Air University Review, July-August 1967
Throughout history, the armed forces of all nations have done an unsatisfactory logistics job. Commanders have always complained that they did not have what they needed at the right place at the right time. It was always a case of “too little and too late.”
One of the most glaring historical examples of a logistics mess occurred during the Spanish-American War. After 33 years of peace, the War Department was suddenly confronted with the task of supporting and supplying a force of 250,000 men, about ten times the size of the peacetime army. The area around Tampa, Florida, embarkation point for the expeditionary force for Cuba, was a scene of fantastic disorder and confusion.
Lack of planning by the War Department was at the root of the trouble; in fact national policy forbade the making of specific war plans. No decisions were made on the nature of the mission of an expeditionary force, and there was no determination as to the size of the force needed. The actual procedure was to see how many troops, ships, and supplies could be congregated at Tampa and then decide what to do with them.
The expeditionary force was sent to tropical Cuba clothed in heavy woolen winter uniforms. Lightweight uniforms did not arrive until after the Cuban phase of the war was over. And when the time came to embark for Cuba, it was found that the transport ships assembled for the purpose could carry only 17,000 of the 25,000 men who were waiting to go.
At one point, the commanding general of the expeditionary force sent a message to Washington recommending that the manufacture of Springfield rifles be discontinued. He was informed that the manufacture of these rifles had been discontinued five years before.
Conditions were so bad that Theodore Roosevelt, an active participant in the conflict, was moved to comment, “There is no head, no management whatever in the War Department. Against a good nation we should be helpless.”
The Spanish-American War marked a turning point in management within the American Army, and from this point of view the poor administration of the war was of great benefit. Criticisms leveled at military management led to improved conditions at the beginning of the twentieth century.
It is perhaps unfair to contrast the logistics performance during the Spanish-American War with the buildup in Southeast Asia during the last two years. Today we have the advantage of many years of experience, including three intervening major wars fought overseas, as well as the benefit of tremendous advances in technology and management techniques.
It must be remembered, however, that the forces and weapon systems we are dealing with in 1967 are much larger and infinitely more complex and sophisticated than those of 1898. And it is also worth noting that while we effectively maintain large combat forces 10,000 miles from home in Southeast Asia, there is no lessening of support to our Air Force units on the defense perimeters elsewhere in the Pacific, in Europe, and at home.
There can be no doubt that the expanded flow of men, supplies, and equipment to South Vietnam beginning in the spring of 1965 has been the key to continued existence of South Vietnam as a nation and has frustrated the political and military objectives of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam. While the performance of all U.S. military forces in the theater has been magnificent, success still falls to the side that has mastered logistics.
In this connection I would like to quote two passages from a speech by General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after he returned from a tour of Vietnam in January 1967:
Almost incredibly, the United States moved nearly 200,000 men and almost two and a half million tons of supplies and equipment over thousands of miles to Southeast Asia between July and October 1965. This alone, in my judgment, was a magnificent feat of arms. No other nation could have achieved it.
After describing the difficulties in raising, training, equipping, and organizing the forces, General Wheeler went on to say:
Perhaps even harder tasks were involved in moving them in and preparing logistically for their employment. It was as if one were to move a major American city some 10,000 miles, place it in a radically new environment, and expect that every aspect of its existence—public and private—would he provided for without delay or confusion, and in the face of dangers and difficulties such as its citizens had never confronted before.
It would be too much to describe fully the evolution of Air Force logistics support in Southeast Asia, all problems that we encountered, and the solutions that we applied. But I should touch a few of the highlights.
The war in Southeast Asia provided the first live test of the effectiveness of our modern logistics system and brought out defects that had to be corrected. Probably the greatest single cause of the problems we encountered in the early stages was that theories conceived in peacetime were not based on any realistic tests of the logistics system and did not conform to the realities of the Vietnam conflict. The system had been geared more to the support of short-term deployments than to the support of prolonged limited war. Supporting a prolonged conflict on the other side of the world is a far cry from supporting a unit on brief maneuvers a relatively short distance from its home base. We had to react to many of our problems in Vietnam on a case-by-case basis. There was an obvious need for the total logistics system to evolve further in order routinely to avoid many problems and solve those we could not avoid.
By way of background, in 1961 the Air Force deployed a limited number of aircraft in Vietnam. These planes were deployed with flyaway kits containing spare parts to support a 30-day sustained mission. There was no logistics support base of any size in Vietnam at that time.
With the buildup of U.S. support to the Vietnam Air Force early in 1962, the Pacific Air Forces decided to establish a base supply at Tan Son Nhut. It was supported directly from the continental United States, surface transportation being the basic means of resupply. Many problems were encountered, including storage, environmental conditions, and responsive communications.
