S
uccessfully
completing Opera-
tion Iraqi Freedom, transitioning to Operation New Dawn (OND), and meeting President Obama’s
Dec. 31, 2011, deadline to have all U.S. units out of Iraq was a mammoth under- taking that in some ways has set the stage for an even larger mission: bringing troops and equipment home from Opera- tion Enduring Freedom (OEF).
Speaking at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA’s) Institute of Land Warfare Army Sustainment Symposium and Exposition May 8-10 in Richmond, VA, LTG Raymond V. Mason, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, G-4, called the drawdown from Iraq “a monu- mental task that was fully accomplished by the entire Army and Joint team.”
Now, Mason said, “…there are tough challenges to come as we reduce our foot- print in Afghanistan. The retrograde/ drawdown from Operation Enduring Freedom will be different in many ways and much harder than Iraq, although the lessons we learned in Iraq have set us on the right path.
- ing reductions with OND concluding and OEF transitioning, along with the We’ve been through this before. The sky and will tighten our belts, while ensur- ing we are ready to execute the worldwide missions the American people expect of us,” Mason said.
LESSONS LEARNED How the OND retrograde was planned, practiced, and executed was the topic of a May 9 panel discussion titled “The- ater Retrograde Operations: Operation New Dawn—Lessons Learned and the Way Ahead.”
BG Karen E. LeDoux, Commanding General, U.S. Army Materiel Command – Southwest Asia and U.S. Army Central Command (ARCENT) G-4, said that some of the lessons learned on equipment disposition during the transition from OND can be applied to the reposturing of U.S. Forces – Afghanistan.
“We want to reduce the total amount of inbound equipment into Afghanistan … so we are reinvigorating the predeploy- ment site survey. This
is a partnership
with the Force providers to make sure we identify what is truly needed on the ground, because the mission is changing in Afghanistan,” LeDoux said.
“You have to make sure that the outgoing unit and the incoming unit really articu- late what [equipment] is on the ground and what is needed, because we are mov- ing the battle space,” she said.
LeDoux said one of the initiatives
ARCENT is working on is improving its contracting ability.
“Sixty percent of the OMA [Operation and Maintenance, Army] dollars … goes to contracting, and that’s not unlike the way it is in overseas contingency operations. We’re working hard at the ARCENT level to make sure we can see where we are spending our money and where we are spending our money for contracts. We have stood up a number of boards where we review the requirements and make sure that the Theater Sustainment Com- mand, as the sustainment requirements owner, has the right capabilities that are right-sized on hand,” she said.
COL John S. Laskodi, Commander of the 402nd Army Field Support Brigade, said another lesson learned is that those running redistribution property account- ability team yards, established to keep
track of equipment that would be shipped out of OND or handed over to the Iraqi government, should get proper training before starting their assigned task.
“These were ad hoc organizations where we took primarily Air Force people and put them into these yards and said, ‘Okay, now let’s learn a process and let’s retro- grade,’ ” Laskodi said.
“What we’ve done to make this a lesson to reform the POI [program of instruc- tion]. We now have handed it off to CASCOM [U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command] and said, ‘We need to take this and institutionalize it across the Army.’ So instead of just learning something over a 10-day relief in place, we actually give them some training on this before they actually have to execute their missions.”
Other OND lessons learned offered at the panel discussion that can be applied to the OEF drawdown include:
Understand the operational plan and create excess transportation or modal capacity to accommodate it.
Manage expectations. - cesses and systems to adjust to unforeseen changes and maintain
Understand the multiple processes of host nation countries.
what is to be accomplished, when, using what procedures; and the pro- cesses to address leftover equipment.
accountability of organizational equip- ment, theater-provided equipment, and contractor-managed government- owned property.
Recognize that contract and contractor management are essential.
ASC.ARMY.MIL 139
CONFERENCE CALL
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170
