Army Trying to Expedite Flow of Supplies to Troops.

As part of the effort to transform itself into a lighter, more deployable force, the U.S. Army is struggling to streamline its unwieldy logistical system in order to do a better job of supplying soldiers with what they need to fight and win fast-breaking wars.

Logistics is moving from a "mass model" of dumping huge amounts of supplies into a combat theater to a "lean, agile delivery system focused on warfighter needs," James T. Eccleston, assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for supply-chain integration, told the Quartermaster General's Symposium, in Richmond, Va. The symposium was hosted by the Association for Enterprise Integration and the National Defense Industrial Association, both headquartered in Arlington, Va.

Gen. John N. Abrams, commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, agreed. In future wars, "there'll be no more Long Binhs," he said. Long Binh was a major U.S. depot in Vietnam, famous for its huge "iron mountain" of military supplies, more than were ever needed.

Such depots don't fit it with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's goal of being able to place a combat brigade anywhere in the world within 96 hours, a division within 120 hours and five divisions within 30 days, officials agreed.

To achieve that goal, the Army is trying to reduce the "logistical footprint" of its combat units. In a traditional division, 80 to 90 percent of the soldiers, equipment and supplies are assigned to support and service elements, rather than combat organizations.

Shinseki wants to give Army units "more teeth and less tail."

In the new Interim Brigade Combat Teams taking shape at Fort Lewis, Wash., for example, logistics units will be small, according to the Army Quartermaster General, Maj. Gen. Hawthorne L. Proctor.

"Quartermaster units are being structured to deploy, not only as entire units, but also as tailored platoons or sections," Proctor said. Contractors and friendly local governments, in some cases, will provide fuel, water and soldier services.

In the emerging logistical system, deployed troops will keep a minimum of supplies on hand, said Lt. Gen. Charles S. Mahan Jr., Army deputy chief of staff for logistics. Combat commanders don't want to manage big stocks of supplies, he said. "I don't want to own all of that stuff, because--guess what--if I owned it, I'd have to pay for it. I only want to pay for stuffwhen I need it."

Instead, the Army is trying to improve its management of the entire supply chain--from the factory to the foxhole--in order to make sure that materiel gets where it is needed when it is needed.

"We have refined and improved the associated ordering, inventory management, acquisition, issue, material release, shipment, distribution, transportation and receiving segments which speed materiel to the combat soldier on the modern battlefield," said Gen. John G. Coburn, commander of the Army Materiel Command (AMC). The result, he said, has been a 51 percent reduction in order and shipment times inside the continental United States and a 53 percent reduction in overseas shipments.

The AMC is integrating retail and wholesale inventory management and financial accounting functions into a Single Stock Fund (SSF).

"The SSF will provide worldwide access to stock, integrate supply and financial processes, integrate logistics and financial automated-information systems," Coburn said. It also will "simplify processes by eliminating multiple ledgers, billings and multiple points of sale."

Information Management

Under the Wholesale Logistics Modernization Program, the AMC is seeking to modernize the Army's information-management system for its wholesale logistics, Coburn said. The command's entire wholesale-logistics software-support function is being outsourced.

The Army's efforts are a part of the Defense Department's move to modernize logistics for all services. Since 1997, the department has:

* Reduced total logistics costs from $84 billion to $78 billion (in constant 1997 dollars).

* Reduced average wholesale-logistics response time--from requisition to materiel receipt--from 32 to 12 days.

* Reduced its inventory of secondary items from $68.5 billion to $64 billion.

* Increased in-storage asset visibility from 60 to 94 percent.

One reform--the use of credit cards--has gotten a little out of hand, said Eccleston. "Credit--card use is good," he said. "But there's too little paper--no address, just a credit-card receipt with a woman's signature. Who is Claire, and where is she?"

Many logistics problems can be resolved, Eccleston said, by better use of information technology. "We're all making huge investments in information technology--hundreds of billions of dollars," he said. "We need to leverage each other, and get more utility out of our investments."

Despite recent attempts to cut back, logistics programs and operations still consume about one third of the nation's defense budget, which this year totals $296 billion. Nearly half of the department's 2 million employees--including military personnel and civilians--work in the field of logistics.

The science of moving, supplying and quartering troops, logistics is as old as organized warfare itself. The title "quarter master" can be traced back to ancient Latin. George Washington appointed the Army's first quartermaster general in 1775. With virtually no money or authority, he was forced to rely upon each of the 13 states to supply the Army.

During the Civil War, the Union's quartermaster general, Maj. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, created the Army's first major depot system and used the emerging rail road system to speed unprecedented levels of supplies and personnel to battlefields.

A Quartermaster Corps

In 1912, Congress consolidated the Army's logistics units into a Quartermaster Corps, with its own officers, soldiers and units trained to perform supply and service functions on the battlefield. Many of those units soon saw combat on the Western Front of World War I.

