Do Stryker Brigade Combat Teams Need Forward Support ...

A Fond Farewell
On 3 June, I turned over command of the U.S.
Army Combined Arms Support Command
(CASCOM) and Fort Lee, Virginia, to Major
General Jim Chambers. I could not be more comfortable
that CASCOM is in the best of hands, and Nancy
and I wish Jim and Elaine the very best in this pivotal
position in Army logistics.
As I settle into my new job as the Deputy Chief
of Staff, G–4, Department of the Army, allow me to
express my sincere gratitude and reflect on a few of
the significant accomplishments of the unsung heroes
within the CASCOM Team. These accomplishments
and countless others were possible only because of
the hard work, dedicated efforts, and commitment
to the fight of the entire CASCOM Team—Soldiers,
civilians, joint and allied military personnel, and contractors.
The CASCOM Team’s focus was always
on ensuring that the Army’s sustainers are prepared
to Support Victory in operations on the battlefield of
today and tomorrow.
Army Transformation has continued to move forward
rapidly, and the CASCOM Team has continued
to refine the great work producing in the Modular
Force logistics concept. Feedback from the field
indicates that our new sustainment structure is working
pretty well—but we know we didn’t get it exactly
right (which we knew would be the case), and a number
of refinements are already under way.
One forum established to ensure we stay in touch
with what our sustainment units are experiencing out
on the ground is the “Reverse Collection and Analysis
Team,” or R–CAAT. R–CAATs bring redeployed
sustainment commanders and key members of their
staff to CASCOM to share their experiences. The use
of R–CAATs has paid enormous dividends by providing
an excellent method for directly infusing lessons
learned into our sustainment doctrine, organization,
training, and all other facets of DOTLMPF (doctrine,
organization, training, materiel, leadership and education,
personnel, and facilities). The R–CAAT program
has helped to rapidly close the gap between how
we envisioned things working and how they actually
work out where the rubber meets the road, and we
hope to continue to be able to use them.
History was made with the establishment of the
new Logistics Branch, which has joined officers
of the Quartermaster, Ordnance and Transportation
regiments into one unified branch that emphasizes the
multifunctional nature of Army logistics. Today, and
into the foreseeable future, logistics officers must be
ARMY LOGISTICIAN PROFESSIONAL BULLETIN OF UNITED STATES ARMY LOGISTICS
by Li e u t e n a n t GeneraL MitcheLL h. StevenSon
multifunctional and able to operate effectively amidst
uncertainty and unpredictability in the full spectrum
of operations. I think our new Logistics Branch will
enable us to achieve just that.
To further ensure that we have especially competent
and highly trained logistics planners in our
operational-level sustainment headquarters, the Army
Logistics Management College (ALMC) developed
the Theater Logistics Studies Program (TLog) to
replace the long-running Logistics Executive Development
Course. TLog will equip logistics planners
with the operational- and strategic-level tools they
need to deploy and sustain the Modular Force and
solve large-scale theater-level logistics problems.
In an effort to ensure that our operational-level sustainment
headquarters are put through their paces before
deploying to Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring
Freedom, CASCOM’s training developers developed
and executed a complex, multilevel collective training
exercise dubbed the “Logistics Training Exercise” and
have as of this writing already put three expeditionary
sustainment command headquarters through it, helping
to ensure they were ready for about any challenges they
would face once deployed. Additionally, each of the
schools within CASCOM has aggressively provided
mobile training teams throughout the Army in an effort
to bring training to units and ease some of the stress on
an Army with an already high operating tempo.
To assist in the transformation of sustainment
training, the CASCOM Team moved forward with a
concept called “lifelong learning” and established the
“Sustainment Center of Excellence Lifelong Learning
Portal” (SCoE–LLP). The SCoE–LLP, which operates
with the virtual muscle of the SCoE Sustainment
Knowledge Network (SKN) (now available on line),
is the hub supporting lifelong learning and collaboration
for the CASCOM, Ordnance, Quartermaster,
Transportation, Soldier Support Institute, and ALMC
learning domains.
But probably the best and most significant thing
that’s happened to CASCOM since its creation was
the decisions of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure
(BRAC) Commission. As a result of BRAC, the
centerpiece of the transformation within the Army
Training and Doctrine Command is the establishment
of four multibranch “centers of excellence”—and
one of these four will be the Sustainment Center of
Excellence at Fort Lee, where all training and combat
development for all of Army logistics will be centralized
by 2011. There is an enormous amount of work
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