"you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want."

This was a very comforting saying as we rolled past the barrier from Kuwait heading north to Al Fallujah with nothing more than plastic doors on our aged humvee's. Filled sandbags on the floorboards and plywood tied to the doors for protection (as little as it would have given). As insane as that sounds, we did what we had to do because of the situation.

But within six months we had appropriated the barrack buildings of Saddam's guard, sealed the buildings with the materials we had, engineered running water, electricity to the building, created metal doors to replace the plastic with, and mounted the appropriate amount of heavy weaponry to repel any sort of coordinated attack.

Now working with/to fix equipment is certainly quite a bit easier than working with people to fix the way operations are run. But we only had six months and you have nothing but time ahead of you if you want to put in the effort. Good luck I say, use this as a stepping stone and don't let it be quicksand. (Gosh I hate that spell)