WASHINGTON — The US Army Materiel Command might be the most essential military organization you never heard of. Headquartered at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, it operates the service's research and development labs, its depots, arsenals, ammunition plants, and maintains the Army's prepositioned stocks on land and afloat around the world, under the command of Gen. Dennis Via.
The command plans to expand prepositioned equipment next year for Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America, as it has in Europe — including gear for disaster relief and the special operations community. In Europe, a battalion's heavy "activity set," as the prepositioned mission-tailored packages are called, will grow to a brigade-sized set, a response to Russian aggression.Such stocks have become increasingly important for an Army that retains its core function, to be able to mass combat power and quickly respond to global hot spots, as has been seen in Europe, the Mideast and Africa in the last year.
Q. What is the status is of the Army's plan to expand to a brigade-sized activity set of equipment in Europe and add activity sets elsewhere?
A. As we come to the close of the war in Iraq, as we have reduced our footprint in Afghanistan, and since the restructuring in Europe, we are moving more and more of our forces back to CONUS [the continental United States]to become a CONUS-based Army. We live in such a complex world and there are missions and requirements such that the Army must be prepared to respond to each of the geographic combatant commands. [Army Chief of Staff] Gen. [Ray] Odierno's guidance is that we should build activity sets to support our regionally aligned force concept.
So the initial guidance was to build a battalion set of equipment in Europe. We built that set in about 18 months. The equipment came from across the Army enterprise. So we built this set not knowing that it was going to be utilized as quickly as it was after Russia annexed Crimea. So we deployed a battalion from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood and deployed the unit there. And in a matter of about 96 hours they drew that equipment and they were out then training with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. So that truly demonstrated the concept of activity sets and the Army's ability of the United States Army to deploy it for us that quickly and to have it up and operating and training with our allies on a real world mission.
Q. What's the difference between an activity set and prepositioned stocks?
A. There are five sets of prepositioned equipment: in the US, Southwest Asia, Northeast Asia, Europe, and one afloat. We're building a set for South America to be in place by fiscal year 2018. So the prepositioned stocks have been there to meet wartime requirements. As we come out of the war, the effort has been to modernize these equipment sets around the world. So prepositioned stocks mean that they're tailored to that particular combatant command to meet the combatant commanders requirements in that theater, centrally managed by the Army underneath AMC to maintain the equipment, tomodernize the equipment, working with the Army and [acquisitions community]. Then of course being prepared to execute the issuance of that equipment, should a mission arise.
Activity sets, on the other hand, or separate sets of equipment outside of prepositioned stocks, are being built and established in various parts of the world [in] support [of] a regionally aligned force concept and support of combatant commander's requirements. So those activity sets are tailored to that combatant commander's area of responsibility. There're anticipated requirements with the topography of that particular part of the world and then the allies that we would work with. So we're building an activity set in Europe, a battalion set. We'll have an armored brigade combat team set there by 1 October. It's an enormous amount of equipment that'll be there, separate and apart from the Army prepositioned stocks. We'll be able to have units rotate over to Europe, and they'll train for nine months with the allies there. We're also building a brigade combat team set in South Korea. This is a part of the United Nations as the Army becomes smaller; we inactivated an armored brigade combat team out of this 2nd Infantry Division. So we're building a brigade combat team set and will also have units rotate to Korea starting this summer.
Q. What types of equipment are going to the different geographic areas and how is that determined?
A. We assess that in conjunction with the combatant commander and the combatant commander's staff. We try to be anticipatory because this concept is designed to be very expeditionary so that the Army can respond quickly when we're called upon. We've got five named operations ongoing right now, and all of that is simultaneously being supported by the Army and with all of the logistics and support that not only getting our forces there, or whatever the need may be, but sustaining them once they arrive. That is a strategic advantage that the US Army has today that no other Army in the world has with the strategic reach.
Naturally in the [Pacific]theater where you tend to have a large number of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, you have storms, flooding and typhoons. We've learned from these contingencies over time to tailor those stocks both in what we have in prepositioned stocksand tailor the activity sets to what we think we'll need. So it's constantly evolving in what the requirements would be to support the command. We assess that in conjunction with the combatant commander and with the combatant commander's staff. Most importantly we try to be anticipatory as best as we can because this concept is designed to be very expeditionary and responsive so that the Army can respond quickly when we're called upon. We've got five named operations ongoing right now, and all of that is simultaneously being supported by the Army and with all of the logistics and support that not only getting our forces there, or whatever the need may be, but sustaining them once they arrive. And that is a strategic advantage that the US Army has today that no other Army in the world has with the strategic reach.
Q. The Army is very busy around the globe, but Army Material Command can't be moving everything everywhere all the time. Is that the thinking behind the activity sets?
