GI’s gear costs 100 times more than in WWII

Cost may reflect U.S. values
Indeed, spending on ever-improving and ever-more-costly technology to make troops safer and more effective could be seen as just what taxpayers wanted.

It reflects an American society that values human life and has a distaste for too many casualties, said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The increases also coincided with the development of the all-volunteer military that Americans greatly prefer over conscription. The end of the draft in the 1970s has meant fewer people in the armed forces, and those fewer people need better equipment to do more.

The military also must protect troops because of the higher investment made to recruit and train a professional force, said P.J. Crowley, a 26-year veteran of the Air Force now with the Center for American Progress.

It doesn’t help attract recruits if the military uses soldiers “as cannon fodder,” Wood said.

Over the years more spending has meant a better chance of survival. Today, for every eight soldiers wounded, roughly one dies, compared with one for every 2.4 wounded in World War II and one for every three in Vietnam, the Army says. The better odds also are due to better medical treatment and other advances.

Troops still vulnerable
Still, troops remain vulnerable and success is far from guaranteed.

Homemade insurgent bombs are the No. 1 killer of Americans in Iraq and a weapon being used increasingly in Afghanistan as well. Insurgents have been known to detonate the explosives with cell phones, washing machine timers and remote controls from toy cars.

Douglas C. Pizac / AP Troops are outfitted with, among other gear, helmets and night-vision goggles.

“As we know in Iraq, a high-tech military can be vulnerable to a low-tech adversary,” Crowley said.

Of the $190 billion the Pentagon has requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2008, the biggest expenses are about $77 billion for operations, about $47 billion to repair and replace destroyed equipment, and more than $30 billion for “force protection.”

More than half of the protection funds are to send 15,000 mine-resistant vehicles to Iraq — at $1 million each. The rest is for protection gear as well as activities such as destroying weapons caches scattered around Iraq by the thousands, funding an advisory group to study and recommend ways to defeat homemade bombs and operating unmanned aircraft systems that do border surveillance, help protect convoys and provide other support to troops.

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