As operations continued to accelerate, new procedures were adopted to improve depot supply support. One such step was the establishment of Weapon System Control Points. For each aircraft model in Southeast Asia, an Air Materiel Area in the United States was designated as the control point. Each control point receives requisitions, performs necessary research, selects the proper source, maintains follow-up, and expedites delivery of the materiel to the requesting activity. Faraway units in the field must be relieved of as many logistics details as possible, and this close monitoring action gives them a “home” they can depend upon for support.
The success of this procedure for weapon systems led to a similar concept for commodities. Thirteen Commodity Control Points were established at the Air Materiel Areas, to receive requisitions from Southeast Asia bases for such items as parts for vehicles, photo equipment, and ground generators. The need for such a system became evident early in 1965 when we found that such ground equipment as tugs, runway sweepers, and bomb lifts were deadlined for parts.
Realizing that overseas combat operations generate peak workloads beyond the capabilities of the operating forces, the Air Force Logistics Command responded to the needs by providing special skills and extra effort in the maintenance, supply, procurement, and transportation areas.
One form of this assistance involves the use of AFLC’s Rapid Area Maintenance (RAM) teams. In order to free tactical unit personnel to carry on standard maintenance, engineers and maintenance specialists who are members of the RAM force expedite removal and recovery of crashed and battle-damaged aircraft. They make on-site repairs or put planes into condition for a one-time flight to Air Force or contractor facilities for repair. They also assist the bases in such work as aircraft and jet engine maintenance and modification.
The effectiveness of RAM team members was attested in a letter I received late last year from Lieutenant General William W. Momyer, Commander of the Seventh Air Force (PACAF):
Your people did a terrific job following the attack on Tan Son Nhut. As you know, we had some fifteen aircraft damaged in some degree. Except for two CH-3 helicopters and an RF-4C, every one of these damaged aircraft was back in the air in less than a week. Parts held up the chopper and RF-4C or they would have been in the air also. Your people worked around the clock, and I am very appreciative of the way they have played on the combat team.
We also have Rapid Area Supply Support (RASS) teams to help in processing the large volume of materiel received in the Southeast Asia theater. These supply experts move into newly established bases where permanent personnel have not arrived in force, or they augment rear-echelon bases where the buildup of supplies and equipment has exceeded base capability. Their purpose is to assist bases in establishing accounting, inventory, storage, and issue activities.
Our Rapid Area Transportation Support (RATS) teams in Vietnam have carried out such functions as processing backlogged priority cargo and providing on-the-job training for Vietnamese civilians to take over the work.
In the early stages another highly successful innovation was the “Special Express” system for airmunitions. It was developed to provide a fast, even flow of munitions directly from the West Coast of the United States to Southeast Asia. Originally it was a five-ship shuttle system; it has since been substantially expanded. The ships were loaded like retail stores, carrying various types of munitions, each in its own temperature-controlled section of the hold. Arriving in the combat zone, they anchored offshore to become floating munitions warehouses. As required, lighters (shore-based offloading vessels) pulled alongside the Special Express ships, and the munitions were loaded directly into mobile weapons transporters that had been prepositioned aboard the lighter. Once back on shore, tractor trucks hauled the loaded transporters directly to the using units.
Along with the increase in air activity in Southeast Asia, there was an increased requirement for support bases. To overcome the problem of inadequate or nonexistent facilities, there has been a rapid expansion of existing bases and fast construction of new ones. Originally, it had been estimated that the expansion would cover four new bases and two or three established bases. The expansion program has since grown to 21 bases, with new ones being literally hacked out of the jungle or—as with Cam Rahn Bay—built on a pile of sand.
It was obvious that PACAF’s limited logistics forces would need assistance in bringing these bases to operational status. Therefore we organized the Logistics Activation Task Force (LATAF), with the top-priority mission of insuring orderly and timely logistics actions to the expanding base program. Located in the command post of Headquarters AFLC at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, LATAF is composed of experienced logistics specialists drawn from the functional staff agencies. Their job is to monitor and assist in the equipping of newly constructed bare bases in order that proper facilities will be prepared in advance of the arrival of assigned tactical units. In this way the time lag between deployment of a combat unit and its operational readiness within the theater is held to the minimum or eliminated altogether. Also the combat unit is assured that its weapon systems will have equipment needed to stay at peak efficiency.
