Army Repair Posts Scramble to Keep the Troops Equipped

Workers at the Red River Army Depot outside Texarkana, Tex., reassemble an HEMTT, or Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, that was sent to the facility to be refurbished. (Spencer Tirey For The Washington Post)

Instead, it will be a scramble just to keep the troops in the field equipped. Depots are confronting four to five times more equipment wear than the Army anticipated, McCoy said. Meanwhile, the Army is also pressing forward with a huge reorganization to break down vast Army divisions into smaller modular brigades of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers each. The Army hopes to create as many as 15 of those brigades by 2007, and they will need to be equipped by the depots and defense contractors as well.

Between the demands of "modularity" and resetting the existing force, the Army chief of staff has asked the Defense Department for 41,600 radios and other communication devices, 33,500 M-4 carbine rifles, 25,000 machine guns, 3,700 tactical wheeled vehicle replacements, 1,160 rebuilt tracked vehicles, 373,000 sets of body armor, and 12,500 add-on armor plates, mainly for still-unprotected Humvees, said Gen. Paul J. Kern, commander of Army Materiel Command.

The war's length and intensity has clearly left the Army winded. M1 Abrams tanks, which normally accumulate 809 miles a year, are averaging 3,600 in Iraq, said Modell Plummer, director of sustainment for the Army's logistical staff. Bradley Fighting Vehicles, designed to run 872 miles a year, are also traveling 3,600, as they escort water and food convoys across the country. Humvees, accustomed to doing 2,640 miles a year, are seeing 7,400.

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.

To critics, it is too much.

Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Northern Virginia think tank, said Rumsfeld will not face reality.

"He knows what the situation is, but he has been unready to change his plans," Thompson said. Army officials, speaking for the Defense Department, agree their task is challenging. Repairing equipment while outfitting new Army brigades means "digging tanks out of depot yards that haven't been moved in five years," Motsek said.

"There is no doubt it would be easier not to have to worry about modularity," he said.

But, he added, with the depots running full tilt and the needs of a lighter, swifter Army never more apparent, the Army "has a window of opportunity" it is mobilizing to exploit.

At the Anniston, Ala., depot, small-arms workshops operate round-the-clock, seven days a week, repairing machine guns, Motsek said. In 2003, Anniston repaired more than 13,000 weapons. Last year, it was 60,000, Plummer said. Red River, staffed by civilian Defense Department employees, will surge this year from its typical 2.4 million man-hours of work to more than 4 million, Lewis said. Last week, the depot set up 10-hour swing shifts on four assembly lines to rebuild five- and 10-ton Humvees and trucks, and to upgrade Humvees to handle the stress of additional armor plating.

Last winter, the military's biggest shortage was the tanklike tracks of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Red River went to three shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, stripping frayed rubber off battered track, buffing the metal, then applying a new rubber sheath.

This year, the bottleneck is Humvees and small arms, Motsek said. Defense department depots and private contractors rushed last year to install armor plating on the vehicles, only to find the added weight quickly wore down the chassis, springs and shock absorbers, and strained the 6.2-liter engine.

In July, the depot began an urgent project to refit the vehicles with heavier springs, suspensions and rear shocks, and 6.5-liter engines.

The depot has pushed to eight or nine Humvee upgrades a day, said David Hawkins, deputy director of operations, but must get to 14 within days to meet the Army's demand for 3,600 in the coming year.

And other work keeps coming. David May, division chief for heavy tactical vehicles, recalled receiving an e-mail at 4:51 p.m. Dec. 2, with an urgent request: six more 10-ton HMMT trucks as soon as possible for the 82nd Airborne, which just received orders to ship out to Iraq. An additional 224 damaged Humvees recently arrived at Red River from the 4th Infantry Division.

Depot officials insist they can keep pace, but that does not mean they do not worry the work will outstrip their capacity. "Everybody has that fear," Hawkins said.

But for now, the real bottleneck may lie in Washington. Those 4th Infantry Humvees will sit until the Army has the money.

"We'd like to produce them all today so the soldiers have their equipment," Lewis said. "But . . . the reality is, there isn't the funding."