The U.S. military has begun sending thousands of battered Humvees and other war-torn equipment home as more Iraqi units join the fight against insurgents and American units scheduled for Iraq duty have their orders canceled.
In the last four months, the Army has tagged 7,000 Humvees and 17,000 other pieces of equipment to be shipped to the United States to be rebuilt. They then will be distributed among active and reserve units at home, or possibly returned to equip Iraqi security forces.
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Deep inside a depot at Camp Anaconda, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, broken trucks and eight-wheeled Stryker troop carriers are lined up for service by Army mechanics. In the case of the Strykers, manufacturer General Dynamics has set a major repair depot in the Middle East.
Most of what's being returned to the United States are vehicles and aircraft that need total rebuilds from the damage of years of operating the hot and dusty Iraqi environment, O'Connor said. From Humvees, manufactured by AM General, to helicopters to tanks, the equipment will enter a multi-billion-dollar repair program — known as reset — that rebuilds equipment for future wars.
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