Industry-military collaborations necessary to reset fatigued force.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Tactical Vehicles

* MONTEREY, Calif. -- It's the million-dollar question. When the combat-fatigued trucks in Iraq and Afghanistan finally return to depots in the United States to be revamped, what will the Army and Marine Corps do with them?

The answer is something that depot commanders already are wrestling with, and some are looking to the past for clues into the future.

"We train for the last war, and through association, we tend to equip for that last conflict as well," says Col. Scott Dalke, depot commander of the Marine Corps Maintenance Center in Barstow, Calif.

At the NDIA tactical wheeled vehicles conference, he presented a slide with two photos: one taken in January 1991 of the 18th Airborne Corps main command post convoy staged for movement, about 24 days before Operation Desert Storm; the other taken in March 2003 of the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade, one week after the first ground forces crossed into Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Though snapped more than a decade apart, both photos captured nearly identical vehicles ready to roll into combat.

After Desert Storm, the Defense Department trained and equipped its forces for another Desert Storm, and it did it well, he says.

When troops deployed to Iraq in 2003, they expected to meet similar challenges to what they faced in the first Gulf War.

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