War on terrorism tests logisticians' skills: conflict presented 'unique' demands, says chief of U.S. Army support command.

The U.S. war on terrorism has tested the resourcefulness of Army logisticians, forcing them to improvise and to question the status quo, officials said.

The diversity of forces deployed for the war in Afghanistan and the difficulties in securing transportation routes have created unexpected hurdles and may lead to changes in the way the Army prepares and executes logistics support operations, said Maj. Gen. Wade H. McManus Jr., head of the U.S. Army Operations Support Command, in Rock Island, Ill.

The OSC's parent organization, the Army Materiel Command, is known for its expertise in logistics support and ability to supply forces in remote corners of the world.

But the war in Afghanistan has been like no other war in terms of "unique" logistics demands, McManus said in an interview.

More than six months into the conflict, there are questions as to whether the Army has the "right balance of people, authority and supplies" in the forward-operating bases, he said.

A case in point is AMC's logistics support element (LSE) in Kuwait, which supplies forces in Southwest Asia.

The commander of the LSE, Army Col. Ronald E. Beasley, said his organization would benefit from more "horizontal integration" within AMC, so that information--such as requests for supplies--is accessible from a single database. Beasley spoke via satellite from Kuwait during a conference of the Association of the U.S. Army.

He said that the current management structure often makes it difficult to track the arrival and departure of units and equipment from the theater.

McManus explained that Beasley's problems stem from the multiplicity of forces that AMC is supporting in this war. Traditionally, Army logisticians plan for an operation, based on having to supply equipment for a single type of force, such as heavy armor. The war on terrorism, however, has required that AMC support armored, light infantry and aviation units simultaneously. "Each requires some unique support," said McManus.

In this conflict, he said, "We are learning a great deal about planning for multiple forces."

Generally, said McManus. "When you think about employing forces across a region, there is more homogeneity." In the current war, "We are not employing standard force packages. They are tailored for specific missions," he said. "That's the piece we have to adjust to."

He shrugged off speculation that the Army was not ready to provide the logistics support for a war that came on short notice. "It's not that we were not ready to do our support job," said McManus. But the reality is that "the war on terrorism we are fighting today has forced us to look at tailored support structures--differently and more rapidly than we have in the past."

Afghanistan is a "new theater, (with] a new force structure, with new support concepts," said McManus. "There is a learning curve."

Much of the logistics support to forces in Afghanistan come from AMC's forward-deployed logistics center in Kuwait, commanded by Beasley. The pre-positioned stockpile there consists of two armored brigades and a variety of support equipment for the entire Southwest Asia theater. Specifically, two combat-maneuver battalions, one in Qatar and one in Kuwait, were responsible for logistics in Operation Enduring Freedom.

The U.S. military supply line to Northern Afghanistan spans from Dover, Del., to Germany, Turkey and, ultimately, the Karshi-Khanabad base, in Uzbekistan, which became the main logistics hub for Northern Afghanistan.

For Southern Afghanistan, the supply line starts in Norfolk, Va., and continues to Spain, Italy and Qatar, the main supply hub for Southern Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Maj. Stephen Wade, Army quartermaster, recently completed his tour as the commander of the Army's logistics operations in Uzbekistan. In his opinion, he said, logistics readiness could be improved if there were closer coordination between the LSE and the unit it must support. Preferably, they should be co-located in the same base, he said at the AUSA conference.

Wade had words of praise for the Army's Force Provider portable housing units, which offer soldiers amenities such as air-conditioned sleeping quarters, showers, kitchenettes and laundry machines. Each Force Provider module houses 500 troops. The Army deployed four modules at Karshi-Khanabad.

For the first time, Wade said, Army soldiers operated the Force Provider, without any contractors. That meant more work for the troops. "It's difficult to build a city and light a war at the same time," Wade said. "Force Provider is a great piece of gear, but it's maintenance intensive, both in storage and in operation."

The massive amounts of fuel consumed at U.S. bases, meanwhile, put to the test the ability of logisticians to deliver it, no matter what the price.

During the first seven months of the war, the Defense Logistics Agency supplied 500 million gallons of fuel--35 million gallons issued to the Army--in addition to 360,000 gallons of fuel additives.

Most of the fuel came via trucks, said Jeffrey Jones, director of DLA's defense energy support center.

The trucks traveled from Pakistan to Army bases in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. "It was an interesting operation," said Jones. "Sometimes, it would take them 14 days to drive 20 miles."

Getting the fuel to the Bagram Army base was a "huge challenge," said Jones, because it required "getting through the nest of snakes on either side of Jalalabad." The drivers, often Pashtun, would be pulled out of their trucks by guards in Bagram who typically are from the Northern Alliance, Jones said. "They would be interrogated, beaten up, threatened.... We had some really interesting times getting fuel to Bagram. It's working our, nonetheless."

