Stan187

GI’s gear costs 100 times more than in WWII

Pentagon spends $17,500 per soldier for high-tech protection, weapons

As Washington lawmakers argue over the spiraling price of the war in Iraq, consider this: Outfitting a soldier for battle costs a hundred times more now than it did in World War II.

The cost was $170 in 2006 inflation-adjusted dollars then, about $17,500 now and could be an estimated $28,000 to $60,000 by the middle of the next decade.

“The ground soldier was perceived to be a relatively inexpensive instrument of war” in the past, said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, head of the Army agency for developing and fielding soldier equipment.

Now, the Pentagon spends tens of billions of dollars annually to protect troops and make them more lethal on the battlefield.

In the 1940s, a GI went to war with little more than a uniform, weapon, helmet, bedroll and canteen. He carried some 35 pounds of gear that cost $170, according to Army figures.

That rose to about $1,100 by the 1970s as the military added a flak vest, new weapons and other equipment during the Vietnam War.

Today, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are outfitted with advanced armor and other protection, including high-tech vests, anti-ballistic eyewear, earplugs and fire-retardant gloves. Night-vision eyewear, thermal weapons sights and other gear makes them more deadly to the adversary.

In all, soldiers today each are packing more than 80 items — weighing about 75 pounds — from socks to disposable handcuffs to a strap cutter for slashing open a seatbelt if they have to flee a burning vehicle.

Newer gear around corner
Several items were added since 2002, when troops in Afghanistan complained that their equipment was outdated and not best suited to the new campaign.

Still, newer gear is just around the corner.

Between 2012 and 2014, officials want troops to have head-to-toe protection, a weapon that can shoot around corners so soldiers don’t have to expose themselves to their enemy and a helmet-mounted 1.5-inch computer screen showing maps of the battlefield.

Drawings of the gear — some parts already in prototype and in the field — look like futuristic “Master Chief,” the human über-soldier who battles aliens in the popular sci-fi video game Halo. Researchers prefer to call it “the F-16-on-legs concept,” a nod to U.S. fighter jets.

The wide range in price — an estimated $28,000 to $60,000 a person — is partly because not all troops will have all of the equipment. Some of it, such as a planning tool, is only for unit leaders.

The ensemble makes the soldier a highly protected “walking computer hub” who can send out and take in information such as maps showing where all friendly and enemy forces are arrayed, said Dutch DeGay, equipment specialist at the Army’s research and development center in Natick, Mass.

“Your tax dollars at work,” he said.


Cost may reflect U.S. values
Indeed, spending on ever-improving and ever-more-costly technology to make troops safer and more effective could be seen as just what taxpayers wanted.

It reflects an American society that values human life and has a distaste for too many casualties, said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The increases also coincided with the development of the all-volunteer military that Americans greatly prefer over conscription. The end of the draft in the 1970s has meant fewer people in the armed forces, and those fewer people need better equipment to do more.

The military also must protect troops because of the higher investment made to recruit and train a professional force, said P.J. Crowley, a 26-year veteran of the Air Force now with the Center for American Progress.

It doesn’t help attract recruits if the military uses soldiers “as cannon fodder,” Wood said.

Over the years more spending has meant a better chance of survival. Today, for every eight soldiers wounded, roughly one dies, compared with one for every 2.4 wounded in World War II and one for every three in Vietnam, the Army says. The better odds also are due to better medical treatment and other advances.

Troops still vulnerable
Still, troops remain vulnerable and success is far from guaranteed.

Homemade insurgent bombs are the No. 1 killer of Americans in Iraq and a weapon being used increasingly in Afghanistan as well. Insurgents have been known to detonate the explosives with cell phones, washing machine timers and remote controls from toy cars.

Troops are outfitted with, among other gear, helmets and night-vision goggles.

“As we know in Iraq, a high-tech military can be vulnerable to a low-tech adversary,” Crowley said.

Of the $190 billion the Pentagon has requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2008, the biggest expenses are about $77 billion for operations, about $47 billion to repair and replace destroyed equipment, and more than $30 billion for “force protection.”

