by Robert F. Sawallesh
15 December 2004
www.pentagonmaverick.com
Recently I was driving over a bridge in a southeastern city in the US and I saw a manufacturing plant that looked as if it was left over from World War I, and I do not mean World War II.
Reaching the other side of the bridge a sign read that the plant was an ammunition plant that came under the US Army Material Command. See http://www.amc.army.mil/.
My immediate thought, after realizing that it was an ammunition plant, was that the US must be outsourcing the production of ammunition.
If the US cannot manufacture enough bullets for our troops, what country, according to a recent magazine article, is helping the Pentagon in the manufacture of bullets. You guess the country: Is it Canada, Mexico, China, South Korea, Japan or Hong Kong?
The answer is "none of the above." Here are two quotes from a Government Executive Magazine article dated 15 July 2004, by Katherine McIntire Peters. First quote: "U.S. troops are burning through more rifle and machine-gun ammunition than they have since the Vietnam War. Ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and stepped-up training requirements for troops deploying overseas are straining the industrial base, Blount says."
Second quote: "To meet the increased demand, the Army last December let contracts worth $70 million each with two firms, Winchester Ammunition in East Alton, Ill., and Israel Military Industries Ltd., for each firm to produce 300 million rounds of small-caliber ammunition, supplementing the production from the Lake City plant." See http://www.winchester.com/ and http://www.imisammo.co.il/profile.htm.
To read the entire above article go to http://www.govexec.com/features/0704-15/0704-15newsanalysis1.htm.
Is the US military industrial base so weak that the US cannot produce enough bullets?
And what about the state of the Pentagon's Army, Navy and Air Force hospitals? Is the Pentagon looking at closing more military hospitals without regards to caring for the combat wounded and injured, active duty and military retirees and their families?
The Health Care Working Groups of the BRAC Commission need to be proactive and initiate the recapture of military medicine so the Pentagon can provide health care to the combat wounded and injured, active duty and military retirees and their families. The mind set of the BRAC Commission must change from closing military hospitals to rebuilding America's military hospitals.
The US must never send our troops off to war and then short change them on medical care. But yet that is what the Pentagon has been doing for years. The BRAC Commission is at http://www.defenselink.mil/brac/. Who in the BRAC Commission will have the courage to change the medical direction of the BRAC?