December 2007

Military Readiness Crisis = National Security Crisis

 

Dear Friend,

America is experiencing a military readiness crisis, which is, in fact, a national security crisis. This is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole. The armed forces of the United States are simply incapable of a full and effective military response to external threats to the country that might arise. Military readiness - measured by the Pentagon's own objective standards for equipment on hand, number of troops available and amount of training completed - has been allowed to decline to levels not seen since the 1970s.

Our senior uniformed commanders have been warning that the war in Iraq has seriously degraded our military readiness; that nearly five years of almost non-stop combat against an insurgent enemy in unbelievably harsh conditions have taken a terrible toll on our troops, particularly the active duty U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and the Army Reserve and National Guard; on their units and on the equipment they rely on to carry out their missions and protect themselves.

Beyond the tragedy of nearly 4,000 American men and women killed and more than 30,000 wounded, multiple deployments - now extended to as long as 15 months - have denied units sufficient time at their home bases to rest and recuperate, spend time with families or go through the kind of intensive training required to prepare them for combat. To maintain troop levels, the Army has been forced to lower its standards for new recruits in age and education, and begun accepting people with criminal records.

Military equipment - much of it high tech - wears out in Iraq and Afghanistan at as much as nine times the normal rate. Keeping a lot of sophisticated machines running under such harsh conditions requires constant repair, cannibalizing parts from other equipment and "make-do engineering." We can't seem to get new replacement equipment to our troops fast enough either. And, the costs are breathtaking: one M-4 Carbine - $800; one set of body armor - $1200; one new armored Humvee - $198,000; refitting one M-1 Abrams tank - $3-million; one new Army heavy truck - $418,000; one new Army Stryker vehicle - $3-million; one CH-47F Chinook helicopter - $31.8-million.

Perhaps the hardest hit have been the country's National Guard units, like Hawaii's own 29th Brigade Combat Team. The unit hasn't fully recovered from their last Iraq deployment. They have less than two-thirds of the equipment they're supposed to because Guard units are required to leave most of their vehicles and gear in Iraq for the next Guard unit rotating in. Without their equipment, they're hard-pressed to train effectively, and if they were ever needed for a natural disaster response - like a hurricane, a flood or an earthquake, they wouldn't have everything they'd need.

This is a critical problem and a significant cost of the war in Iraq that nobody in the Bush Administration wants to talk about. It's going to take several years and billions of dollars to remedy - after our troops come home from Iraq.

Some of us in Congress have been trying for more than a year to raise the alarm. My colleague, Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas, who chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, has joined me in introducing a resolution to call attention to the military readiness crisis. A follow-up resolution will make sure that the rebuilding and restoration of our military manpower and equipment becomes one of our most urgent national priorities. After that, we'll figure out exactly what it will cost to "reset the force," and return our military to the condition it was in before this tragic and unnecessary war. We really don't have time to waste.

 

Aloha,

Neil Abercrombie

Member of Congress