U.S. Army Engineers in the Gulf War
other organizations to purchase these assets, and if the Army did not expedite
the procurement process, it would lose the facilities to a competing buyer. Yet,
Pagonis failed to note any instance where the existing procurement system had
failed during the operation.
Livingstone found it impossible to waive the existing procedures. The Army
general counsel had already determined that operation and maintenance funds
could be used for military construction projects in support of Operation D E S E R T
S H I E L D, provided individual projects cost no more than 0,000. All other
construction was to be charged to military construction funds. Thus, relocatable
buildings were included in funded costs in construction projects, and military
construction funds had to be used for projects exceeding 0,000. Livingstone
determined that ARCENT had to fund all relocatable building procurement
with these funds.12
U.S. forces used various expedient shelter systems for troop billeting and
operations in the theater, including festival tents, clamshell buildings, sprung
structures, and K-Span. Festival tents, purchased from Germany where they
were used on holidays for temporary beer halls, were sometimes difficult to
e r e c t in the desert. The lightweight, compact clamshell buildings were
assembled rapidly on site. They could be erected in four days by an untrained
platoon. The sprung structures, in which a tension fabric skin covered a metal
frame, required scaffolding and a crane to erect.
K-Span structures, made of thin sheets of galvanized steel, were cut to size
and shaped on site by an automatic building machine. One machine formed
Side view of a clamshell building at King Fahd International
The ends of the clamshell
are opened and closed by either a band-cranked or a generator-driven winch.
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