I remember from 1983-84 seeing some unit status reports that stretched the truth almost to the breaking point. I was a company operations sergeant at the time. I knew what our operational status was and it was nowhere near what the reports claimed. It was a matter of interpretation, if a piece of equipment could be repaired in 24 hours it could be considered operational. I asked our maintenance officer about it. He told me that if he had the parts everything could be up and running in 24 hours. We didn’t have the parts and it often took over a month to get them. One day I was talking with our battalion commander when he brought up the subject. He couldn’t really believe the whole battalion for over 95% operational. I suggested he have “rollouts” to check. He’d call an alert and every piece of deployable equipment would muster on the beach. He straightened out the supply chain (rank has its privileges) and we were ready for Grenada. Our equipment was old and we had permission to salvage parts from the local Transportation Museum.
You hit the nail on the head as I went to Colin Powell’s BN in late Dec 1973 to check on his units APC’s . Having been SF for 7 years and a senior CPT, I ask the NCO’s for answers- not the officers. The BN motor pool NCOIC told me the spare parts were in ISREAL for their war. I had maybe a ten minute conversation with that old maintenance NCOIC and told him I was dead lining 90% of the APC’s. He replied-” I told the Major you replaced this for 6 months and he never reported the truth. When I saw that SF patch I was hopeful.” Good NCO’s hate lying. He wanted an officer to report the damn truth.