More Money for Spare Tires and Thirsty Soldiers

When I was a military police platoon leader, I wanted to buy spare tires for all seven of my platoon’s Humvees. Spare tires made them more effective in combat exercises because troops could change a tire after running over a rock or barbed wire rather than wait for a maintenance vehicle to come forward with a new tire.

But a Humvee tire cost $623, and there was no money in my unit’s budget for spares. Or for Camelbaks, the water carriers that my soldiers wanted to help them stay hydrated in the field. Or for extra bullets to train above and beyond our military police gunnery requirements. Or even for professional law enforcement gear such as handcuff cases and pistol belts, although after begging our division’s chief of staff, we finally got $18,000 to purchase those.

President Bush’s increases in defense spending aim to correct these critical shortfalls at the soldier level--shortfalls that in combat may make the difference between life and death.

After the Gulf War, the military rightfully downsized to give nation a post-Cold War peace dividend. But in the mid- to late-1990s, the United States undertook dozens of deployments for missions from peacekeeping to partnership with former Soviet republics. On any given day, U.S. troops serve in dozens of nations, on the cutting edge of Washington’s foreign policy of global interdependence.

One aim of downsizing was to trim a lot of the fat out of military budgets. Civilian positions at base gyms and other facilities were eliminated. These positions were replaced by soldiers on detail from combat units, which had a tremendously destructive effect on unit cohesion, training and overall readiness for combat.

My crusty old sergeants liked to reminisce about the good old days under President Reagan. In those days, they shot their personal weapons at least once a month and their larger weapons once a quarter. You see, marksmanship is a highly perishable skill. If you don’t practice the ability to put steel on target, you lose that ability. Today, most military units qualify with their weapons just once or twice a year.

Spare parts also became more scarce. A mechanized force of tanks, armored vehicles and wheeled vehicles is expensive. Fixing them when they break requires entire battalions of support personnel.

The budgets for unit maintenance have shrunk, and the materiel readiness of those units has declined as well. In many low-level units, vehicles not immediately needed sit idle in the motor pool because they lack parts for repairs. Whenever large units are alerted for deployment, a race begins to fix these dead vehicles.

That brings me back to my Humvee tires.

My platoon did more training in 2000 than any other military police platoon at Ft. Hood, Texas, the Army’s largest installation. I suspect we spent more money on parts than any of our counterparts too. But in the end, $4,361 for seven spare tires was too much to spend. So we had to wait for maintenance, wasting hours of valuable training time every time we blew a tire in the field.

Giving the military $48 billion more this year and increases in subsequent years will go a long way toward relieving chronic shortages.

More important, it will save commanders from making painful choices between funding for gyms and housing versus funding for training.

Our military’s success in war depends on its training in peace. We must give the military enough money so that it can streamline and modernize while not neglecting the lieutenants, sergeants and soldiers who must go into harm’s way.