A HALF-CENTURY OF SUPPORT


inventories for systems, medical supplies, equipment, as well as fuel, then insert some kind of targeted support for main- tenance of the equipment.


Now, in execution things are always a little harder and, as it turns out, with some of the challenges shipping by sur- face through Pakistan, we haven’t quite achieved what we want just yet with the distribution center because our shipping times are still fairly long—longer than expected. We’re doing surface shipments, but we’re also having to supplement with some air shipments; it’s still a work in


A GLOBAL PRESENCE


U.S. Army LTC John Bautch, Commander, DLA Support Team Kandahar Airfield (KAF), Afghanistan, acts as master of ceremonies for the ribbon-cutting of the first DLA Disposition Services Kandahar facility last December. The facility is a key staging area for the disposal or reutilization of unservice- able DOD equipment. (Photo by Daryl Knee.)


progress. And frankly, even moving mate- riel around in Afghanistan is proving more challenging than we anticipated, so we’re heavily leveraging something called Theater Express, which is a contracted airlift inside the country to ship needed supplies from the distribution center in Kandahar to places like Leatherneck, Bagram, up to Mazar-e-Sharif, then out to the units that are consuming them. Again, a very intense effort to provide the full range of DLA support, and a lot of our challenges have been driven based on transportation, both into the country and inside the country.


I think that has all been very successful in the warfighter support area.


Q. What about some of the challenges DLA is facing or may face in the coming months?


A. A lot of it is related to uncertainty. We’ve had a situation in Iraq where, even to this day, it’s very unclear what the future support requirement is going to be. It’s still unclear, beyond the end of this year, what’s going to be the U.S. Army/U.S. military presence; the State Department presence is beginning to look a little bit more certain, but we have to stay flexible. Clearly, if you add many thousands of additional Soldiers who need food and medical supplies and fuel for their vehicles and the spare parts for the vehicles, and they need the disposal support, it’s a much different challenge than if it’s a fraction of that number. Then in Afghanistan, the challenge there is the uncertainty of today, very intense con- tingency combat operations, that drives requirements that maybe you don’t fully anticipate. We’re just now beginning to get clarity on what might be the force that stays behind for a year and two years, so we’ve got to posture for that as well.


Q. It can’t be easy for an organization this large to adapt on a dime. How does DLA handle that?


A. I think that that has been something that DLA has gotten a lot better at in the last decade. Clearly we haven’t really rehearsed that kind of thing extensively, but it does connect well into a designa- tion that DLA has as a combat support agency, which is a statutory designation that gives us a special relationship with the geographic combatant commanders; in effect, we’re directly supporting their operations. It gives us the authority to position DLA personnel, military, and civilians on the ground.


66 Army AL&T Magazine


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