At the height of World War II, quarter master units in Europe and the Pacific provided more than 70,000 supply items and more than 24 million meals each day.

To coordinate the logistics needs of all of the services, Congress in 1947 created the Munitions Board, which over the next 30 years, evolved into the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).

During the Korean War, the Quartermaster Corps assumed a new mission--supply by air. In December of 1950, Army quarter master troops dropped a 20-ton airborne bridge by parachute into North Korea to help the Marines escape entrapment by Chinese troops at the Chosin Reservoir.

President Johnson's 1965 decision to commit U.S. combat forces to Vietnam led to a massive logistics buildup. Supply depots like Long Binh were singled out repeatedly for assault by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, quartermaster units provided the supplies, munitions and other logistical support for the U.S. and coalition force that quickly defeated Iraq. As in earlier conflicts, however, logisticians remained vulnerable to enemy assault, even though well behind the lines. In the single most devastating attack on U.S. forces during that war, an Iraqi Scud missile hit the barracks of an Army Reserve quartermaster detachment in Saudi Arabia, killing 29 soldiers.

Army leaders concluded that it took too long--120 days--to assemble the Desert Storm force. Also, they noted, U.S. forces brought too much with them.

"We took 680,000 tons of munitions to the Gulf War with us," said Abrams. "We brought back 420,000 tons.

The supply chain actually "is more like a cable," said Rear Adm. Daniel H. Stone, director of logistics operations for DLA. It is made up of major segments that are inter twined, he explained.

Perhaps with this in mind, the United States has employed a "team-of-teams" approach to speed up the flow of supplies to the Balkans, said Maj. Gen. Richard A. Hack, commander of the 21st Theater Support Command, based in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He gave the following examples:

* The U.S. European Command pro vides combat-ready forces.

* U.S. Air Forces in Europe supplies long-range transport within the theater.

* The Transportation Command moves personnel and supplies from the United States by air and sea.

* DLA takes the lead in providing fuel.

To move its forces quickly into the Balkans, Hack explained, the United States ran trains from 22 locations, primarily in Germany, and ships from

three ports--Germany's Bremerhaven, Dutch Rotterdam and Belgian Antwerp.

Kaiserslautern and surrounding U.S. facilities are "truly the logistics center of gravity for Europe," Hack said. The nearby Miesau depot has the largest U.S. ammunition storage area outside the country. The forward call area at Ramstein Air Base can hold 50 to 75 vehicles, including 10 Abrams tanks, at the same time, Hack noted. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is a major military hospital, averaging 350 operations per month.

The General Support Center-Europe (GPCE) is

the U.S. Army's largest ware house in Europe, Hack said. It can supply anything from tents to chemical and biological protective equipment, he said. One recent addition: a nail-less latrine that "can be put together without carpenter skills and deployed anywhere."

Increasingly, items are ordered over the Internet and monitored electronically, as they move through the system, explained Lt. Col. James C. Bates, director of the Logistics Training Department at the Army's Quartermaster Center and School, at Fort Lee, Va.

"Whenever we can, we try to use logistics enablers," said Bates. As often as possible, materiel is tracked technologically by robotic electronic interrogators, placed on loading docks to record radio-frequency tags, or by soldiers using bar-code readers. "As a last resort, we record by hand," he said.

Since 1995, 1.3 billion ton-miles of supplies have been shipped from Germany into the Balkans, Hack said. One driver has completed 1.4 million miles "accident-free and still going," he exuded.

To get the materiel to its destination, U.S. military trucks and trains explored routes previously unavailable to U.S. forces, through Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Romania--all the way to the Black Sea port of Burgas in Bulgaria.

Innovation was required. "M-1 tanks won't fit into European train tunnels, and 17 road bridges couldn't support the weight," Hack said. To get around those obstacles, "we had to move the tanks by barge." NATO subsequently agreed to reinforce all 17 bridges, he added.

In February of this year, U.S. ships began to unload military supplies at Burgas. "Who would have thought," Hack asked, "that the U.S. military ever would have access to a Black Sea port?"

The Albanian port of Durres proved to be too shallow for U.S. ships, so the ancient Greek city of Thessaloniki, on the Aegean coast, was chosen as the major entry point for Marines to make their way first to Macedonia and then to Kosovo.

Thessaloniki is "a highly capable port, Hack said. "But it's wide open. Access control is kind of problematical." Force protection is "an overarching requirement, he noted. Peacekeeping in the Balkans is "very dangerous," he said.

Despite all of the recent changes, many attending the Richmond symposium warned that it would not be easy for logistics units to meet Shinseki's goals.

"Talk is cheap," Antonio R. Rodriguez, president of Daniel Penn Associates LLC, of Hartford, Conn., told National Defense. "It's going to take a long time to affect the kind of change they're talking about."

Mahan seemed to agree. "It's a huge challenge," he said. "We've been asked to give more for less. Transformation will not occur without significant upgrades in logistics."