Protected markets: MRAPs

US forces operate in Afghanistan with swathes of space between each unit, their supply bases and their objectives. Similarly, many troops in Iraq must essentially commute to work now that they have traded joint security stations in cities for larger peripheral bases and advisory roles.

However, the seemingly simple task of travelling between locations is one of the most dangerous missions in Iraq or Afghanistan due to insurgent weapons such as improvised explosive devices, explosively formed penetrators and other roadside bombs.

Efforts to detect those who place these explosives and disrupt insurgent bomb networks have proved valuable, but the 'tip of the spear' for force protection in this environment has been heavily armoured mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles.

"The more you're distributed and the more you're dispersed, the more you've got people on the road exposed to all kinds of threats that might be in existence," Lieutenant General Michael Vane, director of the US Army Capability Integration Center, told Jane's.

"So every vehicle, every convoy, every activity is one that has to have some sort of self-defence capability and a level of force protection."

Gen Vane said MRAPs have "helped tremendously" in providing force protection for moving people and equipment securely to forward operating bases and other remote locations.

Humvees have been the most widely used personnel carrier for the US military in recent times. However, catastrophic losses of soldiers in Iraq due to IEDs exploding eventually led the Pentagon to begin building and delivering MRAPs with heavily armoured V-shaped hulls capable of mitigating blasts.