I spent the next twenty-four hours completely in awe of all things military. This organization has the tools and people to do everything perfectly, I thought. That is, until I had to spend five hours at the PAX terminal just to take a thirty minute flight to Bagdad.
For those of you not familiar, the PAX terminal is the base airport. Once you fly though a base airport, you’ll never ever complain about a commercial flight delay ever again. I saw two flights have their leave times changed three times each—and then they both got cancelled! The floor was littered with sleeping soldiers, many of whom had been waiting to hop a flight since the day before. One guy had been at the PAX for three days, and was finally put on our flight. How is it that the same military that can create the F-22 and Bunker Busters runs its airport as if it were a third world nation’s municipal landing strip?
The real killer of this is whole ordeal is that Bagdad is so close that we could’ve driven there in two hours. Which brings me to my proposed PAX solution: open a Rent-an-MRAP facility next to the terminal, so people can drive across the small strip of desert to Bagdad. We’ll get there sooner, and also help to clear any IEDs.
Fortunately, our flight got to Bagdad before the end of the day. We’re staying in one of Saddam’s palaces. It’s cool though, because he hasn’t needed it lately.
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Jeremy Greenberg has written for Geek Monthly, Pregnancy Magazine and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes (Alpha/Penguin). He is the author of Relative Discomfort: The Family Survival Guide (Andrews McMeel). When Jeremy’s not writing, he’s managing the development of his twin, toddler sons, agreeing with his overworked and underappreciated wife, or dodging phone calls from his weird and obnoxious relatives. Learn more at www.relativediscomfort.com