Supplying fuel to Karshi-Khanabad, in Uzbekistan, presented a different set of obstacles. Initially, the fuel was sold to the Army by the Uzbek government. Eventually, Jones said, "they told us we had to get our own, because we were consuming too much and they couldn't supply us." DLA subsequently found other sources of fuel in Russia and elsewhere in Central Asia.

The prospect of losing the lucrative Army fuel business made the Uzbek government reconsider their offer. "The Minister of Defense personally came out and stopped us from getting fuel from other places," said Jones. "It turned out that they were making a tidy profit from supplying fuel to us. They even stopped their own national airline to give us the fuel."

Jones noted that U.S. forces had access to large quantities of Russian jet fuel, left over from the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1 980s. "We ended up using a lot of Russian jet fuel and still are, because it's available," he said. For the most part, however, "we were able to get JP-8, our standard fuel."

RELATED ARTICLE: Changes Planned for Army Pre-Positioned Stocks

The U.S. Army plans to gradually modify the current makeup and distribution of pre-positioned weaponry and ammunition around the world. Driving these changes is the need to make pre-positioned equipment "easier for consumption" and to make stocks more relevant to the demands of current and future wars, said Maj. Gen. Wade H. McManus Jr. He is the commander of the Army's Operations Support Command, in Rock Island, Ill.

The command stores and maintains the materiel for the Army's pre-positioned stocks. OSC also serves as the Defense Department's single manager for conventional ammunition, with responsibility for producing, storing and demilitarizing ammunition for all military services. OSC operates in 35 states, Puerto Rico and 14 foreign nations.

With a $2.7 billion annual budget OSC issues more than 2,000 contracts a year worth about $28 billion. Of that amount $700 million is for ammunition procurement. The command employs approximately 200 military service members, 7,200 civilians and 8,100 contractors.

The so-called "transformation" of the Army, aimed at becoming a lighter and more responsive force, is likely to spawn significant changes in the way the Army pre-positions equipment overseas, McManus told National Defense.

The introduction of precision-guided munitions, for example, will require OSC to "simplify packaging ... and re-look at what needs to be pre-positioned," he said. The growing popularity of smart bombs also is likely to result in new business practices at OSC, McManus suggested. "We will look at what our production base must do and [we will] come up with a new concept."

At the core of the new strategy is the notion of "pre-positioning in support of transformation," said McManus. To increase the responsiveness of military units, OSC plans to simplify the packaging of ammunition, so it can be used on short notice.

"Our pre-positioning strategy has evolved over the years," especially after the Cold War, he noted.

Rather than pre-position large stocks in preparation for a large-scale European war, OSC shifted to a strategy of "global reach," spreading the equipment throughout the world, on land and sea-based locations. Supplies to equip nearly two heavy brigades currently are afloat, on ships, McManus said. The land-based pre-positioned stocks are in South Korea, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Diego Garcia, Guam, Japan, Israel, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy and Germany.

"To increase strategic response, we are taking the APS-2 (Army Pre-positioned Stock in Europe) and transforming it to be relevant the European theater," McManus said. "Some of the equipment that was not useful in the European theater was transferred to other stocks."

The ability to respond to hotspots in widely dispersed corners of the world depends on having equipment available near the theater of operations, he said. "We are looking at how we are using our watercraft and [how we are] repositioning equipment to support [regional commanders] CINCs."

One stinging issue at OSC today is "ammunition readiness," McManus said. A paper published in February by the Association of the U.S. Army documents shortfalls in ammunition supplies and concludes both that the Army's production base is inadequate and that the service does not have enough high-quality ammunition to fight wars and train soldiers.

"The AUSA paper is generally accurate," McManus said. He noted that OSC recently developed a "munitions readiness report" that would help the service measure the adequacy of munitions stocks for various functions. "We have used the same logic as the Army used to calculate readiness for its units."

The readiness reports will evaluate, for example, discrepancies between inventory and requirements, maintenance demands and procurement priorities, he explained. "It provides a great framework for the Army leadership to plan programs in the acquisition world, to more precisely apply funding."

A draft report was briefed to top Army officials in March. The plan, said McManus, is to merge the munitions report into the Web-based "Army Strategic Readiness Reporting System."

Meanwhile, the war on terrorism has produced a new mission for OSC: to drastically tighten the security of the Army's ammunition plants and depots. "I'm doing things today that I never had to do before," said McManus. "The learning curve is steep and the timeline is short."

Logistics transformation: army vows to make it work.

A high level Army task force is scheduled to complete, by August 1, a comprehensive plan to reform the way the service conducts logistics-support operations.

The so-called Logistics Transformation Task Force, formed in early May, was directed to figure out ways for the Army to reduce its "logistics footprint," to become more deployable and to improve the quality of the logistics services to forces in the field, said Maj. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III.

"The task force has to put together an integrated plan that's executable year by year," said Thompson, who heads the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, and is a member of the logistics task force.

In a recent interview, Thompson explained that, this time, he hopes the reform plan will lead to real-world changes, rather than become "just another study."