Actually, the LATAF performs the functions of determining what is needed, the requisitioning and timing of delivery of supplies and equipment, and other responsibilities that would normally fall to the base logistics staff if one existed. It coordinates closely with units already in place to expedite delivery of supplies and materials. Any or all of the 25,000 to 40,000 line items normally stocked at an Air Force base could be required at each of the 21 Southeast Asia bases. At a new base, the materiel involved can cover 25,000 line items, 950,000 units, 7000 measurement tons, and 4 million pounds of material. In addition to our efforts in the zone of interior, a LATAF project officer is assigned to each major base during the phase-in of equipment, to check on shipment of items and assist in the establishment of records.
AFLC has a project known as “Bitter Wine,” which is probably the largest single Air Force logistics effort since the Korean conflict. To date, over 29 million units, 339,000 line items and 124 million pounds of material—all vitally needed—have been moved to Southeast Asia by Bitter Wine. Under an entirely new concept, related items are grouped together and whole units shipped in their entirety, replacing the old system of requisitioning individual items. One package may contain equipment necessary for an entire machine shop, a jet engine facility, or a complete base laundry. Bitter Wine includes not only the whole range of material needed to make the bases operational as far as weapon systems are concerned but also the “behind the line” support.
Bitter Wine assets for the two most recent Southeast Asia bases have been shipped as “unit moves.” This means that all assets destined for a base are assembled and loaded on one ship, thus providing a maximum of material in a minimum of time. Each shipment consists of approximately 6500 measurement tons. During the last year the fill rate for all Bitter Wine bases was increased to 90 percent. This increase was made possible by system mechanization and development of new procedures for processing Air Force supply directives.
The foregoing are a few of the logistics innovations that have been peculiar to the war in Vietnam. But more important to the efficient and effective support of all Air Force weapon systems than innovations adapted to meet a temporary requirement have been the fundamental changes in management of all Air Force resources, particularly the management of our financial resources.
During the early part of this decade, budgets were requested and approved for amounts that might require as much as two or two and a half years to obligate. Some procurement quantities were scheduled for delivery as far as two or three years into the future. We had substantial carry-over of unused funds from one fiscal year to the next. The Department of Defense and the Congress looked upon these practices with increasing disfavor, with the result that in FY 1964 funds in one particular appropriation were so drastically reduced as to force a dramatic change in our management concepts, policies, and systems.
A number of improvement actions followed: we established financial goals to measure program accomplishment; we elevated requirements reviews and procurement programs to top management levels; we indoctrinated all levels of management as to industry’s capacity to produce supplies and services; and we inaugurated the practice of financing only those portions of our needs that, in fact, required financing at that particular time. AFLC adjusted quickly to the policy of treating its available financing essentially as an annual appropriation, instead of the previous concept of continuing appropriations.
When escalation of the war began in the fall of 1964, we were on an extremely austere peacetime budget. It was necessary to look at our ballooning requirements in three increments: those that could be managed within available funds; those buys that would have to be deferred until a supplemental appropriation could be expected; and those buys that could be deferred until the first of the following fiscal year.
Obviously, major innovations had to be made in our methodology of computing requirements and in the methods and techniques of procurement. As with our RAM, RASS, and RATS teams, it is to the everlasting credit of our weapon systems managers, item managers, and procurement personnel that they could accommodate to these major changes while concurrently supporting the escalating requirements, most of which were past the “lead-time away” need dates.
We have met the challenge to our logistic systems and have assured responsive support. We are now examining our policies to insure that the cessation of hostilities will not find us faced with the large stockpiles that existed after all prior conflicts. Even with a sudden ending of hostilities; under our current procurement practices stock levels will be so lean that production by industry will have to continue substantially into the future, although on a decreasing scale. Thus we hope to avoid sudden terminations and great shocks to the economy.
In essence, this basic philosophy also applies to labor. We have avoided increasing the work force in our air materiel areas substantially above the pre-Vietnam level. We wanted to avoid a rapid buildup which, with the ending of hostilities, would cause a surplus labor position and immediate comparable reduction in force and all that it implies.
How, then, are we meeting the greatly increased demand for repair of aircraft components? For a number of years the Air Force has used contract maintenance for approximately 50 percent of its requirement. As our requirements have increased, we have moved a greater proportion of work to industry, which has great capacity and flexibility. As a matter of policy, we have tried to move production-line type of work to industry and do a greater proportion of “job lot” work organically. I am convinced that this policy has resulted in flexible, responsive, and economical support.
