Military vehicles, and lives, take a beating in Iraq

[tocqueville]

Joe Galloway
Tribune Editorial


WASHINGTON - There are always costs in a war, human costs and hardware costs, and as we draw close to beginning the fourth year of our operations in Iraq, it's time to tally those costs one more time.
.....

A little-known cost is in vehicles lost in combat. Just for the U.S. Army alone that number has reached nearly 1,000. The cost for replacing those totally destroyed vehicles and overhauling thousands more worn out by heavy use totals $9 billion in this year's proposed defense budget and in the off-budget emergency wartime supplemental budget Congress passes twice each fiscal year.

Since the Iraq combat operations began in the winter of 2003, the Army has lost 20 M1 Abrams tanks; 50 Bradley fighting vehicles; 20 Stryker wheeled combat vehicles; 20 M113 armored personnel carriers; 250 Humvees; and some 500 Fox wheeled reconnaissance vehicles, mine clearing vehicles and heavy- and medium-transport trucks and trailers.

...................

One senior official of the Army Materiel Command estimates that if the war ended tomorrow there would still be two years' worth of work to fix all the vehicles and gear. That includes 30,000 Humvees, the modern replacement for the old Army Jeep. When they eventually come home some 6,000 of them will be declared surplus or beyond repair. The rest will be repaired and upgraded and parceled out to the Army units.


http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3513955

it's amazing what a bunch of "ragheads" armed with AK47, RPGs and IEDs can do to the mightiest military machine in the world....

[baldguy]

1. A bunch of farmers & shopkeepers did it in the 1770s.

The British Army in N America was defeated by the same thing that US forces are facing in Iraq: our own arrogance and certainty of our superiority over the sub-humans that would dare to oppose us.

[tocqueville]

4. there are similarities yes, but...

without the French intervention the independence war couldn't have been won, at least not at the time it did it. Maybe the most important was the French blockade at sea of reinforcements to the British.

"French involvement proved decisive, with a naval victory in the Chesapeake leading to the surrender of a British army at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

The reasons for Great Britain's misfortunes and defeat may be summarized as follows: Misconception by the home government of the temper and reserve strength of her colonists; disbelief at the outset in the probability of a protracted struggle covering the immense territory in America; consequent failure of the British to use their more efficient military strength effectively; the safe and Fabian generalship of Washington; and perhaps most significantly, the French alliance and European combinations by which at the close of the conflict left Great Britain without a friend or ally on the continent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

what I mean is that the Iraqui insurgents cannot win on their own, they need outside help, like the Americans in the 1770s. Maybe is history going to repeat itself, if an attacked Iran unleashes a total insurgency on the American forces there. This could turn out being very ugly. Far worse than Vietnam, because there the US troops were never trapped, most of them had retreated before the fall of saigon.
The geography there isn't in the favor of the US.

[genie_weenie]

2. HMMWVs are so fucking worthless

Originally designed for use behind lines due to their COMPLETE lack of armor, they were pressed into service doing convoy duty post "Mission Accomplished". Originally any old small arms munition could seriously threaten a HMMWV, then as service members started frantically welding scrap onto the sides, IEDs evolved to add penetration "insurgents started using old 105mm and bigger arty shells, then as the DoD started contracting out for official armor (which is a bitch to mount btw) IEDs again evolved to increase the yield or tonnage of explosives and began to incorporate new munitions (old Surface to air warheads and the use of PE-4 explosive and the rise in "Car bombs"). I would say the point/counterpoint of IED yield vs. armor has been interesting if I didn't know of Marines who have been killed and wounded by them...
What should be investigated is who sold the contract for the Humvee to the DoD! What Congressman pushed it through?

[CatholicEdHead]

3. Big part of this is wear and tear in the desert sand

That is terrible on moving parts.

[Swede]

5. Be sure to buy lots of shares in military suppliers' stock.

You'll make a killing.

[tocqueville]

6. and here is the helicopter toll

To that equipment toll, for both Afghanistan and Iraq, add 27 Apache attack helicopters; 21 Blackhawk utility helicopters; 23 Kiowa Warrior assault helicopters; and 14 big Chinook cargo helicopters.

Only 17 of the helicopter losses are counted as combat downings.

The rest were destroyed in accidents.

This information and these figures are courtesy of The Army Times weekly newspaper, Feb. 20 issue, with thanks.

http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_3513955