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SGT Alexander Gallardo and SGT Cullen Hebert, wheeled vehicle mechanics with the 1st Armored Division Combat Aviation Brigade, use a multimeter to measure electrical resistance and voltage during an advanced vehicle diagnosis course at Fort Bliss, Texas, Feb. 11, 2026. The training, hosted by the Transformation Decision Analysis Center, prepares Soldiers to serve as certified trainers in sophisticated maintenance and repair techniques.
Idaho Army National Guard SGT John Gil welds new metal onto a forklift cage that was damaged. SGT Gil’s initial repairs led to a total reconstruction of the forklift cage.
At the heart of the Orchard Combat Training Center, the Idaho Army National Guard's Maneuver Area Training and Equipment Site (MATES) is the 116th CBCT's premier and largest maintenance shop. MATES is charged with the sustainment of combat power across 3 separate states, in support of their missions both domestic and abroad.
MATES is built around 5 Field Maintenance Teams (FMTs), 1 Field Maintenance Support Team (FMST), 1 Materiel and Readiness Team, and a BII Warehouse in order to provide maintenance support to units from Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada.
MATES soldiers within the FMTs are subject matter experts on the M1A2/A1 Abrams, the M2A3 Bradley, the M88A2 Hercules, the M113/M1068 family of vehicles (FOVs), and variety of other equipment. MATES mechanics have been asked to travel across the country to ensure the highest possible quality of work is performed.
The FMTs rely heavily on the knowledge and skills within the various supporting teams. The FMST are proactive in repairing equipment at the lowest possible expense while recognized nationally for creative solutions to common maintenance or repair problems. The MATES teams can troubleshoot electronic components down to the microchip level, repair .50 caliber machine guns, or fabricate a part when needed.
According to MATES Superintendent CPT Mark Ross, “ Despite a global pandemic, numerous state emergencies, and an ever increasing operational tempo, MATES personnel continue to drive the mission forward, hunt for creative solutions, and steward the high reputation of success created by those who came before them. “
SGT Trevor Smith, a mechanic with War Machine Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division troubleshoots an engine of a M2A3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, Sept. 9, 2021, at Fort Carson, Colorado. during a platoon situational exercises. Field maintenance is integral to a mechanized infantry unit's ability to remain mobile and lethal.
SPC Ashton Guzman, M1 Abrams loader from Battle Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, performs maintenance on an M1 Abrams tank during the Iron Spear Tank Competition in Adazi, Latvia, on Nov. 17, 2025. Two armor crews from Battle Company represented the U.S. Army in a multinational tank competition, which aims to strengthen convergence, enhance readiness, and increase lethality across NATO partnerships. This is routine maintenance before the first day of the Iron Spear competition; it ensures that the equipment is ready for the rest of the mentally and physically demanding three-day event.
The Crisis at the Motor Pool
In November 2011, I was a chief warrant officer 3 and took over as the battalion maintenance technician for a field artillery unit at Fort Bragg. The moment I stepped into the maintenance bays, the warning signs flashed red. Trash cans overflowed; safety violations were visible in every corner; and, most disturbingly, the bays were silent. There was not a single mechanic under a hood.
When I met the motor sergeant, he immediately vented: the mechanics were not working on equipment because they were constantly pulled for external taskings. To quantify this gut feeling, we devised a daily manpower tracker. It was a simple color-coded spreadsheet designed to account for every Soldier’s time: leave, medical appointments, temporary duty, schooling, staff duty, gate guard, and ranges.
After 30 days, the data was staggering. Based on our assigned personnel, the battalion should have generated approximately 2,900 man-hours of maintenance production. Instead, we averaged less than 600. We were operating at roughly 20% capacity while being expected to maintain a full fleet of combat-ready equipment.
The Brewing Storm
Simultaneously, I conducted a deep dive into our scheduled services. The results were even more grim: the unit had not completed a single scheduled service in the nine months prior to my arrival. The reason for the large gap in services was due to redeployment and receipt of equipment from left-behind equipment (LBE) upon return. The civilian contractors managing LBE had performed services a month prior to the unit’s return, but our clerks had made a catastrophic administrative error: they scheduled the annual services for every piece of equipment in the battalion within the same two-month window. To make matters worse nobody caught this problem prior to my arrival.
I had inherited a service spike of massive proportions. Usually, services are staggered throughout the year to level the workload. Yet when I examined my schedule, I knew the entire battalion’s fleet would be administratively deadlined within 90 days. I immediately took this data to the forward support company commander, pleading for an exemption from taskings. He told me his hands were tied. I went to the battalion executive officer; he gave me the same answer. Finally, I sat with the battalion commander. I offered creative solutions: working during physical training (PT) hours, shortening lunch breaks, or staying past 1700. To every request, the answer was no. The only advice he offered me was to do the best I could.
I was left with a mission that was mathematically impossible to achieve under the current constraints.
The Turning Point
By February, the storm had made landfall. We had accumulated over 200 delinquent services. One Wednesday afternoon, the phone rang. It was the battalion S-4: “The brigade commander needs to see you in the conference room.”
I knew this was the moment of reckoning. I did not go to that meeting with excuses; I went armed with hard data. I printed the manpower spreadsheets, the get-well plan, and a series of pie charts and bar graphs that visualized our man-hour deficit. I walked into that room fully expecting to be relieved of my duties.
When the brigade commander asked, “What is wrong with your maintenance program?” I did not stammer. I replied, “Sir, maintenance is a math problem.”
