Equipment drawdown may cost tens of billions

As U.S. troops near what is supposed to be the final year of combat operations in Iraq, the military's top logisticians have quietly been working on the "monumental" task of removing mountains of war-fighting equipment from that theater. "We've been in that theater of war for [six] years. This is Ph.D-level stuff. It's literally millions of pieces of equipment," said Maj. Gen. Kevin Leonard, the G-3 for Army Materiel Command. Officials declined to discuss how much the drawdown effort could cost, but Pentagon leaders are debating the price tag, which changes depending on how much equipment is saved and whether gear bought to replace what's junked is included in the overall tab. One source has said the total will be tens of billions of dollars. The cost of the drawdown could be overshadowed by the complexity of the effort, which will include deciding what to do with each piece of gear and scrubbing certain pieces of equipment, such as those that will be transferred to Iraqi forces, of classified components.