21st TSC hones skills during first of three staff exercises

By Staff Sgt. Warren WrightApril 2, 2015

21st TSC hones skills during first of three staff exercises
Staff members from throughout the 21st Theater Sustainment Command look on as they are briefed on current operations going on across the command's area of operations during an operations update brief on Panzer Kaserne March 27. The staff conducted th... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany - Representatives from the various staff sections of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command participated in a week-long staff exercise designed to assess and improve staff proficiencies on select training tasks on Panzer Kaserne, March 23-27.

The staff exercise, or STAFFEX, was the first of three exercises which will prepare the command to participate in exercise Trident Juncture later this year.

While the 21st TSC staff performs staff functions on a daily basis, it was important for the staff to utilize the STAFFEX in order to train collectively and assess how to improve their functions, said William Grossman, the deputy chief of the 21st TSC's training section and one of the key planners of the exercise.

As a result of the first exercise, the staff has been able to make improvements to how they conduct operations on a daily basis.

"This being the initial staff exercise, we had some very technical communications goals that we had set," said Col. Matthew Redding, the 21st TSC's chief of staff. "We set some product outputs and some process output goals, and we've met those for what is primarily going to be our battle staff members."

Initial planning for the exercise began more than two months prior to the STAFFEX when key planners first briefed the chief of staff and began coordinating multiple internal progress reviews.

Additionally, the team received support from a mission command systems integration team from Fort Bragg which assisted in the improvement of mission command systems within the organization.

As a result, the staff was able to "improve some of the briefing products we produced as a result of this STAFFEX," said Grossman.

"We've tweaked and improved our unit battle rhythm and identified some processes that may allow us to reduce some meetings and give more time back to staff sections."

During the STAFFEX, the 21st TSC staff utilized current operations taking place throughout Europe, such as Dragoon Ride, to formulate the backdrop for the scenario-based staff estimates and updates.

"The neat thing is that the work we've accomplished for this STAFFEX is going to carry on to the following week since we still have ongoing operations," said Redding. At the end of the day, all of the hard work that the staff has done is going to be played out every single day because we are using live systems to track units and sustainment across the theater."

While this was just the crawl phase of the three-phase exercise, the 21st TSC plans to use what they have learned to better prepare themselves for upcoming exercises and real world missions.

"We plan to build on the things we've learned from this STAFFEX to improve our daily operations and to help set the conditions for the two future STAFFEXs we plan on conducting later this year," said Grossman.

"The staff has done a fantastic job," said Redding. "We're really looking forward to the next exercise."