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27 Feb 13. The reset of equipment returning from Afghanistan may be affected by sequestration, said the commander of U.S. Army Materiel Command. The cancellation of reset would affect post-combat repair for about 1,000 vehicles, 14,000 communications devices and 17,000 weapons, Gen. Dennis Via, commander of U.S. Army Materiel Command, or AMC, told an audience of about 500 at the Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Symposium. Retrograde of equipment from Afghanistan is now underway, Via said. About $22bn worth of military hardware, weapons, vehicles and goods will move out of the country back to the United States. Some of that will be put back into the force, while some will first be reset in Army depots, made like new, before being sent back to a unit. Army Materiel Command is largely responsible for that retrograde. (Source: www.defencetalk.com)
30 Mar 13. Outdated Stryker Parts Piled Up In Auburn Warehouse. The Army program charged with keeping thousands of eight-wheeled Strykers running over the past decade had its eye so much on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it neglected to keep its books. The Army program charged with keeping thousands of eight-wheeled Strykers running over the past decade had its eye so much on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it neglected to keep its books. It accumulated nearly $900m worth of Stryker replacement parts, most of them in an Auburn warehouse, with much of the gear becoming outdated even as the military continued to order more equipment, according to a Defense Department Inspector General report released late last year. Take, for instance, the $57m worth of obsolete infrared equipment the Army has not installed in Strykers since 2007. It lingered at the Stryker warehouse until the Inspector General called attention to it last year. Or, the 9,179 small replacement gears called pinions the Army bought as a temporary fix for a Stryker suspension problem that surfaced between 2007 and 2009. The Army took care of the root malfunction in 2010, but kept buying pinions. It needed only 15 of the gears. The 9,164 extra pinions are worth $572,000, the Inspector General reported. The off-the-books equipment piled up in a sort of Army accounting netherworld. Neither the Army Stryker Project Management Office in Michigan nor Stryker manufacturer General Dynamics took ownership of the equipment once it was delivered to the Auburn site, with each party believing that accounting was the other’s responsibility. (Source: Early Bird/Tacoma News Tribune)
31 Mar 13. The U.S. operation to remove military hardware and vehicles from Afghanistan as troops withdraw after 12 years of war will cost between $5bn and $6bn, officials said Sunday. Among statistics released by the military about the process known as a “retrograde” was that 25,000 vehicles have been shipped out of Afghanistan in the last year and another 25,000 remain in the country. About 100,000 containers are also still in Afghanistan, and will be used to remove mountains of equipment ranging from fighting gear to fitness machines, furniture and computers.
“The retrograde from Afghanistan is one of the most challenging military transportation operations in history in terms of scale and complexity,” Brig. Gen. Steven Shapiro said in an email.
“Our number of vehicles in Afghanistan has dropped by nearly half in the past year.”
Shapiro, the commanding general of 1st Theater Sustainment Command, said decisions were being made on what equipment was left for the Afghan army and police to take on the fight against Taliban insurgents.
“Ground commanders are able to nominate this equipment as they assess the needs and maintenance capabilities of their Afghan partners and number