Anon

I bought a 20 February Army Times this morning here on post and page 16 had a huge write up on armor, vehicle, and helicopter losses in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Here are some numbers from that article;
The Army has lost 85 helicopters broken down as;
-27 Apache's
-21 Black Hawks
-14 Chinooks
-23 Kiowa's
Armor and wheeled vehicles are as follows;
-20 M1 Tanks
-50 Bradley's
-20 Strykers
-20 M113's
-250 Humvees
-500 Medium/Heavy Trucks, FOX recon, mine clearers, and trailers
Additional numbers in the article are;
- 230 M1 were rebuilt in 2005, the number will top 700 in 2006.
- 318 Bradleys rebuilt in 2005, the number will top 600 in 2006.
- 219 M113's in 2005, the number will top 614 in 2006.
- 5,000 Humvees in 2005, the number will top 9,000 in 2006.
- 44 aircraft in 2005, the number will be close to 85 in 2006.
The Army has ordered 16 new Apaches, and 5 new Black Hawks. But cannot replace the 27 Kiowas because production lines are no longer open.
Quote- "There are thousands of small arms, radios, and generators that require major repair and overhaul. The repair backlog includes almost every major equipment item, from 50 caliber machine guns to hundreds of thousands of pads for tank tracks".
There are currently 30,000 Humvees in theater, once the war is over, 6,000 will be "washed out" upon return to the states, the rest will be repaired and overhauled.
Every M1 thats being repaired or overhauled comes out as a M1A2 (SEP) at a cost of 7 million each. The upgrades will reduce the M1 versions from 5 to 2, (M1A1 AIM and the M1A2 SEP). Bradleys will also be reduced to just 2 versions.
Army workshops have cranked up capacity from 11 million man hours in 2002, to 20 million hours in 2005. AMC sends half its repair work to private-sector firms to help with the load.

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Is it me, or do those numbers seem really high?

Shek, 20 strykers declared officially 'destroyed'?

I thougt it was 1?

tankervet

This is not exactly a true statement. The upgraded tanks should be M1A2 CEEPs which is an additional variant and the total force will not have A2 variants until at least 2012 according to what I have been told. Probably be further off than that considering the price of the war.

Shek

Snipe, it's definitely more than 1. I can count four for the first six months of the Stryker in Iraq (when I was there):

2 completely fried from the Dec 03 rollover in the canal
1 burned to the ground from a Dec 03 IED attack (AFSS failed)
1 burned to the ground from a Mar 03 RPG attack that ignited an external 5 gal fuel can (fire drill improperly executed/handheld fire extinguishers didn't work properly)

The other sixteen occured after I left and encompass a total of an additional 21 months of service in Iraq. My guess is that the vast majority are from SVBIEDs, which became huge in Mosul just prior to Fallujah II. Mosul was rally point for all the cockroaches that left Fallujah, and so 1/25 ID (SBCT) had a really rough go of it for several months as they fought the A squad.

I'll have to try to find the article of a Stryker that got hit by a SVBIED on one of the Tigris River bridges and was blown off the bridge and fell 40 feet. No KIA IIRC, but there were a couple of severe injuries from the landing. I'm not sure if that is one of the destroyed Strykers, but odds are yes.

As far as the overall numbers, I'd say no. Large IEDs can do a lot of damage - the reason that it probably seems high is because the armored vehicles are doing their job in providing protection to soldiers. Also, you'll have many cases where leaders make the decision that fighting a fire is too dangerous with the combat load of ammo onboard, and so the vehicle burns to the hull instead of risking soldiers lives to put the fire out.

__________________
"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

Anon

27 Apaches doesnt strike you as high either?

How about the 20 abrams?

During ODS we had some really heavily hit tanks that were not declared lost and were rebuilt. Are they totalling them out easier now?

Anyway, thanx, appreciate the skinny on the Stryker numbers.

Shek

I think that a decent amount of them are from secondary fires in terms of the ground vehicles, and I'm sure that ground fire has caused a lot of hard landings for the birds - an airframe can only take so many hard landings before the stress is just too much.

Anon

I suspect we're 'writing off' the old stuff a lot more readily than we did in 1991.

We had some Abrams and Hogs get hit in that war that should have by all rights been declared losses but that were fixed and returned to duty.

tankervet

I can think of 9 m1's off the top of my head. Shek is right about the secondary fires. Thats one thing thats different from ODS. Alot of times with the IED's it will start the tank on fire and like shek said, the decision is made that its too dangerous with the live ammo on board so its let to burn down.

The number that seems high to me is the M1's that have and will be rebuilt. 230 in 05 and over 700 in 06 seems very high to me.

Wraith601

Guess that hurts Sparky's cause some more.

__________________
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-Sir Arthur Wellesley

Anon

Not nearly as much as Sparky hurts Sparkys cause.

Shek

My guess is that this is not necessarily because of combat damage, but more because they've been driven into the ground like most of the vehicles/aircraft over there. After all, 310 Strykers have been "rebuilt" (i.e. went into for a depot level overhaul to make the trannys, etc. and make everything all nice and purty after driving all over Iraq), and they were only three years old (with two years of the three in Iraq).

TopHatter

Ah yes, but were those M113s the SUPER Gavin?

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Anon

Oh, btw, the comments at the very top of the 1st post are not mine. They are from the poster that posted this story at another board, i failed to attribute them earlier.

Just wanted to clarify.