The Army’s Middle East stockade is failing
A lack of proper maintenance could have grave consequences for theatres of war across the region.
Discreet warehouses across the globe house military equipment for the United States Army. On bases across the globe,the warehouses feed a sea of gear to American troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan or units training Iraqi security forces in the Ninewa Province. The fighting systems all come from one of five places and support operations anywhere between Egypt and Kazakhstan. Known as Army prepositioned stocks, or APS, they fuel a domestic military’s global reach. Some $5.5 billion worth of fighting systems from Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1A1 tanks to ammunition and, in some cases, digital multimeters are held in Kuwait alone.
But one of the five stockades across the globe aimed at bolstering military readiness, equipment housed in Kuwait and Qatar (where units from the APS-5 are held) went without proper maintenance for months despite the move to the new facilities, according to a 2018 report from the inspector general at the Department of Defense. Three years on, in follow-up discussions with interested parties since the report was issued, as U.S. forces are reassigned and withdrawn from conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, little has changed.
In some instances the humidity control systems were inoperable. In other instances vehicles were not readily “mission capable as outlined in Army Regulation,” the report said. Accountability officers tasked with inventory checks never physically checked inventory, the report found, a job that is given to the private military contractor, URS Corporation.
URS Corporation did not follow a regular maintenance cycle for the equipment in their care. Those personnel and the maintenance work were not checked by the 401st Army Field Support Brigade charged with overseeing the care and schedules. The report also found that military staff could not account for some of the equipment or its whereabouts. Without verifying the work of its federal private contractor, the Army is unable to account for the performance of its vehicles and weapon systems, increasing the likelihood that equipment would be inoperable or unserviced when deployed.
Deputy Chief of Staff overseeing the army’s global logistics policies, Lt. Gen Duane Gamble, said that while a recent disbursement of equipment only resulted in the recall of five items and was conducted ahead of schedule, improvements in accountability were needed.
"When measured against those standards we failed to meet those standards,” Lt. Gen. Gamble told me. He added that while the observations of the investigation were correct and maintenance standards weren’t clear — specifically the timeframe for which APS equipment is moved from controlled to non-controlled humidity environments — and were instructed to be updated, according to the report. It is not clear whether that was done, despite continued use of the APS.
At the time of the report, Lt. General Gamble told me there was a lot of merit to the report that went beyond the singularity of the APS stock housed in Qatar and Kuwait. “We owe it to ourselves and the army that we have the right people doing the right work,” he said.
Proper maintenance, which includes routine checks on electrical and mechanical systems and inventory, has been tough to achieve.
Towering warehouses that cost $49 million to build in the prepositioned stocks locations. Constructed with the idea of upholding the integrity of the equipment as it waited for its deployment, the warehouses were aimed at saving the Army money: the climate-controlled depots were projected to save the military $60 million over four years.
“Equipment in Southwest Asia has been a longstanding concern of ours,” says Michael J. Roark, assistant inspector general and the report’s signatory. “It's a significant amount of equipment. It's of significant strategic importance.” And without the caches, military readiness is decreased.
“The bases in Kuwait and Qatar are vital to the United States capacity to rapidly defend the gulf states,” says Bruce Riedel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former Middle East analyst at the C.I.A. Only with the prepositioned stocks in a high state of readiness can “the US stand up to a regional threat overnight.”
The Army has operated at full-tilt for nearly two decades in two ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recently with the insurgent Islamic State. Its ability to sustain gear without contractors has lessened. But where contractors slack, the Army feels the strain.
During an exercise around the time of the report,13,000 pieces were issued to the 155th Armored Brigade Combat Team, based out of Mississippi. Six items – two Bradley Fighting Vehicles, one trailer, one ammunition carrier and one tank – were deemed inoperable, highlighting the findings in the inspector general’s report. “Of the 5 systems that weren’t issued, we expect four to be fully mission capable and issued to the 155th ABCT by October,” says Col. Jeffrey S. Niemi, a program manager for private military contractor Amentum and a former commander of the 401st Army Field Support Brigade in Kuwait. “Each of these pieces of equipment is a complicated system and to some degree, there are going to be maintenance issues – just as you might have with your average family car.”
Over several years the military has tried seeking techniques toward providing readily available and quick-deployable troops. Some emphasis has more recently been placed on domestics stockades that can be deployed rapidly by air or sea. Meanwhile, the units in the Middle East play a neverending role in ongoing wars throughout that region, supporting not only coalition partners but also peacekeeping missions.
Susanna Blume, the director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, says that budget instability, along with maintenance and ongoing foreign engagement, are the principal drivers of readiness challenges.
“Continued operations both increase wear and tear on equipment and disrupt regular maintenance schedules, negatively impacting readiness,” she says.