Pentagon deploys logistics experts to manage massive troop rotation

The U.S. Transportation Command has dispatched a special team of logisticians to the Middle East to help manage the largest rotation of troops since World War II.

Army Maj. Gen. Robert Dail, director of operations for TRANSCOM, said 63 uniformed and civilian military logisticians were dispatched to Kuwait this month for up to 120 days to synchronize the flow of more than a quarter of a million troops and their supplies into and out of the region by May.

"This allows us to make decisions a lot more rapidly," Dail said.

For example, the logisticians recently halted the flow of 1,700 shipping containers of construction materials to the Persian Gulf because building supplies were already available in the war zone. In another case, they canceled sustainment supplies for troops leaving Iraq because they weren't needed. And the planners recently had a military cargo boat in the Mediterranean Sea redirected to the Persian Gulf because it had extra space to carry gear for the 101st Airborne Division.

Dail said sending logisticians into a war zone marks a shift in how the Defense Department manages deployment operations. Last fall, the Pentagon named TRANSCOM as the "distribution process owner" for deployments. In the past, TRANSCOM provided airlift and sealift to the services and defense agencies, but was never responsible for managing the entire distribution chain.

"One [command] having visibility over the whole process allows you to have policy, use technology and develop joint performance standards that will optimize joint lift assets and deliver forces the materials on time," Dail said.

Typically, military operations have been plagued by logistics problems. In Operation Desert Storm, the Army was widely criticized for ordering far more materiel than it needed because it did not track what it ordered. During the military's sprint to Baghdad last spring, there were delays in getting spare, parts and ammunition to rapidly moving ground forces.

Dail said having a single agency responsible for distribution and having logistics planners on the ground with troops would alleviate many of those problems.

By May 2004, approximately 135,000 Army troops will leave Iraq and be replaced by an almost equal number of soldiers and Marines. During previous prolonged conflicts, such as Vietnam, the military has rotated individual soldiers. But over the past decade and half, the military has concluded that rotating entire units, including Army divisions, provides for a more cohesive and ready fighting force.

Dail said if the logistics teams prove as successful as expected in Iraq, then similar ones will be established for military combatant commanders around the world.