Modern communications, electronic data-processing equipment, and rapid transportation are essential to the techniques used for improving financial management. As one example, their availability made it possible for us to concentrate management attention on capital equipment, which is subject to depot overhaul and is the most expensive segment of our inventory. The objective is to retrieve these reparable carcasses from the customer quickly, bringing them into the hands of the logistics service to be overhauled, turned around, and reissued. Minimizing the turnaround time reduces the number of spare end items in the inventory. Akin to these expensive end items, numbering some 77,000 line items with a value of $5.5 billion, are the bits and pieces needed to overhaul them.
We developed a system to recalculate our overhaul requirements on a biweekly basis, which generates the need to recover serviceable carcasses and also procurement actions to acquire bits and pieces. We call this program MISTR, for Management of Items Subject to Repair. Formerly we accomplished annual overhaul production schedules for both organic and contract maintenance, updating quarterly.
Turning now to an overall view of logistics, I believe it can be said that, in comparison with support provided during past conflicts in our lifetime, today’s logistics system is lean, fast, and flexible. It has successfully met the challenge of Vietnam without lessening support elsewhere.
Throughout recent history of modern armed forces it has been necessary to position large supply depots and repair facilities as close to the operational units as the tactical situation allowed. Hence, during World War II, for example, supply and repair depots were positioned in Great Britain and moved onto the Continent only after a substantial beachhead had been established.
In recent years, for both economy and efficiency, we have closed all our overseas depots, and for the first time we are operating in combat with logistics support direct from the United States. This is not to say that we do not perform depot-level maintenance overseas, for we package repair and modification kits and furnish people and tools for specific jobs that can be performed on the tactical air bases. But the conventional overseas depot is no longer needed. Operating in this manner is possible because of remarkable improvements and technical advances in three areas: communications, electronic data processing, and rapid air transportation.
Fast communication with units to be supported is essential. We have advanced from a manual supply requisition system, which responded no faster than the speed of mail service, to a teletype system, and presently to the AUTODIN system, which connects major bases with supply depots through automatic switching centers. Although AUTODIN can communicate worldwide supply demands within minutes, there are still inadequacies in the system caused by periods of technical difficulty and priority sharing with other communications requirements. The next step forward, in my opinion, must be a satellite communications system dedicated to logistics. This would be considerably less expensive and far more effective than AUTODIN.
Combined with improved communications has been the widespread use of computer technology. Computers allow us to process demands in hours instead of days, maintain better control of our assets, forecast inventory requirements, and do myriad other logistics chores that once required time-consuming and less-effective manual computations.
The third major improvement in logistics support has been in air transportation. For moving high-cost items, air has long proven to be the most economical form of transportation and provides the fastest response to requirements. Compare the 20-hour flights by C-141 from the East Coast to Vietnam with the grueling 45-hour trans-Pacific flights of C-54s and C-97s during the Korean War. The introduction of the C-5 transport will offer air transportation in still another dimension. Not only will we have an improved capability for deployment of large forces and for truly massive airlift and resupply, but the reduced cost per ton-mile realized by these transports will put them in direct competition with other forms of transportation. Cargo that once was considered air-eligible only for emergency needs will become air-eligible purely from the standpoint of economics.
Putting these factors of rapid communications, automatic data processing, and rapid air transportation together with continuing management improvements, we can see that we have many opportunities for still greater improvements in Air Force logistics. In the years to come the complexity of supporting Air Force weapon systems will not diminish, but perfection will always be the goal we strive for.
Hq Air Force Logistics Command
General Kenneth Burton Hobson (USMA) is Commander, Air Force Logistics Command. After graduation from the Military Academy he completed flying training and transferred to the Air Corps in February 1934. He served first with the 73d Pursuit Squadron and in February 1937 joined the 80th Service Squadron, Albrook Field, C.Z. Assigned to the 22d Bombardment Squadron in April 1940, he assumed command in May 194l and moved with it to the Southwest Pacific Theater. He commanded the 22d until September 1942, when he became Engineering Officer, Far East Service Command. The following month he was appointed Operations Officer, Fifth Bomb Command, Southwest Pacific, and served as its Chief of Staff from January to June 1943. He was then assigned to the War Department General Staff, Washington, where he served until January 1946. Subsequent assignments have been as Chief, Table of Organization and Equipment Branch, ACS/Operations, later Chief, Organization Division, Hq AAF; student, Air War College, 1947-48; Deputy Director of Plans, Hq Strategic Air Command; Commander, 92d Bomb Wing, Fairchild AFB, Washington; Deputy Director and then Director of Manpower and Organization, Hq USAF; Vice Commander, Fifth Air Force, Japan; Commander, Ogden Air Materiel Area, to August 1961, when he became Vice Commander, AFLC. He has been Commander since 1 August 1965.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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