OOPS: 2,273 Americans have lost their lives in Iraq. 16,653 Wounded 20 M1's; 50 Bradley's; 20 Stryker's; 20 M113;s; 250 Humvees; 500 Fox's; 27 Apache's; 21 Blackhawk's; 23 Kiowa's; 14 Chinook's

Galloway: Military vehicles, and lives, take a beating in IraqJoe Galloway
Tribune Editorial
Salt Lake TribuneWASHINGTON - There are always costs in a war, human costs
and hardware costs, and as we draw close to beginning the fourth year of our
operations in Iraq, it's time to tally those costs one more time.
As of this week, a total of 2,270 Americans have lost their lives in
Iraq, the great majority of those losses suffered in combat. The number of
wounded has reached 16,653, just over half of those marked wounded but
returned to duty.
A little-known cost is in vehicles lost in combat. Just for the U.S.
Army alone that number has reached nearly 1,000. The cost for replacing
those totally destroyed vehicles and overhauling thousands more worn out by
heavy use totals $9 billion in this year's proposed defense budget and in
the off-budget emergency wartime supplemental budget Congress passes twice
each fiscal year.
Since the Iraq combat operations began in the winter of 2003, the Army
has lost 20 M1 Abrams tanks; 50 Bradley fighting vehicles; 20 Stryker
wheeled combat vehicles; 20 M113 armored personnel carriers; 250 Humvees;
and some 500 Fox wheeled reconnaissance vehicles, mine clearing vehicles and
heavy- and medium-transport trucks and trailers.
The bulk of these losses in tracked and wheeled vehicles were to the
ubiquitous improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that the insurgents employ
to such deadly purpose.
To that equipment toll, for both Afghanistan and Iraq, add 27 Apache
attack helicopters; 21 Blackhawk utility helicopters; 23 Kiowa Warrior
assault helicopters; and 14 big Chinook cargo helicopters.
Only 17 of the helicopter losses are counted as combat downings.
The rest were destroyed in accidents.
This information and these figures are courtesy of The Army Times weekly
newspaper, Feb. 20 issue, with thanks.
The Army has ordered 19 new Stryker armored vehicles to be built to
replace the losses. In the case of the Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting
vehicles and M113 personnel carriers, which are no longer in production, the
Army pulls replacements out of mothballs and runs them through a frame-up
depot rebuilding process that upgrades them to the newest high-tech
versions.
In addition to replacing the totally destroyed vehicles, the Army is
faced with near-total rebuilding jobs on literally thousands of other Abrams
tanks, Bradleys, M113s, Humvees, trucks and aircraft that have been worn out
by heavy use in the combat zones.
The wear and tear on those vehicles is estimated at five times normal
peacetime use, and that wear factor is cumulative as the war drags on. Last
year the Army's Materiel Command and its contractors overhauled 230 Abrams
tanks. This year they expect to overhaul more than 700 of the huge tanks.
Bradleys go from last year's 318 overhauls to this year's 600. Overhauls of
Humvees, which totaled 5,000 in 2005, will hit 9,000 in fiscal 2006.
These totals do not take into account major repairs needed for small
arms, radios, generators and all the other gear that an army runs on in a
combat zone.
Why is so much of the equipment being ground down? Because the vehicles
and much of the other gear including body armor does not go home when units
rotate out for a year's break from combat. Their equipment stays behind and
the arriving unit just picks it up and puts it back to work without a break.
More than 30,000 vehicles are on duty all the time in Iraq.
Put simply, our soldiers are literally driving the wheels, and tracks,
off these vehicles, and will continue to do so for as long as the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq continue.
One senior official of the Army Materiel Command estimates that if the
war ended tomorrow there would still be two years' worth of work to fix all
the vehicles and gear. That includes 30,000 Humvees, the modern replacement
for the old Army Jeep. When they eventually come home some 6,000 of them
will be declared surplus or beyond repair. The rest will be repaired and
upgraded and parceled out to the Army units.
Equipment can be repaired or replaced. But nothing can replace a father
or mother who has been killed in this war, or any war. Nothing can
compensate for all the lives shattered when a soldier dies in combat. In
Iraq it is estimated that the human toll includes nearly 1,000 spouses who
have been left behind, alone, and more than 2,000 children who have lost a
parent to the war.
Nor can you repair or replace what has been lost by hundreds of soldiers
severely injured by powerful IED blasts and left double or triple amputees,
blind or brain damaged, riddled by shrapnel. For them, and those who love
them, life suddenly has become an unending struggle.
Remember them.

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