From Afghan Sell-Off To Pacific Build-Up: The Strategy Of Logistics

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/06/from-afghan-sell-off-to-pacific-build-up-the-strategy-of-logistics/



From Afghan Sell-Off To Pacific Build-Up: The Strategy Of Logistics
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on June 12, 2014 at 1:58 PM

WASHINGTON: Some 45 football fields and gear worth $5 billion. That’s how much excess inventory and storage room the Defense Logistics Agency has sold or destroyed since the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s not finished. DLA’s first sale of surplus equipment to local businesses in Afghanistan is scheduled for next week, its director told reporters this morning. But DLA’s job isn’t just downsizing for the post-war, post-sequestration era, Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek made clear: It’s also rebuilding a worldwide supply system to support the new national strategy, from Africa to the West Pacific.

“The big one for us in terms of the pivot to the Pacific is fuel,” Harnitchek said. While Napoleon’s army marched on its stomach and Nelson’s fleet depended on the wind, the modern US military guzzles gas, especially for aircraft. The Air Force’s recent decision to move from military-specification jet fuel to commercial fuel has made a major difference, Harnitchek said: Not only will it save millions of dollars, it will also allow the use of vastly more suppliers and storage sites worldwide. Nevertheless, the operational plans for Pacific still require DLA to provide “millions of barrels” of fuel across thousands of miles of distance.

Already, he said, “we’ve moved quite a bit of fuel to the Western Pacific from [Hawaii], based on consultation with the combatant commander,” Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Locklear. (Harnitchek didn’t mention specific contingency scenarios, but Korea, the Senkaku Islands, and Taiwan all come powerfully to mind). DLA is studying whether to further drain its long-standing reservoir in Hawaii — where the Japanese Navy’s failure to destroy the fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor made a crucial difference in World War II — to help beef up supplies in increasingly important partners such as Singapore and the Philippines.

For the six-year-old Africa Command, by contrast, the question isn’t quantity but access. Islamic extremists are on the rise, as are US military assistance missions, but the US doesn’t have the network of allies and partners in Africa that it has in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Even where politics allow, poor or non-existent roads, seaports, and airfields simply make delivery difficult.