NO MORE ‘STEEL MOUNTAIN’
[Operation] Desert Storm. After almost every war the United States has fought, we’ve had trouble retrograding and get- ting stuff out,” Dwyer said.
PIECE-BY-PIECE INVENTORY
Each piece of excess equipment, like these night vision devices, must be inspected and inventoried before units can turn them in for reallocation as part of the drawdown of equipment. Aiding in this pro- cess are various information technologies, such as the Army War Reserve Deployment System, designed to provide visibility of equipment already in the inventory, and Theater Provided Equipment Planner, whereby the user can put information into a database so that a Life Cycle Management Commander can provide instruction on what to do with a given piece of equipment. (Photo by SPC Maurice Galloway.)
EQUIPMENT DISPOSITION Stood up in October 2009, the R2TF helps determine where equipment needs to go after deployment. The task force includes representatives from U.S. Army Medical Command, the Assistant Secre- tary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASAALT), and trans- porters, among others.
“It provides a link from the foxhole back to the commander. In some cases, equip- ment can be disposed of and does not need to be brought back to the United States. A key part of the task is to antici- pate equipment flow planned for the future so as to maximize readiness,” said COL Larry Fuller, Division Chief, Plans and Operations Division, G-3/5.
The ASAALT works in tandem with AMC to shepherd equipment through the R2TF process by placing program man- agers or their representatives in forward combat locations, said COL Don Moore, Chief of Forward Operations, Deputy for Acquisition and Systems Management.
“Our representatives provide forward sup- port operations to the R2TF to make sure equipment is properly tracked and reset.
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They also work to scrub equipment, at times removing government-furnished equipment,” Moore said.
A key aim of the R2TF is to avoid a static, post-conflict buildup of war-damaged items like the “steel mountain” of equip- ment that accumulated following the Gulf War in the 1990s.
“There were acres and acres of equip- ment built up in Kuwait following the Gulf War. We did not have the integrated mechanisms for tracking equipment that we now have. We ended up with a lot of excess equipment,” said Fuller.
The R2TF unit pools data and resources to track the flow of equipment all the way from its origin to its final destination, cataloguing necessary stops along the way. For example, an Abrams tank in Iraq typically went from its FOB in theater to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, before being put on a boat back to a depot in CONUS.
“The R2TF has been a huge success. It has enabled us, for the first time in history, to retrograde and avoid having all of this equipment sitting on the docks for years and years and years, just like we did after
INFORMATION TOOLS Various information technologies are woven into the fabric of R2TF, such as the Army War Reserve Deployment System, designed to provide visibility of equip- ment already in the inventory. The R2TF also uses a Theater Provided Equipment Planner, whereby the user can put infor- mation into a database so that a Life Cycle Management Commander can provide instruction on what to do with a given piece of equipment, Fuller said.
“If I have a truck that I no longer need, I can enter that into the system so that oth- ers can see it and determine the best path forward,” he said.
About 99 percent of the large-scale items go back to a depot for reset, Fuller said.
The RT2F also works closely with the Army’s Equipment Distribution Review Board, a special unit co-chaired by U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff GEN Peter W. Chiarelli and AMC Commanding General GEN Ann E. Dunwoody that is tasked with analyzing equipment needs and chart- ing a path forward for items leaving Iraq.
“We’ve efficiently and effectively retro- graded tens of thousands of pieces of equipment from Iraq so that we could get them back to our depots,” Dwyer said.
KRIS OSBORN is a Highly Qualified Expert for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Office of Strategic Communications. He holds a B.A. in English and political science from Kenyon College and an M.A. in comparative literature from Columbia University.
Army AL&T Magazine
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