Americans who have never served in the military may not realize the scale of the problem

Americans who have never served in the military may not realize the scale of the problem. Napoleon’s army may have marched on its stomach, but ours requires a juggernaut of mechanics, medics, logisticians and truck drivers carrying everything from ammunition to underwear to keep moving. As a general rule, these support troops outnumber combat soldiers by about seven to one.

Phil has additional commentary on his own article on his blog, Intel Dump.

However, there remains a giant elephant in the room: equipment. The Army’s “MTOE’s” — “modified table of organization and equipment” — have not changed much, except for organizational changes such as the move to create “units of action” that are more flexible and modular. Unfortunately, these units still contain much of the same flawed equipment allocations, such as light-skinned vehicles with no armor to protect the crew and too few crew-served weapons for force protection. These MTOEs were drawn up a long time ago. Though they have been revised many times, they have not been changed to incorporate the new realities of warfare. That’s a real problem, and it’s one that must be fixed.

For more detail on the problem, visit Noah Schachtman at Defense Tech, here and here. Those posts point out the issues involved in acquiring new equipment and armor kits for equipment already deployed. Considering the unexpected levels of wear and the enormous resupply effort required for simply keeping the equipment already in MBT running, one wonders how the addition of some 12,000 troops, many light infantry (i.e. no armored vehicles – the 82nd Airborne currently deploying is an example) will affect the current crisis. More troops mean not only more possible targets for the resistance, but also far more supplies.