ARTICLE

January 2003

Army Logistics: Changes Ahead In Force Structure, Maintenance

by Sandra I. Erwin

A panel of senior Army officials in charge of reforming the service’s business practices concluded that up to 100,000 logistics-related jobs could be realigned, in order to free up soldiers for war-fighting duties.

In anticipation of personnel shortages in combat units around the world, the Army may consider a “reallocation of the force structure,” said Maj. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III, who chaired the Army Logistics Transformation Task Force.

“We challenged the requirement for 100,000 logistics spaces,” Thompson told National Defense. The Army, he said, is not interested in downsizing the force, but rather in “transferring jobs” to high-priority areas such as infantry units, Stryker brigades and homeland defense functions.

Thompson cautioned that of the 100,000 positions identified, only 40,000 currently are filled. The other 60,000 are listed as required positions but have been vacant for years.

Most of the 40,000 slots that are funded are staffed by reserve units, said Thompson. He noted that 75 percent of the Army’s logistics force is made up of reservists.

The task force proposal will be studied as part of the overarching “Total Army Analysis,” he said. “We looked at the allocation of the force structure, and we are still looking at it.”

Thompson, who heads the Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, said the Army is under pressure to shift more soldiers to front-line positions. “We could get the job done with fewer people, but we have more requirements.” Having 180,000 troops deployed around the world today, he said, “is really stretching the Army.”

The manpower is a bigger issue in the Army than in other services, said Thompson. “We go in and stay for a long time, unlike the Marines.”

The Logistics Transformation Task Force was made up of 15 hand-picked members, including representatives from the Reserves and the National Guard. The panel’s final report was presented to the Army’s chief of staff in August. The cost of the entire study project was less than $100,000. “It’s not perfect. But it’s a good effort,” said Thompson. “We recognize that we cannot do Army transformation without logistics transformation.”

Other recommendations by the task force focused on equipment maintenance. That is no small matter for the Army, which has $800 million to $1 billion worth of broken-down equipment worldwide.

The problem, said Thompson, is that “there are not enough resources to deal with spares that need to be repaired.”

The delivery services for spare parts have improved, he said. The average response time in September 2002 was nine days, down from 20 days in 1995.

A bigger headache for the Army is managing the return of broken-down hardware from the field back to the repair depots. “The reverse distribution is absolutely broken,” said Thompson. “Unserviceable, expensive repairables wait for 20-30 days.”

TACOM is negotiating with the Defense Logistics Agency on a possible arrangement that would make DLA responsible for the “reverse distribution” services. Thompson stressed that he does not want DLA involved in engineering services, only in the distribution of equipment. Oftentimes, he said, “DLA prices itself out of business.”

To deal with the maintenance backlog and to help its organic depots survive, TACOM created the so-called Ground Systems Industrial Enterprise. The GSIE is the corporate umbrella organization for six Army installations: the Sierra Army Depot (Calif.), the Rock Island Arsenal (Ill.), the Watervliet Arsenal (N.Y.), the Lima Army Tank Plant (Ohio), the Anniston Army Depot (Ala.) and the Red River Army Depot (Texas).

In the past, these depots and arsenals have been competitors. Now, they will be a “single business unit,” said Jimmy Morgan, director of GSIE. He said that TACOM already has been in discussions with 19 government-employee unions about the implications of this reorganization. The unions realized that this may be the only way to save jobs that, without the GSEI, would be lost in future rounds of base closures, said Morgan. “There are alternatives that none of us likes, so the unions support this to try to prevent these alternatives.”

By combining all the depots and arsenals, the Army is hoping to reap financial and industrial benefits. “We are trying to get the available capacity, make use of it and spread the overhead,” Thompson said. Program managers often contract out their maintenance work without considering that the Army may be able to do the work in-house, possibly at a lower cost, he added. “We have the capability in-house and we still pay a contractor to do the work,” he said. “My intent is to stop the Army from paying twice to get the same thing.”

But TACOM also recognizes that the private sector has better technology, so it is proposing new measures to facilitate “partnering” between the depots and the commercial industry. “In the Army, we have lots of real estate, environmental permits and low-cost labor rates,” he said. “We want to partner with companies that have advanced technology.”

Public-private partnering has been going on for many years, he noted. A partnership between the Anniston depot and General Dynamics, for example, received nearly $380 million in contracts during the past five years.

Army contractors should begin to line up partnerships sooner than later, said Thompson. Failure to do so may result in lost business. “I don’t win every game, but I win a lot of them,” he said. “That’s my message. Try to find a way to partner.”

The Logistics Transformation Task Force also recommended that the Army simplify the maintenance structure by cutting it from four to two levels. Army equipment now undergoes four types of maintenance: organizational, direct support (division and below), general support (corps level) and depot maintenance. The changeover will take place by 2006, said Thompson. Those four layers would be replaced by two: field and national level.

TACOM is advocating “component replacement and minor repair in the field,” said Thompson. Such repairs generally are done at the national level, sometimes by contractors or in fixed installations.

The switch to two-level maintenance will not be easy, he added. A key point of contention that has to be resolved is “where to draw the line between what’s done in the field and what’s done at the national level.”

The new Stryker brigades perform two-level maintenance already. The rest of the Army will transition gradually.

Thompson acknowledged that two-level maintenance has not been successful in previous attempts. “The Army’s problems are more complicated than the Navy’s and Air Force’s,” he said. “We are not big-platform oriented,” which means maintenance officers have to manage thousands of smaller pieces of equipment.

Restructuring maintenance and logistics operations only is one piece of a larger overhaul effort taking place at TACOM’s parent organization, the Army Material Command. A top priority of AMC Commander Gen. Paul Kern is to expedite the process of moving technology from the lab to the field. This fall, AMC will stand up a new command that will coordinate the activities of the Army’s extensive web of labs and technology centers.

Many of the details about the Research, Development and Engineering Command still are being pored over at AMC and Army headquarters. RDE would incorporate the Army Research Laboratory; portions of what used to be the Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command and AMC’s research and development centers, called ARDECs.

The RDE Command is temporarily based at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal, in Md., and run by the chief of the Soldier Biological Chemical Command, Maj. Gen. John Doesburg.

Thompson said he supports the RDE in principle, but he has “some concerns” about TARDEC (Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center) operating under a different chain of command that may or may not adequately address TACOM’s needs. He also is worried that the RDE Command may create a new “stovepipe” in the Army’s technology base.

“I expressed those concerns. ... We worked through them,” said Thompson. “But my boss made a decision. And we are going to do it.”

Under the current structure, AMC owns commodity commands, each of which focuses on particular products. That type of organization has “great value,” said Thompson, because each commodity command has “the technology, engineering, acquisition, logistics together so you integrate at the lowest possible level.” However, he added, “Gen. Kern’s thesis is that we haven’t done a good enough job in getting technology to the soldiers.”

In the future, Thompson said, the Army’s program managers will receive “matrix support” from the RDE Command (for science and technology) and from TACOM for equipment maintenance and logistics.

Richard E. McClelland, director of TARDEC, said that the realignment should not affect the relationship with TACOM. “I anticipate that nothing will change in TARDEC or ARDEC support to TACOM.”

Thompson, meanwhile, predicts that, as the AMC reshuffling continues, it would not be inconceivable that his command’s name may be viewed as obsolete. “As AMC reorganizes, it will change what we do inside TACOM,” he said. “I expect the names of the commodity commands will change.”

This may be easier said than done, however. “Don’t get me wrong, TACOM has a proud history. But its name begins with ‘Tank’ ... We may not build tanks anymore in the future.”

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