Line in the Sand

here is no comparison between the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the war to topple the regime of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Twelve years ago, the United States and its allies spent more than five months stockpiling equipment and marshaling troops in Turkey and the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, before pushing Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in a 96-hour rout that followed six weeks of aerial bombardment. With access to Turkish bases and Saudi seaports, which are among the largest and most modern in the world, moving hundreds of thousands of troops and millions of tons of equipment to the battlefield was a fully achievable, albeit immensely complicated, undertaking.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the military objectives were far more ambitious. What's more, assistance from allies was far more circumspect. With severely limited support from Turkey and Saudi Arabia-which meant no access to seaports or staging areas for ground troops in those countries-the logistical demands also proved very ambitious. When the history of this war is written, the role of logistics planners in overcoming those hurdles will be seen as a major contributor to the campaign's outcome.

The challenge for logisticians was on full display in early April at the Army's Military Traffic Management Command operations center in Fort Eustis, Va., about 150 miles south of the Pentagon. In a noisy, windowless room, where the walls were covered with maps and computer printouts of shipping schedules for the more than 300 vessels the military was tracking in the midst of the war in Iraq, dozens of people worked around the clock to keep the troops, equipment, ammunition, food, fuel, water and medical supplies flowing into Iraq.

"In this war, everything is different," says Lori Starke, deputy commander of the command operations center. "There was no plan that we took off the shelf and dusted off. There is no book to go by."

The Military Traffic Management Command, the Air Force's Air Mobility Command and the Navy's Military Sealift Command are the key components of the Defense Department's Transportation Command-the organization responsible for moving troops and cargo wherever they are needed worldwide. The vast majority of military cargo headed to the Middle East moves through MTMC, which arranges the shipments of equipment from military installations to ports of embarkation, manages operations at the ports, and contracts with commercial carriers when military transport is insufficient.

"We do the same thing in wartime we do in peacetime, except a lot more of it," says Keith Morrow, executive assistant of the MTMC Operations Center. Between early December and the end of March, MTMC orchestrated more than 18,000 ammunition shipments alone. Command planners arranged to send more than 12 million square feet of cargo to the theater of war, involving 108,500 truck shipments and 6,168 rail shipments. While most of the attention was focused on Iraq, MTMC supports operations and exercises worldwide, from Afghanistan to South America.

REALITY CHECK

Coordinating all of these shipments is a cadre of men and women, civilian and military, active duty and reserve, many of whom have been doing this work for years. To do it right requires in-depth knowledge of the trucking and rail industries, the layout and load requirements of dozens of types of ships, interstate and international shipping and cargo-handling regulations, domestic and international customs laws, port operations and much more. Military cargo often is extraordinarily heavy, requiring special exemptions to carry it across certain bridges or highways. It also is often hazardous, requiring other permits and precautions before it can be moved.

"You're reacting all the time," says Edward Brown Jr., a deputy director for domestic distribution operations at MTMC. "You can be proactive all you want, but something always comes up." Those things often come up in the 9:30 a.m. daily teleconference Brown has with installation managers across the country. His staff is responsible for complying with transportation laws and regulations in every state, and they need to know who to call when things need to get done in a hurry. That means forging close relationships with military installation managers, federal and state regulators and industry officials. "Our job is to be flexible at any time. That's what we get paid to do," he says.

The process of moving cargo from military installations to the Middle East or elsewhere is constantly in flux. Labor shortages, equipment shortages or breakdowns, changes in war plans and a host of other factors continually affect planning. In addition, security is an ongoing concern. When intelligence reports indicate threats along shipping routes or in particular ports, plans often are changed, shipments rerouted and extra precautions taken.

Sgt. Maj. Terrance A. Heyward, whose last assignment was with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which led the charge into Baghdad, provides the eyes and ears on the ground for the logisticians in the command operations center. As the operations sergeant major, Heyward must know exactly what's going on at the nearly 30 ports MTMC currently is using worldwide. By visiting the ports and working the phones, "I'm the guy that brings reality to the plan," he says. Reality intrudes in unexpected ways-in the form of equipment that won't fit on certain decks of certain ships, or is too heavy to be put on commercial rail cars. Heyward has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the idiosyncrasies that characterize every seaport. He knows that certain ships can only get into the port at Corpus Christi, Texas, during low tide-otherwise they won't fit under the bridge that spans the entrance to the port. He knows how much traffic a given port can accommodate at a given time, and he knows that the shipping channel leading to the port in Beaumont, Texas, runs inbound in the mornings and outbound in the evenings-and don't even think about going against the traffic.

