in USTRANSCOM through Karachi and then upward through two main ground routes through Pakistan into Afghanistan. As a logistician, I’ve watched that movement from several different jobs that I’ve held over the last five or six years. If you had asked me prior to November 2011, what do you think about that, I would have said well, that’s the way we do things. It’s almost an assumption that we’ll move on the ground because of the access and the distance in a landlocked country and all the operational impact. When it closed, there was a little bit of a concern on the part of DLA about how we would provide sustainment inside a landlocked country, knowing that we’d been heavily dependent on that Pakistan ground line of communication. Fortunately, in about 2008, USTRANSCOM and Central Command decided they needed another entrance, and the northern distribution network was established. Frankly speaking, our dependence on the PAKGLOC was really on my mind. As it turned out, we were not as dependent as I had thought we were. The northern distribution network and the effective partnership between DLA and USTRANSCOM proved a successful workaround, based on the dedicated effort, focus and outstanding support by the rank and file members of both organizations—USTRANSCOM and their ground component is the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command—as well as other partners. Quite frankly, since the early part of 2012 we’ve even grown our theater sustainment support. Q: Staying with Afghanistan, looking at how you did things in Iraq versus how you’re going to have to do things in Afghanistan, what does DLA’s forward deployment structure look like in Afghanistan in comparison to Iraq? Is the structure you have now an evolving structure or are you where you want to be? A: I’ll tell you like all the operators will tell you, Afghanistan is not Iraq—but our structure is very similar. We have a DLA support team headed up by a military 06 who manages the various commodities, supply chains we support, and the distribution processes we have in place. If you look at the reverse <strong>logistics</strong>, the disposition requirements, the defense reutilization and marketing office—there are three sites today in Afghanistan. That structure is very similar to what we used in Iraq. We had the same reutilization and marketing office sites, where the military members could turn in equipment that was no longer needed or was unserviceable. In Iraq, as it came time for the repositioning out, units were able to move some serviceable material to us and let DLA provide the disposition services. There were several categories of that reutilization that we were able to use to help us identify exactly how to do that right. First of all, we would try to redistribute it to needs that the services had. If that didn’t work, then we would try to market it and sell it as scrap or as unserviceable military gear. If that didn’t work, then we would take the responsibility for demilitarizing it or destroying it and then additionally selling that demilitarized material as scrap to eligible consumers. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the theme there is the deployable agility of the DLA workforce. Some of that work I described is inherently governmental, so we need DLA employees to step up to the responsibility of deploying, and we’ve had incredible success with our employees stepping up to those responsibilities. Q: You’ve explained the structure that DLA has in Afghanistan. Can you go a little deeper into what DLA will do to manage the 22 | MLF 6.5 flow of equipment and avoid mountains or iron or tremendous backlogs? A: The role that DLA plays and its support to the mission will be very similar to that in Iraq: to provide a single touchpoint for the combatant commander and his component commands inside the AOR to turn to for disposition services and capabilities. In Iraq, we established a place to unburden the services of excess and no longer serviceable equipment, and ensured what went back was exactly what had to go back. The end goal is identical in Afghanistan. However, techniques, tactics and procedures for doing this will be different, because we don’t have an outlet. There is no mature government infrastructure to do business with, from a marketing and resell environment, so our practice and our technique of managing that will be somewhat different. We’ll have to work carefully on how we plan to do the demilitarization, for instance. Let me give you an example. Today, in Iraq, we are able to successfully market to the Iraqis. A businessman in Iraq could purchase over 600,000 pounds of scrap from our DRMO site. We don’t have that same enterprise opportunity in Afghanistan, but we in DLA still have the requirement to demilitarize that material and move it into a categorization called scrap. What we’re going to do with that and how we actually dispose of it in that country is something we’re working on. We don’t have any perfect answers. Moving it out of that country, paying to ship it, is not an alternative. It’s too expensive; we don’t get any return on that investment for our taxpayer. So we’ll have to come up with an innovative approach to actually dispose of that material. I’ve talked about the reutilization and the resale and the actual disposal of it. How we move that out of Afghanistan, off their terrain, is something we’re working real hard. Q: Does DLA have a seat at the table in deciding what happens to a piece of equipment? What’s DLA’s role in that decision? A: That’s another great question. Almost all the military equipment over there belongs to the military services. There’s very little actual material, actual supplies, that belong to DLA. Some of our sustainment repair parts, for example, belong to DLA until we have a requirement for them from the service, a point of sale if you will, and we then transfer it to the military service that needs it. But by and large, the things you’re talking about—military weapons systems, trucks, communications systems, infrastructure like the re-locatable buildings and tents—all belong to the services. Despite that, we absolutely have a seat at the table. I would say we’re a partner with the services on that. We’re not an equal partner—it’s their supplies, it’s their material, it’s their weapons systems and fighting platforms—but we absolutely sit at the table with them and provide our expertise with regard to the tactical questions: How can I move it to you? What condition does it need to be in? What are the processes I need to go through to take it off my records so the supply record-keeping is accurate? Those sort of administrative functions that make sure the property is properly documented and taken care of are accomplished in partnership with the units. DLA plays a key role in that. With regards to physically transferring property, those three sites that I talked about occupy approximately 40 acres in theater and we’re about to double that over the next few months as we www.MLF-kmi.com
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