Procurement: April 3, 2005

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The U.S. Army National Guard always had older equipment than the active duty units. But sending so many of these reserve units to Iraq has caused their already old (20-30 years old, on average) vehicles to wear out completely during service in Iraq. Thus the National Guard is asking for a $5.7 billion to buy nearly 14,000 hummers and trucks to replace these losses. Another item Guard units found themselves severely short of were night vision devices. The reservists had little use for these items, and had few. But the activity duty troops had lots of them, and to be capable of doing the same work, the National Guard needs to be equipped with night vision devices to the same extent as the active duty troops. This will requite about 200,000 devices, costing, on average, about $7,000 each. The Guard has a number of items it feels it is short of, and it will cost about $14 billion to buy everything.