I laid out the data. I showed him that it was physically impossible to complete the required work when 80% of my labor force was pulling every possible detail and tasking on Fort Bragg. As he looked at the charts, his frustration shifted to impressed silence. He turned to my battalion commander and said, “Not a single tasking goes to that motor pool.” The next day, the floodgates opened. Every mechanic returned to the bays, and we began the long climb back to readiness.
Why Maintenance Fails: Understanding the Math
I have shared this story with nearly every Ordnance Warrant Officer Basic Course class at Fort Lee. I do this to coach them on how to protect their careers and communicate with commanders. However, the problem is not just about taskings; it is about a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Army calculates its need for maintainers and how we should put them to work.
There is a persistent rumor that logging more man-hours in the system automatically increases a unit’s personnel authorizations. While accurate reporting is vital, the reality is maintainer authorizations are governed by two complex metrics: the annual military occupational specialty (MOS) availability factors (AMAF) and the manpower requirements criteria (MARC).
1. AMAF
The AMAF determines how much time a Soldier is expected to perform MOS-specific duties during wartime. For a maintainer in a brigade support battalion supporting an armored brigade combat team, the Army forecasts a workday of 8.8 hours. Over a year, this accounts for roughly 3,200 hours of production.
Interestingly, units farther from the front lines often have higher AMAF factors. A mechanic in a military intelligence brigade may be forecasted to work a 12-hour day (over 4,300 hours per year) because they have fewer tactical requirements (like providing security or digging fighting positions) than their peers in a maneuver unit. These hours are the baseline used to justify how many mechanics a unit is authorized on its modified table of organization and equipment (MTOE).
2. MARC
If you are not familiar with MARC, these calculations can be found within the Force Management System Website under the Army Maintenance MARC Database. The first step in the process is to calculate the annual maintenance man-hours for all unit equipment. These hours are the sum of direct production hours plus 40% indirect production time. The Army adds up the total man-hours required for every piece of equipment and divides it by the man-years provided by the AMAF. The result of this equation determines how many authorizations for mechanics end up on the MTOE.
The Peacetime Paradox
The glaring issue with this calculation is that it is based on wartime missions. In a garrison environment, we are lucky to achieve 50% of the wartime MARC factor. Between mandatory training, medical readiness, leave, and the standard Army day, the maintenance program is behind the power curve before the first wrench is even turned.
If we are authorized personnel based on a 12-hour wartime workday and a seven-day work week, but our garrison schedule only allows for five or six hours of actual wrench-turning time Monday through Friday, we operate well below a 50% deficit. This is why maintenance leaders must become masters of time management and organizational efficiency.
Rethinking the Duty Day: Eliminating the Waste
If we take an honest look at the traditional Army duty day, it is incredibly inefficient for technical production. In this model, the Soldier is at work for nearly 11 hours, but the unit only receives six hours of production. The rest is consumed by transitions, commutes, and waiting. We have all have seen mechanics reclined in their cars after PT or during the 90-minute lunch break, simply killing time until the motor pool reopens.
We must consider restructuring the duty day to maximize direct labor.
Consider a shift in perspective to reclaim the duty day. By moving PT to the end of the day, we would increase direct labor from six hours to eight hours — a 25% increase in productivity without staying late. This would also provide predictability. PT would act as a hard stop, ensuring Soldiers would get home to their families on time, which in turn would boost morale and retention.
The hours we need are already there; they are simply buried under administrative waste. The proposed solution using a flipped schedule is just one example, and there are many other options to rearrange the duty day for efficiency. I ask every maintenance leader and commander in the Army to consider modifying their duty day to protect maintainers’ time and increase readiness.
We made some big changes to our duty week when the service spike hit us. As planned, it took my team six months to climb out of that hole and return the fleet to peak readiness. It was the ultimate proof of concept: the math was sound; the plan worked; and, most important, it showed that leadership will listen when the truth is presented through the lens of data.
The Human Cost of Mismanagement
Beyond the math, there is a human element that has far-reaching implications. When we task mechanics to work outside their MOS, we are failing them as leaders. The journey from private to sergeant is extremely short. If a young mechanic spends their first three years working outside their MOS instead of repairing equipment, they will eventually pin on NCO stripes without the technical competence required to lead.
In future large-scale combat operations and multi-domain operations, our forces will be dispersed. A sergeant may be the senior maintainer at a remote site without a warrant officer nearby to solve complex problems. If they have not had the sets and reps in the motor pool during peacetime, they will not be able to keep the fleet moving during wartime. This is a risk we must not accept because lives may be lost and the mission may fail.
Conclusion
Running an Army maintenance program is a challenge of finite resources: time, people, and money. As Ordnance leaders, we cannot always control the money, and we cannot always control the number of people assigned to us. However, we do control the data and the schedule.
We must stop treating maintenance as a chore and start treating it as a production system. By using MARC and AMAF data to communicate with commanders and by messaging the necessity to restructure inefficient duty days, we protect our Soldiers, ensure technical proficiency, and — most importantly — maintain the readiness required to fight and win.
Go Ordnance!
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CW5 Kent Shepherd currently serves as the 13th chief warrant officer of the Ordnance Corps. He oversees the accession, career development, and education of all Ordnance warrant officers in the Army. His most recent assignments were in U.S. Army Southern European Task Force G-4, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) G-4, and the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center. His civilian education includes a Master of Arts degree in theology and church history from the Rawlings School of Divinity at Liberty University.
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This article was published in the summer 2026 edition of Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin.
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