The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Where Tanks Go To Die
by James Dunnigan
April 19, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Like the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army has now
established a desert storage area for old, no longer needed, but not totally
useless, equipment. Ever since World War II, the U.S. Army has taken a lot of
older equipment it no longer needed and stuck it “bone yards.” The old
equipment, usually trucks, armored vehicles and helicopters, were seen as a
potential source of spare parts, or even additional equipment (in wartime, after
refurbishment.) The army bone yards were usually near existing army bases, and
the equipment quickly deteriorated from the rain, salt (if near the ocean) and
changes of season (freezing and thawing). A new army bone yard was established
two years ago at the 96,000 acre Sierra Army Depot In the California desert,
near the Nevada border. So far, 1,800 vehicles and armored vehicles are stored
there, in the dry, salt free air. Many army divisions were disbanded in the
1990s, leaving hundreds of low mileage M-1 tanks, and other armored vehicles,
unneeded, but not unwanted if there were a future military emergency. Like the
old air force aircraft, the army vehicles sit and deteriorate much more slowly
in the desert, waiting for possible activation, and as a source of parts for
vehicles no longer manufactured (like the M-1 tank).
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