Trucks, Stat!

The 190,000-strong Army Reserve needs trucks, and bad. So says new Army Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz when I inter­viewed him a few weeks back.
We have pro­vided a lot of equip­ment to [the Iraqi] the­ater that has remained. That cre­ates short­ages on this [state­side] end.
He’s talk­ing about up-​​armored Humvees and FMTV trucks, mostly — new stuff that’s inter­change­able with the active Army’s equip­ment. Even before it started giv­ing away equip­ment in Iraq, the Reserve’s vehi­cle fleet was pretty decrepit over­all. Now it’s get­ting worse, even as the need for trucks grows with the increas­ing impor­tance of mil­i­tary forces in domes­tic dis­as­ter relief.
We still have deuce-​​and-​​a-​​half trucks … Weve got to get that equip­ment replaced, Stultz says.
Hence this break­ing news from Inside Defense:

The ser­vice also is in line for major truck pur­chases should the Pentagon’s plans [for a new $50-​​billion sup­ple­men­tal] win the approval of Congress. The doc­u­ments show the Army wants $614.7 mil­lion for Humvees, with more than $422 mil­lion of that total slated for the National Guard and Army Reserve; $220 mil­lion for Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles trucks, all for the reserves; and $201.5 mil­lion for reserve Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles trucks.

Equipment short­ages notwith­stand­ing, Stultz is push­ing to make the Reserve more rel­e­vant, con­tin­u­ing his pre­de­ces­sors ini­tia­tive to boost civil affairs units while cut­ting back on sup­port for­ma­tions that are less often deployed. Remaining sup­port units will con­sol­i­date into mod­u­lar sus­tain­ment brigades that com­ple­ment active brigades.
At the same time, the Reserve is elim­i­nat­ing non-​​deployable forces. Where once the Reserve main­tained ten sta­tic regional head­quar­ters to raise and train troops, now it is stand­ing up “func­tional” com­mands devoted to par­tic­u­lar dimen­sions of warfight­ing. There will be sep­a­rate deploy­able head­quar­ters for engi­neers, mil­i­tary police­men, avi­a­tors and so on.
In todays Army Reserve, even train­ing divi­sions — once solely ded­i­cated to state­side mis­sions — are in Iraq train­ing native secu­rity forces.
It’s an excit­ing time to be in the Reserve, but only if you don’t mind rid­ing around in a 50-​​year-​​old truck.
Want to see sexy pics of trucks in Iraq? Proceed to my Flickr!
–David Axe

July 13th, 2006 | Ground Vehicles | 20182 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/07/13/trucks-stat/Trucks%2C+Stat%212006-07-13+20%3A45%3A34hambling You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.