thedrifter
02-25-07, 04:56 AM
posted on Sun, Feb. 25, 2007
Wars sapping U.S. military's equipment stockpiles
Fast pace of deployments hurts training, leaders say
BY DAVID WOOD
Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON — Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining the U.S. strategic military reserve, officers say, leaving combat brigades and battalions unable to respond quickly to international crises and corroding the military power that in the past has strengthened America's diplomacy abroad.
With U.S. forces locked into a grinding rotation through the war zones and equipment wearing out fast, the Army and Marine Corps are struggling to keep units that are between combat tours trained and equipped — and mostly failing, senior officers acknowledge.
In order to equip the tens of thousands of troops ordered by President Bush to "surge" to Iraq this spring, units that make up the strategic reserve are having to give up weapons, armored Humvees, night-vision goggles, roadside bomb jammers and other critical gear, military officers said.
The pace of deployments, which leaves Army units barely a year between 12-month combat tours and Marines less than seven months, also means there is scant time to train. Practicing for large-scale mechanized warfare has become a thing of the past, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Conway, has said.
"The forces that are not deployed to combat have substantial equipping holes. They are not trained to the level they should be at, and so, therefore, they are unready for high-intensity combat," Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, responsible for equipping the Army, recently told reporters.
The erosion of American combat power is so severe that some senior officers are refusing to talk openly about it. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, requested at a congressional hearing that readiness questions be deferred until the panel could meet in a nonpublic session.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, admonished a reporter asking about declining combat readiness that "there are other audiences" listening that might draw the wrong conclusions.
At present, 15 of the Army's 41 brigade combat teams are in Iraq, along with two of the Marine Corps' six regimental combat teams. About 40 percent of the most modern U.S. ground combat equipment is in the combat zone, leaving troops back in the states short of tanks, armored Humvees, M4 carbines, grenade launchers, night-vision goggles, .50-caliber machine guns and radios, military officers said.
The "surge" of five brigades and supporting units will leave 21 Army brigades and four Marine regiments, each with between 2,500 and 5,000 troops, theoretically available for emergencies, Pentagon officials said.
In a crisis, U.S. military strategy calls for these troops to be airlifted near a combat zone and to take up prepositioned stockpiles of armor, weapons, ammunition and rations to sustain them in the first weeks of combat.
But those stocks have been depleted to equip troops in Iraq. That means that, in a crisis, troops could be deployed only to find there weren't enough tanks and machine guns and rations to sustain them in combat.
The Army, for example, normally keeps two ships at sea, each with a complete set of gear for a 3,500-person heavy-armored brigade. Last year, it unloaded one of those ships and used the gear in Iraq, leaving the Army's emergency stocks short of critical equipment, according to the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency of Congress.
"That prepositioned equipment is essential," Schoomaker told a congressional panel recently. But he said the details were classified.
Marine Corps prepositioned stockpiles are in slightly better shape. According to Marine Lt. Gen. Emerson Gardner, deputy commandant for programs and resources, two of the three squadrons of prepositioned ships are carrying 98 percent of their equipment. But the third group of ships has only 48 percent of the emergency gear it should have and won't be completely refilled until 2008.
Several Army officers said that without armored Humvees, new drivers, typically the newest soldiers in a unit, learn to drive on lightweight, unarmored Humvees and don't master the specialized skills needed with the heavy armored versions they will operate in Iraq. Armored Humvees have experienced a high rate of fatal rollovers in Iraq.
"In training, we treat a Humvee as if it were armored," said an Army lieutenant colonel, who asked not to be named. "You do the best you can with what you've got." But, he said, new drivers "miss the feel of the heavy vehicles and the longer braking patterns."
Much of the equipment now in such short supply is stacked up at military depots in a repair process that is taking far longer than planners had anticipated.
A Marine Corps AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter damaged in January 2003, as U.S. forces gathered for the invasion of Iraq, won't be returned to service until 2009, the Marines said. It takes, on average, 260 days just to move a piece of heavy equipment like a tank from Iraq back to the U.S.
In what is intended as a strategic cushion against such problems, most combat contingency plans call for the Air Force to hold the enemy in place with airstrikes until U.S. ground forces can arrive. But Air Force officers say their service's combat readiness is beginning to suffer from the demands of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, throwing that assumption in doubt.
Of 316 Air Force combat units, those reporting as fully ready fell from 68 percent in 2004 to 56 percent this year, said a senior Air Force officer, who called it "an insidious decline in readiness."
These difficulties will become dangerously evident if an unforeseen crisis demands the threatened or actual use of U.S. combat troops, strategists said. Military officers now expect any future conflicts to be sudden and unpredictable — and to require a significant commitment of ground forces over a lengthy period.
"These people who say we are never going to do this again, I don't know where they are coming from," Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, referring to the war in Iraq. "This is a peek into the future."