He recognizes that there is skepticism in the Pentagon about the service's ability to adapt to change. For that reason, said Thompson, "We need to do a better job in showing and demonstrating to people that there is a lot of movement and a lot of momentum in this area." The task force plan, he said, will include short, medium and long-term actions.

Asked how the Army will measure results, Thompson said that no specific numbers have been set, but he noted that, most probably, the Army would seek reductions in the manpower and equipment needed to sustain a force in the battlefield. More than two-thirds of the load that the Army brings to a war is made up water, fuel and ammunition. Any future reductions in the logistics footprint likely will be achieved by finding ways to consume less fuel and techniques to generate water in the field, for example.

"We haven't set a certain percentage reduction yet," he said. Army officials currently are modeling several scenarios, to try to determine how much logistics support is really necessary to deploy a heavy brigade, medium-size brigade or a division-size force.

"We have to determine the delta between what we have to put in there today, and what we have to do in the future," said Thompson.

Additionally, he said, "We are going to look at what we have in pre-positioned stocks, both afloat and in theater. We will look at what will be needed in the future. Hopefully the answer will be 'a lot less."

Currently, Thompson said, "We've got a lot of pre-positioned combat equipment." The makeup of the equipment may change in the years ahead, he said. (See related story)

"A lot of that is left over from what was bought during the Cold War. I am not sure that we are going to be able to afford to preposition combat equipment in the future." A more affordable option, he said, would be to pre-position support equipment, such as trucks. "It's expensive, but a lot less expensive than the combat vehicles."

The task force realizes, Thompson said, that it must garner credibility within the Defense Department, where some top officials have criticized the service for not doing enough to lighten the force.

The logistics transformation report, he said, is likely to be scrutinized by the Joint Logistics Board, headed by Diane K. Morales, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness.

She explained that the Joint Logistics Board will focus on "end to-end weapon system support and integration," and will be "leading efforts to make sure changes are implemented" in the logistics arena.

A series of studies to take place this summer--in preparation for the Defense Department's fiscal 2004 budget submission--will address logistics requirements and possibly a consolidation of the transportation and supply functions within the military services, said Morales at an industry conference.

Nobody wants to relive the "DMR," she said. The 1989 Defense Management Review--directed by then-deputy defense secretary Donald Atwood--aimed to cut logistics, personnel and base operating costs in order to save $71 billion from fiscal -- 1991-97. At the time, the plan was to eliminate 30,000 civilian and 40,000 military jobs.

"We don't want to repeat DMR," said Morales. "A lot of money went by the wayside ... This time, I fought very hard to avoid across-the-board cuts in logistics."

The ongoing studies will continue through the fall, she said.

Thompson, meanwhile, is confident that the Army can "convince the Joint Logistics Board and others that [the Army is on] the right path." Logistics in a theater is a joint operation, he said. But the Army has the most resources to provide that support.

Working in parallel with the logistics task force study is an Army Science Board panel looking at logistics, as a well as an ad-hoc team studying the "sustainment" issues associated with the Future Combat System (See related story, page 16).

Obviously, Thompson said, "There are a lot of other things going on. We have to stay linked to all those other efforts. I don't want to duplicate. We don't have the time."

By August, said Thompson, "I hope to have an objective, honest assessment that can stand up to OSD [Office of the Defense Secretary] scrutiny."

Further, "We are going to do some detailed analysis to back up the recommendations," he said. "Some will be major shifts in culture. ... It's not all about dollars. A lot of it is change in our processes and the way we think about things."

In the Army, he said, "We spend a lot of time worrying about supply." That is OK, but it's also important to plan ahead, and figure out, for instance, how vehicles should be designed, so they require less maintenance and burn less fuel, he explained. "There is an opportunity to do that now."

Thompson also is involved in an overarching "industrial base study" that is scheduled for review by the Army chief of staff in September, he said. The study is expected to paint a detailed picture of the Army's organic industrial capabilities, as well as the availability of commercial sources for ammunition and other weapons.

One initiative under way is the realignment of the Army's depots and arsenals, in order to create a "ground systems industrial enterprise," said Thompson. The plan is for TACOM to take over the management of the Watervliet, N.Y., and the Rock Island, III. Army arsenals. TACOM already manages the Anniston, Ala., Red River, Texas, and the Lima, Ohio, depots. The two arsenals currently report to the Operations Support Command. Bringing all five organizations under TACOM would make sense, said Thompson, because it would help to "maximize the capabilities" of each facility and ensure they all get enough work to stay in business. "OSC will have more of a munitions focus in the future," he said. "Arsenals are now part of OSC, but it's not a natural fit. Arsenals would fit better as part of the ground systems enterprise.

"I would foresee that as early as this summer, operational control of the two arsenals could shift to TACOM," said Thompson. At press time, the Army was briefing the depots' and arsenals' congressional representatives about the reorganization.