Why The US Army Parks Thousands Of Tanks In The California Desert

The Mojave Desert spans an area of some 25,000 square miles, covering a massive swath of land across California, southwestern Utah, southern Nevada, and northwestern Arizona. Annual precipitation ranges from 3.5 inches at lower elevations to approximately 8.5 inches in the mountainous regions. As one might expect, the driest months are in the heart of summer (May and June), while the wettest occur between November and April. During the winter months of December and January, average lows drop to near freezing (34 degrees Fahrenheit) while temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit are typical during the mid-summer months.

This vast expanse of desert is home to dunes, Joshua tree forests, over 10 kinds of scorpions, the desert tortoise (which California recently declared as endangered), and the Sierra Army Depot (SIAD) near Herlong, California – approximately 60 miles northwest of Reno, Nevada. First established in 1942, and now covering approximately 36,000 acres, this high desert environment offers low humidity and minimal precipitation. It is an ideal location to store mechanized vehicles long-term because the environment won't cause any significant deterioration.

Assigned to the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, SIAD is one of 26 locations that make up the Organic Industrial Base. As such, it has become what the Army calls the "End of First Life Center" for outdated military vehicles and equipment, where they can be stored until such time as a final determination on their future can be made. It's but one of the ways the U.S. military deals with old decommissioned tanks and armored vehicles, including the top-tier M1 Abrams.

During World War II, the Army needed somewhere within the continental United States to store extensive amounts of bombs and ammunition that were "near enough to Pacific ports, but far enough from the coast to be sheltered from possible attack." The site near Herlong already had a rail spur and was situated within the Mojave Desert, an area with very little rainfall and humidity, which minimized the risk of rusting. Because of this, the Mojave is also home to one of the largest airplane boneyards in the world. 

After that global conflict ended, it began to transform from a weapon stockpile to a place (a massive parking lot, if you will) where surplus equipment could be stored for future retrograde, regeneration, reutilization, and redistribution. It's not a military junkyard, but a facility where everything from military vehicles to uniforms and other supplies that have seen combat can be sent to get refurbished. SIAD is also the Army's Center for Industrial Technical Excellence (CITE) for all Petroleum and Water Distribution Systems (PAWS), focusing on repairing, resetting, and supplying all of the Army's fuel and water systems and needs.

Well over $1 billion worth of clothing has been shipped to the facility, along with tens of thousands of different vehicles. It's not limited to just repairing items for the Army; it also does so for agencies like the Program Execution Office, the CMO, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the Air Force. As of 2019, it had also repaired over 800,000 defective ballistic insert plates for armor, saving taxpayers over $350 million.