The Iowa national Guard has a big job ahead of it– repainting its entire groundfleet of tactical vehicles. Guard spokesman, Colonel Robert King, says it’s both a strategic and maintenance issue. The colonel says the guard has about 1200 trucks, trailers, humvees, tanks, caterpillars and all kinds of combat vehicles, many of them in need of repainting, so the decision’s been made to paint them brown. They’re all traditional camouflage green right now. He says it means that first, the guard’s meeting the requirement of painting the vehicles to keep them in good condition, but also the traditional “forest camo” scheme involves several layers of paint, several different shades and a precise design pattern that must be followed. Colonel King says the brown will blend in better at a California training ground where many of the vehicles are being used, but he admits that’s not the only factor. In view of the current world situation, there are vehicles at the Iowa National Guard that could be mobilized to desert parts of the world where brown would “be the right color.” Colonel King says the guard’s being proactive by tying routine maintenance to the new color choice for ground-fleet vehicles. The paint shop at Camp Dodge won’t tackle every vehicle at once. The plan’s to paint about 525 vehicles first, and eventually continue painting them all as it’s needed till the entire Guard fleet is brown. The first 525 vehicles are rolloing down Iowa highways toward Camp Dodge now, and should be repainted by the end of the month.