More than half of the protection funds are to send 15,000 mine-resistant vehicles to Iraq — at $1 million each. The rest is for protection gear as well as activities such as destroying weapons caches scattered around Iraq by the thousands, funding an advisory group to study and recommend ways to defeat homemade bombs and operating unmanned aircraft systems that do border surveillance, help protect convoys and provide other support to troops.

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gunnut

GI deaths 100 times more in WWII

400,000 to 4,000 in around 4 years of fighting

Our tax dollars at work. Which I think is a fair trade.

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VarSity

Agreed.
I worry about 'head to toe' protection though, whilst it sounds great, I hope they take into account maneuverability, and perhaps more importantly comfort. If these things end up making a trooper feel like he is in full NBC gear whilst in the desert its not going to be fun.

Expat Canuck

If it was a power suit with aircon and booster rockets in your boots to jump over buildings would you complain then?!?!

Starship Troopers, as in the suits in the book spring to mind.

VarSity

Well I am under the impression Starship troopers is on the reading list at west point. Then again that could be a lie...

Its the way they want to go I feel.

Expat Canuck

Hmm, it's very umm pro-totalitarian governmet isn't it? Public floggings including flogging the father if the son screws up.

The book is great though, been years since I read it though. I wish the movie had stuck exactly to the book, would have been way cooler!

VarSity

yeh it is an excellent book. As for pro-totalitarian im not so sure. People do vote, just not everyone.

Think I will read it again now :D

Odd numbers, sleep in 5, 4, 3, 2....

Shek

There is no West Point "reading list" for the cadets. The books they read will be part of their classes, and Starship Troopers is not part of any core course that I'm aware of.

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"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

-{SpoonmaN}-

Indeed, and if you look at the comparative casualty rates for US/Iraqi/Allied forces vs. Rebels, for example at the Battle of Turki where the 82nd fought against just about the best Opfor this war has yet offered (US: 2 KIA, Rebels: 72 KIA) I'd argue the numbers speak for themselves.
My uneducated opinion anyway.

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Shek

Gunnut,

Sorry, but you're comparing apples and oranges. You'd have to compare ratios of soldiers killed relative to the the numbers of soldiers deployed. I don't have the time to run the numbers, but you're not going to find that a GI was 100 times more likely as a percentage of GIs deployed to get killed in WWII.

Tarek Morgen

And does the enemy not play a role too? Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were surely much stronger enemies than what they have to face now in Iraq,

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uh I might be wrong

VarSity

Like I said could be a lie, but the blerb on the back of the book says its the only sci-fi book to be read at west point.

Anyone think this head to toe protection will end up something like this?
Hamilton Spectator - News

omon

where is the surprise??? it is logical.
everything cost much more than it did in 1945.

What Things Cost in 1945:
Car: $1,250
Gasoline: 21 cents/gal
House: $10,000
Bread: 9 cents/loaf
Milk: 62 cents/gal
Postage Stamp: 3 cents
Stock Market: 152
Average Annual Salary: $2,900
Minimum Wage: 40 cents per hour

the only thing that brakes the patern is milk, it used to be 3x as expencive as gas, now it cost almost the same.

besides that now soldgers have much more hitech gear that wasn,t even tought of in 1945

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" B. Franklin

HistoricalDavid

IIRC US Armed Forces reached a total of 12 million men deployed during WWII; I don't know how many were actually deployed abroad, but regardless they also faced a different sort of enemy. I realise plenty here will disagree (High probability of collision: Bluesman) but Iraqi insurgents and Al-Qaeda are not on the same level as German and Japanese troops... in any aspect, at least until the very end of the war (e.g. Volkssturm).

omon

yes and no, it was pretty straight forward back than, you see german solger you kill him, now you don,t deal with solgers you deel with armed insergents, wich are not so easy to id, plus you have civilians who secretly support insergents, even the so called frendly civilians have a great chance becoming insergents tomorow, sometimes todays war is fought with one eye closed and one arm tied up(figurativly speaking), ww2 enemies and today enemies don,t compare. plus todays war look more like policing than military action