July 24, 2009 -- As Defense Department officials finalize plans for a large-scale redeployment of warfighting gear from Iraq starting next year, some lawmakers are concerned about the fate of the equipment the military wants to leave behind.
Michèle Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, this week briefed lawmakers about the logistics involved in shifting the Pentagon's focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, which involves shipping more than 80,000 personnel and their equipment out of Iraq by next August.
After the closed July 22 session, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) issued a statement titled, “DOD Faces Challenges As U.S. Forces Redeploy From Iraq.”
The statement is meant to signal panel members' eagerness to provide close oversight of the complex process, which is expected to begin in earnest after the Iraqi general election in January 2010, a congressional source said. “There's a lot of concern that this goes right,” the source added.
“Our nation has not carried out a redeployment on this scale since the Vietnam War, and when I visited Vietnam years later I remember seeing rows and rows of U.S. equipment that we left behind,” Skelton's statement reads. “We must do a better job managing the redeployment from Iraq.”
Pentagon officials are in the midst of developing a “deliberate and rapid process” for the drawdown, DOD spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder said in a statement yesterday. Key decisions will center around the questions of what materiel needs to be transported, how quickly it must be shipped and what kinds of equipment will be left behind, he added.
The issue of leaving gear behind, in particular, raised concerns among some House defense panel members during the Flournoy briefing this week, according to the congressional source.
Defense officials typically consider leaving behind equipment -- for host-nation use or demilitarization -- when it is classified as excess materiel. Excess is gear so worn that the cost of shipping it would exceed its residual value.
Last month, Pentagon officials requested authority from Congress for a separate class of transferable items, worth up to $750 million, that could be left to the security forces of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When the issue came up during debate on the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill, panel members decided against including the provision in the legislation. “Frankly, there were a lot of questions,” the congressional source said.
For one, Pentagon officials failed to explain what types of equipment they would consider parting with, according to the source. In addition, the source said, panelists had concerns about the counting rules, arguing $750 million in semi-worn warfighting gear, when counted at a fraction of the original purchase price, could result in a very large number of items.
Finally, DOD's proposal left lawmakers unsure about the effect of transferred equipment on the readiness of units, particularly those of the National Guard, whose service is crucial during domestic disasters, the source said.
Lawmakers this week also raised questions about what to do with equipment in the excess materiel category.
“Yes, some materiel is not worth shipping home -- generators, for example,” the congressional source said. “But there are a lot of communities in the U.S. who are planning for natural disasters who might want to have a shot at those generators and might be willing to pay for shipping them,” the source added.
At the briefing with Flournoy, Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) tasked defense officials to compile a list of “any and all” items they may consider leaving behind, Taylor's spokesman Ethan Rabin told InsideDefense.com today.
Taylor wants the list to be available to states and local communities across the United States, Rabin said. The idea is to “let the states and local communities make the decision of whether they want to bring that equipment back,” he added.
Meanwhile, members of the congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting this week began a 10-day trip to Iraq and Kuwait to examine DOD plans for the drawdown of government-owned equipment purchased by contractors, according to a July 21 commission statement.
“Determining the history, condition and usefulness of this property is a huge challenge and managing its disposition during the U.S. drawdown in Iraq will be a complicated and expensive operation,” commission Executive Director Robert Dickson is quoted as saying in the statement. -- Sebastian Sprenger
July 24, 2009
Inside Washington Publishers
7242009_july24a