Defense logisticians face critical time

After fire destroyed a major Marine Corps supply center in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, last May, military logisticians quickly reconstituted the center and in doing so, improved the readiness of troops who depended on it for critical supplies, according to the Defense Department's senior logistician.

Alan Estevez, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for logistics and materiel readiness, described the fire incident last week to lawmakers in an effort to show how far the department has come in its ability to manage what might be the world's most complex supply chain.

"Afghanistan is about as hard a place as we could have picked to go to war," Estevez told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 27. Historically, most equipment and supplies have been shipped through volatile Pakistan from the Port of Karachi, but more recently, the Pentagon has expanded distribution operations in the north over four existing commercial routes that connect Baltic and Caspian ports with Afghanistan through Russia and the Southern Caucuses and Central and South Asian states.

To date, the Defense Logistics Agency has booked more than 10,000 containers through the northern distribution network, accounting for 81 percent of all shipments.

Estevez had just returned from a visit to Afghanistan two weeks before he testified, where he reviewed efforts to move and support the 30,000 additional troops ordered there by President Obama in December 2009.

"At every place I visited, the troops and their commanders reported that for the most part, they are receiving the material they need when they need it," he said. Since the troop increase was announced, Defense has moved more than 17,000 portable buildings to Afghanistan to house troops while bases there are expanded.

"We are meeting a 1.1 million gallons a day demand for fuel for the U.S. and coalition forces while feeding 435,000 meals a day to U.S. service personnel and civilians on the ground," he said. In addition, the department has shipped 10,000 vehicles and the supplies necessary to keep them at a 90 percent readiness rate.

All this has occurred as the department is withdrawing tens of thousands of troops and their equipment from Iraq. "To date, we have moved 32,000 pieces of rolling stock, closed 369 bases and are on track to bring the force down to 50,000 troops by Aug. 31," Estevez said.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said he was encouraged by how well Defense was handling the simultaneous drawdown in Iraq and surge in Afghanistan.

"As the supply chain increasingly shifts to Afghanistan, the department will face a critical test to determine whether the dangerous logistical gaps that emerged during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom have been closed, and whether progress will continue in the areas of requirements forecasting, asset visibility and material distribution," Voinovich said.

He and committee chairman Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, questioned whether the department's latest strategic logistics plan, released last month, was sufficient to address its long-standing supply-chain management problems. The issue has been on the Government Accountability Office's high-risk list for 20 years now.

"DoD supply-chain management still suffers from inadequate strategic planning," Akaka said, noting Defense has a history of overstocking some supplies and underestimating the need for others.

Jack Edwards, director of defense capabilities and management at GAO, said the department's latest plan is an improvement over previous efforts, but it lacks clear performance measures and fails to adequately identify capability gaps and the resources needed to address them.

"GAO has some legitimate arguments," Estevez said. "There are areas where we can do better."

In October, as required by the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, Defense will submit to Congress a comprehensive inventory management improvement plan. That plan will describe how the department will address demand forecasting, asset visibility, inventory management and the disposal of unneeded items.