Changes on the way for Army logistics ops.

The Army's goal to become a more "expeditionary" force will not be attained unless the service makes sweeping changes in logistics and support operations, officials said. Although the Pentagon deemed the buildup to the Iraq conflict a logistics success, the Army is not organized to rapidly set up a base of operations and launch a major campaign from an area that does not already have basic infrastructure.

To be expeditionary, a force has to be able to "open up the theater and set up a sustainment base" in a short period of time, said Lt. Gen. Claude V. Christianson, Army deputy chief of staff for logistics. That the service cannot do that today is a fundamental shortfall the Army must solve soon, he told National Defense.

Despite some notable improvements in logistics since the 1991 Gulf War, the Army still needed 90-120 days to mass the force that would launch Operation Iraqi Freedom, Christianson said. The current U.S. defense posture, however, requires that the services be prepared to deploy and engage in quick-response operations, where a 90-day buildup period would be unthinkable.

The Army currently does not have the means to quickly "open a theater," Christianson said. "We don't have the organization to do that now. The capabilities are in the Army, but nor in a single organization."

In future battles, the Army likely will not have the luxury of 90120 days to set up a logistics base, he said. "To be able to support expeditionary operations, we have to be able to go forward, and quickly establish sustainment operations."

In expeditionary operations, the Army will be "simultaneously deploying, employing and sustaining forces," Christianson said. "Our force structure is not designed to operate that way. We move in gradual steps."

The Army's long-term plan is to reform its logistics structure, so it can "go in very quickly, establish operations, without having to go through this very cumbersome and time-consuming task of building organizations to do it."

Christianson insists that changes are on the way. "We are briefing the chief of staff of the Army next month on how we are going to support an expeditionary force," he said in a February speech at the 2004 Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference, in Monterey, Calif.

The Army has talked about reforming logistics for the past five to six years, bur not much really has changed, Christianson said. "I defy anyone to tell me what we've done to make our Army a distribution-based logistics Army."

Distribution-based logistics is a Pentagon buzzword to describe the ability to deliver supplies to the front lines in a timely manner, without shipments getting held up in bottlenecks along the way.

Backlogs and lack of "visibility" of the supply pipeline plagued logistics operations in OIF. "We could see everything very clearly at the strategic level but very poorly at the tactical level," said Christianson. "We have to fix that."

One area that needs improvement is managing the movement of vehicles, he said. "We don't have a single manager, controlling, prioritizing the movement of vehicles.... There is no single manager of theater distribution."

The need to operate in a hostile environment only adds to the complexity of the logistics planning. "Wal-Mart type efficiency is not applicable when you are under fire," said Christianson. Before the Iraq war, armoring trucks and installing tracking devices were viewed as luxuries. They now have become necessities.

Army logisticians for decades have struggled with the lack of "in-transit visibility" of supplies en route. Despite advances in information technology, the ability to create a centralized network that is updated in real time has been a tough nut to crack. "It's not a technology issue. It's organizational," said Christianson. "Logisticians have to see the requirements in real time.... You can't be Wal-Mart and respond to the store if you don't know what the store is selling. We have to be able to see the requirements."

Army logistics operations were designed for a fixed brigade structure, and can't respond to smaller unit needs. That makes it difficult to support expeditionary operations.

To help fix the bottlenecks, the Defense Department last year gave the U.S. Transportation Command the responsibility for managing the distribution of supplies in the Middle East. A TRANSCOM team was dispatched to Kuwait earlier this year.

The TRANSCOM cell in Kuwait will be responsible for the distribution process "at the strategic level." The Army manages and oversees the distribution inside Iraq.

In a July 2003 memo, Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne directed the use of "unique identification" devices for military shipments, such as electronic product codes, UPCs or radio-frequency tags.

The Army logistics systems, however, are not set up to implement the IUD policy, said Maj. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III, commander of the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command.

Neither the Army's nor the Defense Logistics Agency's computerized systems "are looking at the standards in a comprehensive way to begin to address how to implement the IUD policy," he said. "If we do this right, it'll take us a long way to solving the distribution process."

Poor Training

Another source of frustration for logistics officers in Iraq is the poor training seen in equipment operators. Much of the hardware damage and the growing maintenance backlog are attributed to operator errors, said Thompson.

"We need to train operators," he said. He cited the rough-terrain container handler as an example of an expensive piece of equipment that often breaks, because it's not properly operated.

The RTCH is a favorite among logisticians, because it expedites the movement of containers coming off ships. It also comes with embedded diagnostics and prognostics computers, making it one of the most technologically advanced logistics vehicles in the fleet. About 100 RTCHs (pronounced 'retches') were sent to Iraq. Regrettably, said Thompson, "operators are unlicensed and untrained. They break a $500,000 piece of equipment, in many cases, because they don't know how to use it." When a RTCH breaks, containers aren't moved, creating a supply bottleneck.

Maj. Sam Homsy, assistant program manager for construction equipment, said the Army should design equipment so it's easier to maintain and requires minimum operator training.

Maintaining equipment such as the RTCH is difficult in the desert, because it was not designed for that environment. "If you don't protect this engine from the dust, the engine is dead-lined, it has to be sent back or replaced." A simple failure to replace an air filter can result in a $25,000 repair bill.

Only experienced and trained crews are capable of maintaining these high-tech vehicles, said Homsy. "There aren't enough trained maintainers."

Logistics should be a priority in unit training, he said. "Are we giving logistics its due diligence at the training centers? Or does it always take a back seat?"

According to Homsy, "it's no mystery that the Army has problems getting repair parts forward." The scarcity of spare parts has fueled what Homsy calls "survivor behavior" in the field.

Examples of survivor behavior range from soldiers bringing more parts with them upfront to cannibalizing parts out of every vehicle that breaks down.

As things settled down in Iraq after the initial phase of the war, logisticians engaged in other forms of "survivor behavior" to overcome the shortage of spare parts. They frequently signed blanket purchase agreements with local truck-parts suppliers, contracts with Kuwaiti dealerships for construction equipment and services contracts for equipment. "Those Kuwaiti dealers were able to get the supplies the soldiers needed faster than the Army retail supply system," said Homsy. Some soldiers used their government credit cards to order parts from U.S. dealers and had them shipped directly to Iraq by DHL International.