How the US Army's being worn down
in Iraq By David Isenberg
Recently, the Washington Post reported
that US President George W Bush's "surge" of
troops to Iraq by 21,500 "would create major
logistical hurdles for the US Army and Marine
Corps". That's a nice way of putting it, like
calling a tsunami a maritime disturbance or an
earthquake a tectonic-plate adjustment.
The truth is that after nearly four years
of fighting in Iraq, the US military is deeply
stressed and worn out by its operations there.
While most dispassionate observers are aware of
this, it is not
something the Bush
administration likes to talk about. Nevertheless,
the truth is that from a US military perspective,
Iraq is increasingly burdensome.
Consider
the following facts. Last year senior Marine Corps
officials admitted that if the war in Iraq ended
tomorrow and marine units were shipped home, it
would cost US$12.8 billion to re-equip them with
vehicles and gear lost in combat and through wear
and tear. That outlay would take up a significant
portion of the corps's yearly budget, which in
2004 stood at nearly $17 billion.
Last
July, Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Bush
noting that up to two-thirds of the army's combat
brigades were not ready for wartime missions,
largely because they were hampered by equipment
shortfalls.
Much of the equipment deployed
in Iraq is beginning to wear out as a result of
heavy use, harsh operating conditions, and the
frequent attacks launched by insurgents.
Furthermore, the quantity and quality of weapons
in units away from the war zone are eroding as
equipment is transferred to deploying units. The
latter problem is particularly pronounced in the
reserves, which already were functioning with a
deficit of modern equipment when the war began.
Last February the US Army asked for $9
billion to "reset" its war-depleted stocks - most
of it to replace and repair tanks, helicopters and
vehicles. Just about five months later, army chief
of staff General Peter Schoomaker said the army
needed $17.1 billion in fiscal 2007 to "reset" or
restore the service's equipment stocks.
Since the Iraq insurgency heated up in
autumn of 2003, the US Army's combat losses
include at least 20 M1 Abrams tanks, 50 Bradley
fighting vehicles, 20 Stryker wheeled combat
vehicles, 20 M113 armored personnel carriers, and
250 Humvees. The number of vehicles lost in battle
comes to nearly 1,000 after adding in heavy and
medium trucks and trailers, mine-clearing
vehicles, and Fox wheeled reconnaissance vehicles.
Nearly all these losses were caused by improvised
explosive devices in Iraq.
The situation
was so serious that the Office of the Secretary of
Defense considered adding tens of billions of
dollars to the army's base budget in the
Pentagon's new six-year spending plan to address
funding shortfalls that armed-service officials
say could threaten the viability of US ground
forces.
In fact, Schoomaker withheld a
required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders
last August after protesting to then-defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the army could not
maintain its current level of activity in Iraq
plus its other global commitments without billions
of dollars in additional funding.
That
decision was believed to be unprecedented and
signaled a widespread belief within the army that
in the absence of significant troop withdrawals
from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely
reworked.
Actually, it could be even
worse. Reset costs have not been incorporated into
the Pentagon's baseline budget, and many observers
have predicted that it will take two years of
supplemental appropriations after an end to
operations in Iraq to reset the force fully. If
these supplementals end once the US withdraws from
Iraq, the military, and especially the army, will
face a major budget crisis, because the costs of
resetting the force will have to compete with
other priorities within both the Pentagon and the
rest of the federal government.
The army
has deployed significant portions of its trucks,
combat vehicles and helicopters in Iraq. Much of
this equipment does not rotate out when troops do,
either because the army is trying to minimize
transportation costs or because it wants to retain
key items such as up-armored vehicles in the war
zone.
As a result, the equipment is
exposed to continuous use for long periods - more
than two years in the case of some Chinook
helicopters - and may not receive scheduled
maintenance in a timely fashion. The army
conducted an analysis of how such stresses affect
fielded equipment, and concluded that a single
year of deployment in Iraq would cause as much
wear and tear as five years of peacetime use.
That is hardly surprising, given the fact
that much of the equipment in Iraq is being used
at a rate several times what typically prevails in
peacetime. The operating tempo of helicopters is
twice as high in the war zone as elsewhere. Combat
vehicles such as the Abrams tank and Bradley
fighting vehicle operate at five or six times
normal rates. And trucks are used at up to 10
times their peacetime rates (which helps explain
why so many are washed out by the end of their
time in Iraq).
But high utilization rates
are only the beginning of the problem, because the
conditions under which systems operate in Iraq are
harsher than those encountered in peacetime
training exercises. For example, Abrams tanks are
designed to operate in open country, but in Iraq
they often travel on paved roads, accelerating
wear. Their mechanical and electronic systems are
exposed to sand, wind, precipitation and vibration
far in excess of what would be experienced in
peacetime.
Maintenance is deferred, or
carried out in sub-optimal circumstances. And then
there is the enemy, which seldom misses an
opportunity to shoot a rocket-propelled grenade at
whatever US vehicle is going by.
Fixing
and replacing army equipment alone could run from
$60 billion to $100 billion, according to retired
General Paul Kern, a senior consultant to the
Cohen Group and the retired head of Army Materiel
Command. The total cost for wear and tear on
equipment is unclear because it is not known how
long US troops will remain in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
David Isenberg, a
senior analyst with the Washington-based British
American Security Information Council (BASIC), has
a wide background in arms control and national
security issues. The views expressed are his own.
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