Billions sought to upgrade war gear

Tue., Dec. 14, 2004

Jonathan Weisman Washington Post

TEXARKANA, Texas – Twenty-one months after U.S. forces entered Iraq, the Defense Department is coming to terms with equipment shortages caused by prolonged fighting there.

The Pentagon has prepared an unprecedented emergency spending plan totaling nearly $100 billion – as much as $30 billion more than expected as recently as October – say defense officials and congressional budget aides. About $14 billion of that would go to upgrading an increasingly frayed arsenal.

As the conflict continues, the country’s battered war materiel is making its way back for repair – and so is the bill. The emergency spending request President Bush will send to Congress early next year will include billions of dollars to “reset the force,” in military parlance. The Army alone has requested $9.2 billion to repair, replace and upgrade equipment, congressional and Pentagon officials said. The Marine Corps may seek as much as $5 billion more.

Those figures dwarf the “reset” requests in two previous war supplemental spending bills. In fiscal 2004, which ended Sept. 30, the military spent $2.2 billion to repair tanks, trucks and other equipment for land forces, said a defense budget specialist at the Congressional Research Service.

The Army chief of staff asked the Defense Department for 41,600 radios and related; 33,500 M-4 carbine rifles; 25,000 machine guns; 3,700 tactical vehicle replacements; 1,160 rebuilt tracked vehicles; 373,000 sets of body armor; and 12,500 add-on armor plates mainly for unprotected Humvees, the Army Materiel Command reported.

In fiscal 2003, the Army’s five maintenance depots logged 11 million labor hours and spent $700 million, said Gary Motsek, deputy director of support operations at Army Materiel Command. Last year, with $1.2 billion, they managed 16 million labor hours. In fiscal 2005, they expect to put in more than 20 million – not only on equipment from Iraq, but also on preparing for seven new Army brigades to be established by 2006.

For now, a bottleneck may lie in Washington. An order of 4th Infantry Humvees will sit until the Army has the money, officials say.

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