A. We're expanding that to what we call "Care Of Supplies In Storage," COSIS. We're moving more and more to placing the equipment inside of climate-controlled facilities. Therefore, we don't have it exposed to the whether elements and we increase the readiness of it. Because it's not exposed and because it's in climate-control, we can reduce the intervals that we have to service the equipment. It's no different than if you park your car in a garage. You maintain all of the [electronics] that's onboard so you don't have to add the command and control and communications and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems. You can maintain those on the platforms. You can keep the batteries inside of the vehicles. You can store them in various sets. So you can store a company-size set based on what you think the need would be, whether that's with engineering equipment, ground clearance equipment, water purification, fueling, all of that can be positioned inside of climate-controlled [warehouses] and you've reduced tremendously [the costs] of maintenance in sustainment of that equipment over time. Then we are able to issue that equipment to units very, very rapidly, and so we've proven that time and time again. Europe wasn't the first demonstration of that of how well we've been able to issue equipment. We've also done that multiple times in Southwest Asia.
Q. You've spoken about the Iraqi military's lost sustainment capability since the US left, and recent reports claim Iraq has no Army. How did Iraq come to dismantle the capability the US provided to them? How does it get fixed?
A. I can't speak specifically to the combat operational side of their capabilities. I just know that there is a need to be able to help the Iraqis, shore up their ability to sustain their equipment, and we're doing that primarily through contractor logistics support. These are with organizations or companies that have had extensive experience because of supporting the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. They're able to help the Iraqis repair their equipment and sustain their equipment primarily in aviation, in some of their armored capability, ground clearance equipment, and in ammunitions. So we're working with them to be able to reconstitute the capability that was in place and has eroded over time. Why it has eroded I can't really speak to.
Q. What's your unvarnished take on how diminished it actually is?
A. We know that they certainly don't have the established processes that we have in place. Despite the fact that we'd been there a long period of time, they don't have the mature sustainment infrastructure, the processes, and the trained personnel in place. Being able to maintain their tanks and their artillery systems, their aircraft.
But our focus is to help them build that capability to do so and to ensure that they have the parts and the supplies that they need. So we're working very, very closely with the Army elements on the ground there and with the other forces to identify what needs to be repaired. What we're ensuring is that we're responsive in terms of the full supply chain, to get the parts there that's needed. To get the equipment through foreign military sales to the Iraqis from the United States. So there's work to be done and we're very confident in the companies we have that are working there with the Iraqi army as they reconstitute this capability, but they have a ways to go.
Q. Are you worried about their ability to secure equipment in light of reports about Humvees and tanks falling into the hands of the Islamic State?
A. I haven't heard so much of that, except at the initial overrun that took place. I'm confident in the abilities of the folks that we have on the ground with maintaining control as best as we can of the equipment there. But that's probably more aligned to [the Office of Security Operation-Iraq] who's there, and of course the units that are on the ground that actually conduct the advise and assist mission.
Q. Regarding Afghanistan, there are reports the US is abandoning $6 billion in US equipment. Is that accurate, and what is the lesson for future conflicts?
A. It's not accurate that we're abandoning equipment in Afghanistan as the Russians did when they left. We're not leaving equipment strewn across the battlefield there in Afghanistan. We have a very, very deliberate of retrograde of equipment from Afghanistan that I think is the best we've ever done. We learned from the retrograde out of Iraq, which was highly successful as we moved that equipment back through different ports and brought that equipment back. Some of the equipment, of course, is stored in place. The equipment that was deemed non-mission-essential we either sell to other allies or through foreign military sales or other processes approved by the Department of State and the Department of Defense to the Iraqi army and to Afghanistan. War and in of itself is inefficient, and when you look at being at war 14 years, you're talking about the billions of dollars of equipment that go into supporting and fighting two wars simultaneously. Our best equipment that we deployed to Afghanistan, we have in fact been in a very deliberate process to retrograde that equipment back so that we can reset it and get it back into the hands of our brigades, our battalions, and enabling the units for future operations. So we've done that to billions of dollars in equipment, and we destroyed some equipment in place that's not economically feasible to return.
Q. Sensitive equipment?
A. No, not sensitive equipment . All of our sensitive equipment we've been primarily able to fly out, but in a landlocked country like Afghanistan you look at the cost involved. We do an analysis of moving that equipment from the landlocked country, getting that to a seaport and then having to ship it back. If it's uneconomically feasible to do so, and if we've not been able to meet foreign military sales requirements to Afghanistan or to other allies and partner nations who require that equipment from the United States, then it's destroyed in place so we don't have anything to be used against us in the future. I think we've done extraordinarily well in the prudent uses of the taxpayer dollars here, and not only just in the dollar amount of equipment that we retrograded, but the amount that we've done and at the timeline in which we've done so. Remember while we're retrograding we're also supporting operations in Afghanistan. We still have 10,000 service members there. So it's balancing what's needed to support that transition of the mission to the Afghanistan Army and supporting our own forces on the ground while we continue to retrograde and wait for a decision about the future as of December 2016.
Q. OK. In terms of fielding equipment to theater, do you think that we might do that differently in a different conflict?
A. We've learned that maybe it's a process that we can improve in how we maintain visibility, because we were supporting two wars. We've got America's sons and daughters who were in harm's way, and so we're going to do everything we can to get them the equipment they need. We'll be prudent, but we will get them the equipment that they need because it saves lives. The MRAP is one example of vehicles that we got there.
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @reporterjoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
