{"id":39472,"date":"2014-01-26T10:20:59","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T15:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39472"},"modified":"2014-01-26T10:20:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-26T15:20:59","slug":"sound-familiar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39472","title":{"rendered":"Sound familiar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The News-Tribune<\/a> follows a platoon of Strykers through their paces at Fort Irwin as they discover that their enemy doesn’t always wear uniforms – their equipment is showing signs of age and the tail of their logistics teams seems broken;<\/p>\n

At one point in Yakima, fewer than half of the Strykers in the cavalry squadron were considered ready for combat, said squadron chief mechanic Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ric Minton, 31, of Olympia.<\/p>\n

He and his team \u201cdidn\u2019t sleep for three days\u201d to get the squadron\u2019s readiness rate back up to 90 percent, he said.<\/p>\n

Spending constraints further crimped the brigade as it prepared for its Yakima exercise during the October government shutdown. The unit could not buy essential replacement parts until the spending restrictions were lifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got the parts, our operational readiness levels came up to standard,\u201d said Maj. Dennis Fajardo, the brigade\u2019s logistics officer.<\/p>\n

Minton said the Strykers were in good shape when they hit the ground at Fort Irwin in early January. The Army sent the machines by train from Lewis-McChord to the desert base. About 10 of the cavalry squadron\u2019s 69 Strykers were down for repairs early this week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, wait, weren’t we assured that the DoD was completely funded during the goverment’s shutdown? I guess not. But, as I read the entire article, I had flashbacks to the 1978-1981 period when maintenance on vehicles and equipment was accomplished by cannibalizing other vehicles because there was no money to fix them right, so soldiers made do with what they could, like they always do.<\/p>\n

Of course, the big difference between now and the Carter years is that the troops are still involved in a shooting war and their equipment is already decrepit and the parts\/maintenance chain is already drying up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The News-Tribune follows a platoon of Strykers through their paces at Fort Irwin as they discover … Sound familiar?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}