Iraq: Cost of Upkeep of the MIlitary machine

[ken hanly <northsunm@xxxxxxxxx>]

Unforeseen Spending on Materiel Pumps Up Iraq War Bill
Senate to Take Up Measure as Military Fights to Keep
Guns, Tanks Working

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 20, 2006; A01



With the expected passage this spring of the largest
emergency spending bill in history, annual war
expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since
the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the
rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and
replacing equipment chewed up by three years of
combat.

The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined
this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise,
from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81
billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006,
according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending
nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up
from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional
Research Service report found.

Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61
billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam
between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars. The
invasion's "shock and awe" of high-tech laser-guided
bombs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft has long
faded, but the costs of even those early months are
just coming into view as the military confronts
equipment repair and rebuilding costs it has avoided
and procurement costs it never expected.

"We did not predict early on that we would have the
number of electronic jammers that we've got. We did
not predict we'd have as many [heavily] armored
vehicles that we have, nor did we have a good
prediction about what our battle losses would be,"
Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker recently told
the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Steven M. Kosiak, the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments' director of budget studies,
said, "If you look at the earlier estimates of
anticipated costs, this war is a lot more expensive
than it should be, based on past conflicts."

The issue will be hotly debated next week when the
Senate takes up a record $106.5 billion emergency
spending bill that includes $72.4 billion for the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House passed a $92
billion version of the bill last month that included
$68 billion in war funding. That funding comes on top
of $50 billion already allocated for the war this
fiscal year.

The bill is the fifth emergency defense request since
the Iraq invasion in March 2003. Senate Democrats say
that, in the end, they will vote for the measure,
which congressional leaders plan to deliver to
President Bush by Memorial Day. But the upcoming
debate will offer opponents of the war ample
opportunity to question the Bush administration's
funding priorities.

Defense officials and budget analysts point to a
simple, unavoidable driver of the escalating costs.
The cost of repairing and replacing equipment and
developing new war-fighting materiel has exploded. In
the first year of the invasion, such costs totaled
$2.4 billion, then rose to $5.2 billion in 2004. This
year, they will hit $26 billion, and could go as high
as $30 billion, Kosiak said. On the other hand, at
about $15 billion, personnel costs will drop 14
percent this year.

Total operations and maintenance budgets will rise 33
percent this year, while investment in new
technologies will climb 25 percent, according to the
Congressional Research Service.

The helicopters, tanks, personnel carriers and even
small arms "have required more maintenance than we
planned for," said Gary Motsek, director of support
operations at the Army Materiel Command. "We're
working them to death."

In the first years of the war, Army and Marine units
rotating out of Iraq left behind usable equipment for
the next units rolling in. But even the working
equipment is now being shipped back to the Army's five
depots to be refurbished and upgraded.

Last year, the depots repaired and upgraded 600
helicopter engines. This year, they will see 700,
Motsek said. A total of 318 Bradley Fighting Vehicles
went through the depots in 2005; 600 will be cycled
through in 2006.

Last year, depot workers upgraded 5,000 Humvees with
new engines and new transmissions to support
ever-heavier armor. This year, they will see close to
9,000. They will also have to patch up 7,000 more
machine guns, 5,000 more tank tracks and 100 more M1A1
Abrams tanks.

In 2001, the depots logged 11 million labor hours.
Last year, that reached 20 million, and this year, it
will total 24 million, Motsek said. Depot officials
had hoped to work 27 million hours, but funding delays
forced them to cut back.

And that is only the work being done in the United
States. In and around Iraq, 53,000 people -- 52,000 of
them contractors -- are maintaining and rebuilding
lightly damaged equipment, a senior Senate defense
aide said. Indian workers are refurbishing U.S.
Humvees for $6 an hour.

"The equipment is wearing out five times faster than
normal operations," said Jeremiah Gertler, a senior
fellow at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies and a former House Armed Services Committee
procurement aide.

What cannot be repaired has to be replaced.
Procurement costs were a tiny fraction of the initial
emergency war requests, Kosiak said. This year, new
equipment purchases will consume 20 percent of the war
funding. That has led to what some critics see as
wasteful expenditures. The Senate bill includes $230
million to replace an unspecified number of CH-46E Sea
Knight helicopters lost in battle with three V-22
Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. In other words, senators
plan to replace a Marine Corps workhorse with an
experimental aircraft that critics say will never be
useful in combat.

Such costs were always there, Gertler said, but Bush
administration officials and members of Congress put
off maintenance and procurement expenditures to keep
down the war's price tag.

Schoomaker said as much at a Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing in February, when he remarked that a
"bow wave" of costs "pushed forward from previous
years" is now cresting.

"It was just recently that we started to get
procurement money" for equipment repair and
replacement in supplemental funding, he testified.

Schoomaker warned that such costs will continue, even
after U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq. To fully
re-equip and upgrade the U.S. Army after the war ends
would cost $36 billion over six years, and that figure
assumes U.S. forces would begin withdrawing in July
and would be completely out of Iraq by the end of
2008, an assumption Bush dismissed when he suggested
withdrawal will be up to his White House successor.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed
Services Committee, said a more protracted fight could
triple Schoomaker's $36 billion figure.