Commander's corner.

In the coming weeks, SDDC will start executing the second largest logistics movement in the history of our country since World War II. For the most part, this massive movement will go almost unnoticed. At the same time, it will be a tribute to everyone in the command because you're doing your job so well that a lot of people won't realize we're doing it.

I witnessed a good example of this last November while visiting our Soldiers and civilians serving in Southwest Asia, including Pakistan.

On October 8, 2005, Pakistan experienced a devastating 7.6 magnitude earthquake displacing about 3.5 million people, injuring about 1.2 million and sadly killing more than 80,000. As a result of this natural disaster, survivors were faced with a life or death situation due to lack of food and water. Their homes and offices--especially in remote and high elevations--were uninhabitable due to the initial earthquake and hundreds of aftershocks. Complicating matters, the harsh winter weather would soon add to the list of challenges survivors were facing.

On the following day the devastated region experienced the first arrival of what would become 24 nations responding to survivor needs with rescue and medical teams and supplies.

That's where SDDC came in.

The old adage of being in the right place at the right time couldn't have held more truth than in this case. For us, it was capabilities we had developed in Pakistan supporting OEF which we could immediately redirect to support humanitarian relief efforts. The U.S. Central Command, Army, Navy and DLA worked to get supplies to the country. We had the capability in place to receive cargo at the Port of Karachi and move it through Pakistan to areas where it was needed.

In two days we turned an existing structure that had been supporting 20,000 American Soldiers in Afghanistan to support more than 3.5 million Pakistanis affected by the earthquake--and we did it successfully! As a direct result of SDDC, thousands of lives were saved each day and, with the exception of those on the ground, they probably didn't really understand how we did it.

The U.S. Army pilots flying the relief helicopters only knew the food and vital materiel for the villagers was always there for pick-up. Few, if any of them, knew how the cargo got there.

Even the Pakistani military was amazed at our ability to generate capabilities in their own country and get humanitarian supplies where they were needed. The commercial shipping contracts we used to transport cargo were already in place. Instead of taking supplies to Afghanistan, we simply rerouted humanitarian supplies north through Pakistan. A combination of our commercial partners' capabilities and our ability to leverage those over time gave us a robust capability in Pakistan. Even though people needing supplies were in the remotest areas of Pakistan, we were able to get there literally in a matter of days starting at the Port of Karachi. Our contractor moved supplies by truck to the assembly area where they were airlifted by U.S. Army helicopters and delivered to the last tactical mile in Pakistan. From there, supplies were loaded onto mules through the rocky terrain and distributed to the people.

Contrasting the way we normally carry out air operations, our helicopters sported an American flag on their side letting the Pakistanis know who we were.

Because of the efforts by everyone in SDDC, a contractual process was already in place in a country where we could rapidly respond when needed. And when asked to do it, we simply did. There was no infighting. We did it and the operation went so well that no one realized we were there.

What I see strikes me all around the command--people take great pride and work very hard in what they do. But people don't get a lot of recognition for their efforts so they find their rewards in the satisfaction of the tasks they perform knowing what they do is important. I think this talks to the professionalism and quality of people we have across the command. The Future

There is a demonstrated capability by our operations, particularly in Pakistan, to leverage commercial capabilities in a responsive support with a minimal military footprint.

We're doing this in support of OIF and OEF, other military forces, and humanitarian operations. This is the future! We will only move in the required amount of military forces when the commercial capability is either nonexistent or nonresponsive. In the end. it costs us less money, less structure, and gets the Soldiers back to performing functions that only they can do.

In Operation Desert Storm, we had thousands of Soldiers staying on for more than a year in retrograding all materiel back to CONUS. A similar retrograde today would require only about 10 percent of those military forces and a significantly larger amount of SDDC involvement leveraging our commercial partners.

How do we bring this current capability into the notion of warfighting as a part of the joint force of the future? We can do it, but the same anonymity that we have grown used to in our normal operations. The challenge is to get our supported commands to understand what we can do and when we can be called to bring our capability to the appropriate place. We are not the answer to every requirement, but we are an answer. And when we are the answer, there's no answer better than US.

Thank you all for the dedicated and selfless work you do! o