"When somebody plans that it will take 48 hours to load a vessel, I'm the guy that discovers the vessel has freight elevators and there's no way you're going to load that in 48 hours," Heyward says.

Anticipating such needs is critical to maintaining good relationships with port personnel in the United States and abroad, says Starke. The support of commercial port operators is essential to keep things running smoothly and to overcome the inevitable hurdles that arise.

Those hurdles were most evident during the deployment of the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, to Iraq. Initial war plans called for the division to enter Iraq from southern Turkey and form a northern front in the war. The unit's tanks and other heavy equipment were moved to the ports of Beaumont and Corpus Christi, Texas, and loaded on more than 40 ships, which headed toward the west coast of Turkey in late February. But in March, the Turkish parliament voted to prohibit the United States from using Turkish bases for operations in Iraq. For about three weeks, Defense war planners waited to see if Turkey would change its mind.

"We had over 40 ships doing circles in the Mediterranean," says Brig. Gen. Barbara Doornink, deputy commanding general and director of operations for MTMC. Six of the ships were unloaded before the deployment stalled. By the time MTMC got the word to redirect the cargo to Kuwait, nobody was surprised. "We were preparing for that decision," Doornink says. "We had run a lot of 'what-if' drills."

The redeployment to Kuwait added another two weeks to the arrival of the cargo, MTMC officials say. In addition, the backup of ships into Kuwait's harbor waiting to be unloaded added additional time-as much as three weeks to some shipments. Had the 4th Infantry Division been headed to Kuwait from the beginning, its gear probably would have been loaded on fewer, larger ships more easily unloaded in Kuwait than the ships contracted for moving the division to Turkey.

FROM FORT TO FOXHOLE

More surprising than the glitches may be how much logistics operations have improved since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Twelve years ago, for example, almost all ammunition was shipped on pallets in "break bulk" vessels, which are designed for loose cargo. Loading such ships requires teams of carpenters that essentially build walls and floors separating the cargo so it doesn't shift in transit. Unloading is equally labor-intensive, as those structures then must be broken down as cargo is removed. Today ammunition is shipped in containers, resulting in a 75 percent reduction in the amount of time it takes to load and unload ships. In addition, Transportation Command officials estimate that six container ships can haul the equivalent of 18 break bulk ships.

With an organization about half the size it was in 1991, MTMC has moved more equipment faster, more easily, and with fewer problems, officials say. Over the past decade, the Defense Department has improved rail heads and purchased custom rail cars for moving tanks and other heavy equipment from military installations to ports; it has upgraded the number and type of ships it uses for ferrying cargo, and it has improved cargo-tracking methods. In addition, MTMC sends teams to help units prepare for deployment and to supervise equipment loading so unloading is more efficient.

The improvements have paid off enormously in dramatically reduced ship-loading times, more organized shipments and faster deployments. For example, when the 101st Airborne Division deployed in February from Fort Campbell, Ky., to Kuwait, it did so 15 percent more quickly and with half the number of ships the division required in 1991, according to MTMC officials. Twelve years ago, the Defense Department-owned and -operated rail line between the installation and a commercial rail line 22 miles away in Hopkinsville, Ky., was deemed unfit for use, requiring 400 truckloads to move the division's equipment to the port of Jacksonville, Fla. (Upon its return after the war, the division used the rail line and experienced eight derailments, according to a Transportation Command history of the deployment).

This time, by shipping its equipment to Jacksonville on 33 trains over improved rail lines, the division deployed much more quickly. Also, ships were loaded and organized in such a way that the division had immediate combat power upon unloading in Kuwait. Deployments of the 4th Infantry Division and the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Lejeune, N.C., saw comparable improvements in efficiency over their experiences in 1991.

Logisticians also have made significant progress in tracking equipment and supplies while they are in transit. In December, MTMC started enforcing a rule that all container shipments must include highly detailed inventories of the contents. If a shipment contains boots, for example, the inventory needs to say which sizes they are. Of 6,500 containers shipped earlier this year, about 10 percent were "frustrated," meaning they were pulled aside until shippers could verify and label their contents. Better to frustrate the shipper than to frustrate the troops on the receiving end, MTMC officials contend.

"This was painful to enforce," says Doornink. Some suppliers balked at the requirement, but Doornink says it is essential to eliminate problems for troops on the receiving end-problems that were legendary during the 1991 Gulf War, when thousands of containers, contents unknown, had to be opened and inventoried in Saudi Arabia.

In the end, the success of logistics in the Iraq operation, as in all others, is measured by the performance of combat troops in Iraq. "If our customer isn't successful, then we aren't successful," Doornink says.