Databases, Warehouses and Ships

"We have tried to be very innovative about how we have approached logistics," says Capt. William Elliott, who oversees logistics for the Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain. Elliott oversees nearly 500 largely uniformed personnel who provide fuel, ammunition, spare parts, mail, food and other cargo for about 100 Navy ships in an area stretching from the Horn of Africa through the Persian Gulf.

Elliott says relational databases allow the 5th Fleet to track inventories and the movement of supplies on ships at sea, in warehouses spread throughout the region and at Navy and Defense Logistics Agency supply depots in the United States. As a result, he says, the 5th Fleet has cut the time it takes for supplies to get into the region from 30 days to 10 days.

In the past, the 5th Fleet did not have shared databases and, as a result, could not always determine the best place from which to order goods. Now, 5th Fleet officials easily can determine how best to get particular items to where they are needed. For example, a spare part needed by an aircraft carrier could be located on another carrier and be transferred in a few days, as opposed to shipping the part all the way from the United States. If the parts must come from the United States, logisticians can check warehouse inventories to ensure the parts are in stock.

Ellliott says shared databases allow all orders to be placed through 5th Fleet headquarters, where logisticians determine the most efficient source and means of delivery for equipment and supplies. He said real-time computer chat systems and e-mail have also made it much easier to coordinate orders throughout the fleet, to share supplies and to anticipate shortages.

"We are constantly trying to stay in the technology loop to help how we manage and procure," Elliott says.

The way in which the events of the war unfolded had little effect on logistics operations, Elliot says. "Whether you are at war or peace, how you operate does not change. You just do more of it when you go to war."

Several months ago, the Navy used computer models to project the level of supplies it would need for a naval force of the size of the one assembled in the Gulf for the war on Iraq. Elliot says those models proved to be accurate within 5 percent.

Ordnance, which the Navy must ship into the region because it has no storage agreement with any Middle Eastern nation, was moved in much smaller amounts than in 1991. Elliot says the high accuracy rate of smart bombs means fewer bombs are needed. (In some cases, one precision-guided bomb can do the work of 10 dumb bombs). In Operation Desert Storm, only about 10 percent of the bombs dropped were smart munitions. The rate for Operation Iraqi Freedom topped 90 percent.