Ellie
Wars sapping U.S. military's equipment stockpiles
Fast pace of deployments hurts training, leaders say
BY DAVID WOOD
Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON — Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining the U.S. strategic military reserve, officers say, leaving combat brigades and battalions unable to respond quickly to international crises and corroding the military power that in the past has strengthened America's diplomacy abroad.
With U.S. forces locked into a grinding rotation through the war zones and equipment wearing out fast, the Army and Marine Corps are struggling to keep units that are between combat tours trained and equipped — and mostly failing, senior officers acknowledge.
In order to equip the tens of thousands of troops ordered by President Bush to "surge" to Iraq this spring, units that make up the strategic reserve are having to give up weapons, armored Humvees, night-vision goggles, roadside bomb jammers and other critical gear, military officers said.
The pace of deployments, which leaves Army units barely a year between 12-month combat tours and Marines less than seven months, also means there is scant time to train. Practicing for large-scale mechanized warfare has become a thing of the past, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Conway, has said.
"The forces that are not deployed to combat have substantial equipping holes. They are not trained to the level they should be at, and so, therefore, they are unready for high-intensity combat," Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, responsible for equipping the Army, recently told reporters.
The erosion of American combat power is so severe that some senior officers are refusing to talk openly about it. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, requested at a congressional hearing that readiness questions be deferred until the panel could meet in a nonpublic session.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, admonished a reporter asking about declining combat readiness that "there are other audiences" listening that might draw the wrong conclusions.
At present, 15 of the Army's 41 brigade combat teams are in Iraq, along with two of the Marine Corps' six regimental combat teams. About 40 percent of the most modern U.S. ground combat equipment is in the combat zone, leaving troops back in the states short of tanks, armored Humvees, M4 carbines, grenade launchers, night-vision goggles, .50-caliber machine guns and radios, military officers said.
The "surge" of five brigades and supporting units will leave 21 Army brigades and four Marine regiments, each with between 2,500 and 5,000 troops, theoretically available for emergencies, Pentagon officials said.
In a crisis, U.S. military strategy calls for these troops to be airlifted near a combat zone and to take up prepositioned stockpiles of armor, weapons, ammunition and rations to sustain them in the first weeks of combat.
But those stocks have been depleted to equip troops in Iraq. That means that, in a crisis, troops could be deployed only to find there weren't enough tanks and machine guns and rations to sustain them in combat.
The Army, for example, normally keeps two ships at sea, each with a complete set of gear for a 3,500-person heavy-armored brigade. Last year, it unloaded one of those ships and used the gear in Iraq, leaving the Army's emergency stocks short of critical equipment, according to the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency of Congress.
"That prepositioned equipment is essential," Schoomaker told a congressional panel recently. But he said the details were classified.
Marine Corps prepositioned stockpiles are in slightly better shape. According to Marine Lt. Gen. Emerson Gardner, deputy commandant for programs and resources, two of the three squadrons of prepositioned ships are carrying 98 percent of their equipment. But the third group of ships has only 48 percent of the emergency gear it should have and won't be completely refilled until 2008.
Several Army officers said that without armored Humvees, new drivers, typically the newest soldiers in a unit, learn to drive on lightweight, unarmored Humvees and don't master the specialized skills needed with the heavy armored versions they will operate in Iraq. Armored Humvees have experienced a high rate of fatal rollovers in Iraq.
"In training, we treat a Humvee as if it were armored," said an Army lieutenant colonel, who asked not to be named. "You do the best you can with what you've got." But, he said, new drivers "miss the feel of the heavy vehicles and the longer braking patterns."
Much of the equipment now in such short supply is stacked up at military depots in a repair process that is taking far longer than planners had anticipated.
A Marine Corps AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter damaged in January 2003, as U.S. forces gathered for the invasion of Iraq, won't be returned to service until 2009, the Marines said. It takes, on average, 260 days just to move a piece of heavy equipment like a tank from Iraq back to the U.S.
In what is intended as a strategic cushion against such problems, most combat contingency plans call for the Air Force to hold the enemy in place with airstrikes until U.S. ground forces can arrive. But Air Force officers say their service's combat readiness is beginning to suffer from the demands of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, throwing that assumption in doubt.
Of 316 Air Force combat units, those reporting as fully ready fell from 68 percent in 2004 to 56 percent this year, said a senior Air Force officer, who called it "an insidious decline in readiness."
These difficulties will become dangerously evident if an unforeseen crisis demands the threatened or actual use of U.S. combat troops, strategists said. Military officers now expect any future conflicts to be sudden and unpredictable — and to require a significant commitment of ground forces over a lengthy period.
"These people who say we are never going to do this again, I don't know where they are coming from," Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, referring to the war in Iraq. "This is a peek into the future."
Ellie