Aerospace and Defense eNewsletter
Volume 6 Issue 2 - June 2006
Equipment Worsens for U.S. Warfighters as Costs Rise
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The war in Iraq has shed its image as a brief blitz of shock and awe and taken a new title: The Long War. President Bush acknowledged that ending this conflict is a chore that will fall to one of his predecessors. After that admission follows the realization that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost vastly more than planners predicted. The price tag so far has totaled more than $368 billion, according to a Congressional Research Service report released on April 24, with another $120 billion before this year ends. In the report, the CRS predicts that the cost of the wars will add up to at least $811 billion by 2016. (That’s $2,666,666.66 to be paid by each U.S. citizen, not including debt service on the loans used to foot the bill.)
Of that cost, an escalating factor is the repairing and replacing of equipment and development of new materiel, which could shoot up to $30 billion this year. The problem of worn equipment is a crisis that, in the early years of the war, was put off for later, but later is now. Age and use are wearing equipment to its end. Some pieces were already more than 20 years old when they were sent into war. Tanks, helicopters, trucks, personnel carriers, weapons—they are all being pressed into service greater than they were meant to endure. A tank that would normally log 800 miles a year is doing 3,600 in Iraq. A Humvee geared up for 2,600 miles a year is grinding out 7,400. Materiel and depot administration planning was not written with a sustained pace and an extended stay in mind.
The brutal conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan have a deleterious effect on U.S. warfighting equipment, as warfighters well know. Heat, sand, and dust accelerate the rate of failure for equipment, and prolonged combat leaves much of it too badly damaged for repair. Sensitive components of advanced systems cannot withstand long-term exposure to the environment, and so equipment spends more time in repair and less time in use on the battlefield.
U.S. military depots are operating at a frantic pace. Depots are responsible for the highest levels of equipment maintenance. It is here that the most complex repairs are done, from extensive equipment overhaul to complete rebuilds. In 2004, activity levels were increased to three 8-hour shifts and 7-day workweeks. And still, the work continues to mount. Some say that staffers have installed cots for those occasions when there isn’t enough time to go home. Last year, the depots chalked up 20 million labor hours, and this year, depot officials had hoped to total 27 million hours, but because funding was delayed, they reduced expectations to 24 million.
The Army and the Marine Corps, the two branches with the most heavily impacted materiel, are implementing plans to increase maintenance capabilities in theatre, leaving equipment in place in Iraq after the unit has returned to its home station in the United States. In theater, there are about 53,000 people, all but 1,000 of them contractors, doing maintenance and rebuilds for lightly damaged equipment. For example, Indian workers now refurbish Humvees for $6 an hour. Nevertheless, as it stands today, much of the worn equipment is not receiving depot-level repair, and therefore, the condition of equipment in use by warfighters will worsen.
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