ARTICLE

September 2004

Central Command Reports Improvements in Logistics

by Sandra I. Erwin

As a new round of troop rotations gets under way in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military transportation officials expect fewer logistics hassles than seen previously. In Iraq, particularly, the lessons from the past 18 months and an influx of resources have led to measurable improvements in the shipment of supplies, and in the distribution of equipment inside the theater, officials said.

In response to logistics nightmares experienced in the early stages of the Iraq occupation—such as fuel and spare parts shortages, as well as delays sorting out massive loads of cargo—the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Transportation Command set up an operations cell in Kuwait strictly to oversee the distribution of supplies to 17 brigades deployed throughout Iraq.

The organization—called the Central Command deployment and distribution operations center—started out as an experiment but has acquired a more permanent status, and is likely to serve as a model for how to manage logistics operations in a theater of war, noted Maj. Gen. William E. Mortensen, director of logistics at U.S. Central Command.

The logistics cell, unlike any other organization in the chain of command, has up-to-date information on every incoming shipment and matches them up with the requests from the field. Among the immediate priorities was to set up supply routes from Kuwait to the various U.S. military staging bases in Iraq, and to remove bottlenecks at ports of debarkation that can hold up deliveries for days or weeks.

The process has gotten smoother, according to Mortensen. “It gets a little bit easier the longer you are at it,” he said in an interview. “We are becoming more solidified in location and we are maturing the theater.” Although “pockets of shortages” remain, he said, from Central Command’s perspective, “the support is as good as it’s ever been.”

The Defense Logistics Agency was scheduled in August to open a supply depot in Kuwait that will stock 7,800 of the highest-demand items. Maj. Gen. Daniel G. Mongeon, director of operations at DLA, said commanders prefer to have access to critical supplies in the theater, as opposed to having everything shipped from the United States. The goal is to expand the depot in Kuwait to eventually provide 40,000 items, Mongeon said.

To facilitate distribution of cargo shipped from DLA depots in the United States, the agency is packaging items in “pure pallets,” which are custom-organized for specific units, based on what they requested. For soldiers, this marks a welcome departure from the usual “aggregated pallets” containing an assortment of equipment for multiple units, which has to be sorted out in theater, significantly delaying the process. Mortensen said theater commanders would much rather have DLA take a couple of extra days to build pure pallets than rush a shipment of aggregated pallets.

“Approximately 98 percent of the pallets flying into Iraq are pure pallets,” Mongeon said.

Central Command, meanwhile, has stepped up security measures to protect incoming cargo, said Air Force Gen. John Handy, head of U.S. Transportation Command. “We maintain very tight control of our shipping in terms of who moves our stuff,” he told reporters. “We also are aggressively pursuing technology to ensure the protection of our containers as we ship then anywhere in the world using a variety of technologies that either exist today or are being developed.”

The situation is more hazardous for air deliveries, with airplanes throughout Iraq getting shot routinely by shoulder-fired missiles and small arms, Handy said.

U.S. military aircraft, including a C-17 and a C-5, as well as a non-U.S. commercial freight airplane, recently were hit, although the crews were not severely injured, he added. “The threat is out there and we’ve dealt with it.”

Mortensen confirmed Handy’s accounts of the dangers airplanes face. “The air threat in Central Command is in fact real,” he said. In addition to anti-missile systems such as chaff and flares, pilots employ defensive flying tactics to avoid ground fire, and are briefed ahead of time of potential attacks. “We know points of origin,” said Mortensen. For the most part, airplanes can maneuver around the threat, he added. “There are thousands of air landings day-to-day just in Iraq alone.”

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