The Army's future ability to deploy a combat brigade
to a trouble spot within 96 hours hinges on several policy changes the service
plans to introduce during the next several months.
Long-standing Army practices in logistics support operations will be modified,
said Maj. Gen. Charles S. Mahan Jr., chief of staff of the Army Materiel Command
(AMC). In a recent interview at his Alexandria, Va., office, he outlined AMC's
plan of action to make Army forces easier to deploy and logistics support operations
more efficient and less costly.
The goal set by the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, is to create
medium-weight brigade combat teams, which would be ready for battle within 96
hours of getting called to deploy. The brigade combat team would have smaller
vehicles than a heavy armored unit but more firepower than a light brigade.
Having lighter vehicles lessens the demand for both airlift sorties and fuel.
Mahan believes the 96-hour goal can be achieved within two years. In the longer
term, Shinseki has more ambitious objectives, including the ability to deploy
a division within 120 hours and five divisions within 30 days. There is a sense
of urgency within the Army to achieve these goals because it does not want to
lose clout vis-à-vis the other services. "You are not relevant if
you can't get to the fight," said Army Secretary Louis Caldera, who noted
that the service plans to field two medium brigades per year beginning in 2002.
In the short term, the Army will take steps to slash the so-called "logistics
tail," said Mahan. In the context of a brigade, this means compressing
a cycle that currently takes weeks into a 96-hour operation.
The first item on the priority list, said Mahan, is to identify what items
a brigade will need to meet basic combat requirements. "That means bringing
only the troops and supplies that are essential for carrying out the mission,"
he said. For the Army, that marks a drastic cultural change.
Traditionally, commanders build "detailed equipment lists from the ground
up," said Mahan. Under the new plan, there would be pre-determined force
packages for a brigade that would provide 80 percent of the needed equipment
and supplies. The remaining 20 percent would address unique demands tied to
specific climatic or terrain conditions. But the brigade could deploy with pre-packaged
sets and meet the commander's immediate needs.
According to Mahan, this is how the new system would work: When a brigade combat
team is called to deploy, a computer system automatically will determine what
equipment goes with that unit. The Air Force, he said, currently follows that
model with successful results. Army leaders will have to agree, in advance,
on what supplies and equipment will accompany each brigade. "When you want
this brigade, this is what you get," Mahan asserted.
Once commanders agree on these pre-configured loads, they cannot "come
back and try to reshuffle the deck," he said. When the Army had to deploy
to Albania to support the Kosovo air war, "everything was being built from
the ground up." That contributed to the slow response time, said Mahan.
"We could not go forward with the deployment until the detailed equipment
list had been generated. It took three to four days just to generate the list."
Staging Bases
In addition to pre-packaging brigade kits, the Army also would seek "intermediate
staging bases" to place its support forces, said Mahan. During the Kosovo
air campaign last year, for example, the Army set up such a base in Hungary.
An intermediate staging base, or ISB, would be somewhere near the battle zone,
but still far enough that support troops would not need to be defended at the
same level as combat troops.
The selection of potential ISBs would be made for each regional command worldwide,
so the Army would know which ISBs would be used for a particular deployment.
"In the past, we waited for hot spots to bubble up before we decided where
is the best place to support [the conflict]," Mahan said. Now, the Army
wants to seek candidate ISBs and, if necessary, build the needed infrastructure
in anticipation of a future conflict. "Ideally, they should be in a relatively
benign environment, so I don't have to divert lots of tooth to support and defend
the tail," he said.
The Army also will ask each regional commander to review supply requirements
for all U.S. armed services, since about 30 percent of the supplies the Army
brings support the other services.
But more significantly, said Mahan, the Army will have to change its internal
practices in the logistics support arena, not only to expedite the deployment
process, but also to trim wasteful spending.
There are significant inefficiencies in current logistics operations, said
Mahan, primarily because there is no central database that tracks Army-wide
purchases, repairs and maintenance work. Each base commander has discretion,
for example, to order equipment or repair work from the Army depots or from
local contractors. In many cases, the work is contracted out because the private
sector prices tend to be lower, explained Mahan. But that is not necessarily
a smart move, he said, because it results in depots operating under capacity-and
that artificially raises their costs. For the system to work efficiently, Mahan
said, the Army needs to determine how much work should be sent to depots and
arsenals to make them run efficiently. And that cannot be achieved without a
"central repository of contracting information."
"We need to centralize decisions for buying and repairing," said
Mahan.
"Today, we can't do that. Each command can do its own contracting.
"If I can establish a single Army-wide logistics provider, then I reduce
the logistics footprint," he explained, because that central provider-which
is AMC-would be able to make faster decisions about what equipment is available
to be deployed.
"If we could centralize the operation, our prices would be at least what
the commercial prices are. Commanders have chosen to divert work from the national
depot system," he said, which drives up depot prices. "It's called
the death spiral," said Mahan, because, as depot prices go up, more business
is lost.
During a recent meeting with reporters in Washington, D.C., Caldera told National
Defense that the Army is "looking at the future requirements for arsenals
and depots." Purposely avoiding the use of the term "death spiral,"
Caldera acknowledged that the organic depots currently are in an "untenable
position" because they are competing with a more efficient private sector.
A new policy to centralize contracting decisions is "being coordinated,"
said Mahan. He noted that Shinseki wants to make sure all commanders will support
the policy before it becomes part of the official rulebook.