Army struggles to maintain ground vehicle fleet.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

Facing a $12 billion tab to repair and replace vehicles and equipment damaged in combat operations, the Army expects to both reassess funding priorities and take a hard look at its logistics and maintenance practices.

On the aviation side, the funds needed to fix up the fleet will come from the cancelled Comanche program. But the Army may need to cut other programs or drastically change business practices in order to restore ground vehicles and spare parts accounts to acceptable levels, officials said.

"We are not getting more dollars. We have to do things smarter," said Maj. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III, commander of the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command.

The main reason why the Army is in this predicament is that the combat vehicles deployed in Iraq--the Abrams tank and the Bradley infantry vehicle-were among those "legacy" systems that were scheduled to end production, so that Army had not budgeted any money for spares or repairs.

Now, the Army is having a tough time maintaining vehicle fleets at the required "readiness rates," Thompson said in a presentation to the 2004 Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference, in Monterey, Calif. "Readiness is really a challenge right now," said Thompson. "System sustainment really is causing problems."

TACOM alone will be $600 million short in the spare parts account for fiscal year 2004. "We have been trying to dig ourselves out of a hole," he said.

Thompson noted that, in this case, the Army created its own problems. When the service launched its so-called "transformation" to a lighter, more technologically advanced force, it cancelled programs viewed as obsolete, such as heavy armored vehicles. The intent was to shift the money into next-generation programs, such as the Stryker brigades and the Future Combat Systems. "We took nothing to take care of the existing systems," Thompson said. Those vehicles the Army intended to soon phase out of the fleet were the workhorses during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the Army now must come up with money for repairs and upgrades.

The overall $12 billion "resetting bill" for ground systems includes 1,555 tracked vehicles, 9,426 Humvees, 7,076 medium and heavy trucks, 3,579 trailers, 82 multiple launch rocket systems and nine Patriot air-defense battalions. The aviation repair backlog has 248 Apaches, 204 Chinooks and 451 Black Hawk helicopters.

The truck fleet, particularly, is taking a beating in the budget. Nearly one-fourth of the Army's 240,000...