Southern border states asking for surplus war gear

[Twana Blevins]

States rights is the only thing that will help our country now. If we don't start using our state sovereignty - We lose! 

Twana

 

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An Air Force F-16 pilot checks his night vision goggles prior to a July 2007 flight in Iraq.

Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Stars and Stripes

 

A pair of Texas Congressmen and more than a dozen sheriffs from Texas, Arizona and New Mexico are asking the Defense Department for some of the surplus war equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan for use along their border with Mexico, citing “national security,” The Washington Times reports.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the lawmakers - one a Republican and the other a Democrat - noted that some of the surplus equipment would come in handy to federal, state and local agencies that work the along and near the U.S. border with Mexico, according to the Times. Humvees, weapons, night-vision goggles, communications trailers and observation platforms were among the items cited.

Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican, has already introduced a resolution that would direct the Defense Department to make available 10 percent of certain equipment from Iraq, the paper reported. The equipment would be made available to law enforcement patroling the border.

Poe called border defense "a national security issue," according to the The Washington Times article.

"State and local officials are on the front lines of the southern border fighting to protect Americans from spillover violence from Mexico," the story wrote in quoting Poe.

In January, Cuellar hosted a meeting with a Defense Department official that was attended by representatives of local law enforcement agencies. More than 100 officers were in attendance. The Times article said 17 sheriffs from border areas have joined the two Congressmen in formally asking Panetta for the equipment.

Source: The Washington Times

[Bruce Forster]

Like that Obama PUPPET cares ANY more about border security than our Liar-N-Chief?!

[Dan Corcoran]

Have gun...will travel..

 

[Darwin Rockantansky]

It would not surprise me if the Obama administration decided to announce a major cost cutting effort in which we do not ship all those tools of war back to this country but instead sell it all to Hezbollah as scrap metal.

Darwin Rockantansky

Las Vegas, Nevada

[Ray Zelker jr]

Congress should be more then happy to help the states get this equipment

[Ray Zelker jr]

I my slf am going to write and call my pa rep and tell them they need to help states get what they need

[Lina Rott]

PER NAPPY WHAT SECURITY PROBLEMS, WHAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT PROBLEM, KNOW THIS ADMINISTRATION THEY WOULD PROBABLY GIVE IT TO THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD OR THE MEXICAN CARTEL OR HEZBELLAH BEFORE THEY WOULD GIVE ANYTHING PAID FOR BY OUR TAX DOLLARS TO THIS COUTNRY.

[Charles L. Buttrum]

TAKE THEM ALL OUT, NOW!!  I'M 67 WITH SOME DISABILITIES SO I MAY NEED A LITTLE HELP BUT, I'LL DO MY PART.

[Charles L. Buttrum]

OBAMA WANTS AMERICANS TO LIVE LIKE ALL THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES DO. HE THINKS WE WASTE THE WORLDS NATURAL RESOURCES..

[Raffaele Cafagna]

Tell Your Republican Senator You Oppose The Rubio Amnesty Plan This new fax has been posted in your Action Buffet based on your answers to the Interest Survey. You can find this fax by proceeding to http://www.numbersusa.com/faxes?ID=13904 According to the Hill, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is planning to introduce a DREAM Act amnesty:

[Raffaele Cafagna]

 Army Overwhelmed by Massive Lots of Waiting Vehicles

[Raffaele Cafagna]

Military.comArmy Overwhelmed by Massive Lots of Waiting Vehicles

Army Overwhelmed by Massive Lots of Waiting Vehicles

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March 28, 2012

Washington Times|by Kristina Wong

Imagine a parking lot as large as 100 football fields and filled with nearly every type, make and model of U.S. military vehicle, covered in dust and dirt and baking under a desert sun in Kuwait.

Your job: Find one specific vehicle, read its serial number and catalog it for transport back to the United States.

That’s part of the daunting task facing the Responsible Reset Task Force, which must inspect thousands of vehicles used in the Iraq War and decide which ones are worth sending back to the United States.

“There’s just this huge, big expanse of sand with a fence around it,” said Army Col. Jeffrey Carra, the task force’s former chief of operations. “Forty rows of stuff that’s just parked head to tail.”

The Army is responsible for about 15,000 vehicles at four U.S. military bases in Kuwait, some with a dozen lots. About 9,000 vehicles will stay with the U.S. forces in Kuwait, but up to 6,000 will be shipped home, Col. Carra said.

They include Humvees, trucks, trailers, cranes, bulldozers, tanks, personnel carriers and howitzers. One Humvee can cost more than $1 million, and a tank, a couple of million.

“I’m sure it’s over a billion dollars,” Col. Carra said of the value of the military vehicles in Kuwait.

Before a vehicle can come stateside, it needs to stripped of extra equipment, washed, sterilized and brought to a port. It will spend more than a month at sea before arriving in the United States. Roughly 5,000 vehicles that came out of Iraq are now en route to the United States.

The vehicle then will be transported to a depot to be refurbished to factory standards and redistributed wherever necessary.

About 2,000 contractors are also involved in the program. They are supposed to take an average of 20 hours to find and prepare a vehicle for shipment, but they usually take much longer.

Sometimes a contractor carrying a handheld scanner spends days walking around a parking lot the size of a sports stadium parking lot in search of a specific vehicle.

It cost $20 million over a seven-month period to complete the process at just one lot, according to an Army study. That cost did not include shipping, which can run thousands of dollars per vehicle. Shipping a single vehicle from Afghanistan to the United States costs $7,000.

One of the U.S. bases, Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, contains dozens of lots. Lot 58 is its main sorting area. It is 174 acres, or the size of about 174 football fields, and can hold up to 2,000 vehicles.

Camp Arifjan is the only Army base equipped with special technology for speedy wireless tracking of the vehicles.

The technology, called AMATS, involves affixing a small mobile-phone-sized tag to each vehicle with the vehicle’s serial number and unique identity programmed into it. That tag can be located by satellite using GPS technology.

“It’s freaking awesome,” Col. Carra said about the technological capability to pinpoint a vehicle’s location.

“You can say, ‘Oh that’s going to be in Lot 58, row 17, the fourth one from the front,’” Col. Cara said.

The technology has halved the cost of readying the vehicles, according to the case study.

Mary Ann Wagner, who worked with the Army for five years to develop the technology, said the system can cut costs by 50 percent over seven months.

“Because we don’t need as many people going around with handheld readers, we’re able to reduce labor costs,” said Ms. Wagner, president of Cubic Global Tracking Solutions and XIO Strategies.

The technology also has been installed at the naval base in Kuwait and at the Kuwaiti port of Shuaibah to track vehicles being shipped.

Vehicles will be shipping out from Kuwait throughout the summer before the Responsible Reset Task Force can say, “Mission accomplished.”

“We’re trying to figure out how to do that for Afghanistan,” Col. Carra said.

He estimated that there are 50,000 pieces of rolling stock -- anything big with wheels -- in Afghanistan.

“The problem is the military has many, many vehicle and high valuable assets,” Ms. Wagner said. “Keeping track of those assets are important.”

Better technology could prevent equipment theft by contractors.

“I’m not naive. I’m sure there was some,” Col. Carra said.

Military assets lose value over time, especially if the technology becomes dated, so some things cost less to leave behind than to bring home and refurbish, he added.

“If you’ve got a 10-year-old car, and it needs a $2,000 repair and $1,000 for transportation, but you can buy new for $4,000,” he said, “it may make more sense to buy a new one.”