SIDE BAR

January 2005

Guard Maintenance Units deploying Closer to the Front

by Joe Pappalardo

When members of the Connecticut Air National Guard’s 1109th aviation classification and repair activity depot heard last February that they were going to be deployed to Kuwait within days, eyebrows were raised.

Although they did not know it at the time, these guardsmen were on the leading edge of a fresh doctrine for the use of the Guard and Reserve for wartime maintenance. The U.S. military sees great advantages in moving logistics units to temporary bases close to the front lines. Those comfortable with garrison duty had to think differently; the days of repairing equipment from domestic bases were fading fast.

“The more we can repair forward, the better we are at keeping the fleet flying,” said Lt. Col. William Shea, commander of the 1109th AVCRAD, now rotated home.

In all, 200 AVCRAD guardsmen were sent to Fort Drum, N.Y., to prepare for deployment. “We qualified in minus 40 degree weather to operate in the desert,” Shea said wryly. The 1109th AVCRAD has more than 175 full-time employees and an additional 200 part-timers.

Adding to the stress of their impending deployment, he added, was an utter lack of mobility, since the unit was constructed to operate solely from its domestic base in Groton, Conn. Every tactical vehicle they would need in theater had to be scrounged from other Guard units, from Maine to Oregon.

“We borrowed them from everywhere,” Shea recalled. “We were forward deployed for weeks before the equipment arrived.”

AVCRAD is a support unit that specializes in maintaining helicopters. The 1109th operates in one of only four facilities of its type in the U.S. Army. It supports 23 aviation facilities and approximately 500 aircraft.

This large-scale deployment of Guard and Reserve maintenance units is uncommon, according to Dennis Wightman, program manager at the Logistics Management Institute.

“The novelty is that an entire unit was called to duty, rather than selecting members to be called,” he said. “This certainly seems to indicate the increasing reliance on Guard resources.”

During previous conflicts, groups of maintainers from depots, AVCRAD units and other bases would set up shop close to the action. They were chosen for their expertise in repairing battle-damaged systems.

Adding to the mix is the military’s shift from three-level maintenance—field, intermediate and base—to just two, which takes advantage of fast-moving distribution channels. Without the security, staff and resources of a large, intermediate base, costs could be cut dramatically with little increase in turnaround time. “When you take advantage of expedited transportation, you can reduce the footprint,” Wightman said.

Some of the maintenance would have to be taken up by front-line units. “There has been some concern” over the division of labor involved in this new approach, Wightman added, but he estimated that only 10 percent of the work was shouldered by forward deployed maintainers, with 90 percent going back to depots.

For Shea and his crews, the experience of deployment was only the first surprise. The 1109th was filling roles for which it had never been prepared.

Their list of expected duties included assessing and rehabilitating damaged National Guard aircraft, coordinating shipments of severely damaged equipment to Germany or the United States and searching for spare parts among other bases and depots. “Critical repairs—every day we had half a dozen,” Shea said, citing engine problems and damage to helicopter blades.

But the demands of war expanded their job descriptions. The 1109th was tasked to maintain Patriot missile batteries, move from Camp Doha to a new base, Camp Arifjan, and establish a heliport there, monitor test flights on repaired equipment, back up the Marine aviation maintainers and provide perimeter security for the airfield.

“That’s the strength of maintainers; their skills are not necessarily unique to a single piece of equipment,” Wightman noted. “There’s no reason they can’t take on other systems that are similar.”

The brutal conditions played havoc with the sensitive aircraft gear. “We were literally pulling handfuls of sand” from engines, Shea said. “The Army is now putting barrier filters on Blackhawks and Chinooks.”

He added that the unit suffered from a lack of clean rooms and warehouses where equipment could be kept away from the elements.

During their deployment the unit repaired more than 1,800 parts, 140 aircraft, four of which were heavily damaged. They performed without the help of any contractors until October 2003.

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