JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. -- No one knows when the next crisis involving the U.S. military will occur, or where.
But thanks to the personnel at the Army Strategic Logistics Activity Charleston, or ASLAC, supplies and equipment now aboard the U.S. Naval Ship Red Cloud are ready for action.
Army Prepositioned Stocks - 3 is a program that places combat-ready equipment aboard naval ships, which spend up to 36 months at sea.
The equipment loaded aboard the 950-foot long floating warehouse comprises a port opening package, enabling the landing of combat equipment for infantry brigade combat teams and materiel to sustain forces ashore.
"That's extremely important in this [geopolitical] climate we're currently going through. Hostilities could mount anywhere in the world," said Paul Turner, director of Operations at ASLAC. "And the Army, as well as the other services, has got to react extremely quickly. The way to do it is have equipment on ships that are able to deploy in a moment's notice to marry up with Army forces."
Red Cloud is a ship that is just over three football fields in length, and contains six interior decks along with the weather deck. The ship has a cargo capacity of 350,000 square feet or six football fields. A typical ship load will contain more than 1,200 pieces of cargo.
It is classified as a large, medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ship, or LMSR, managed by Military Sealift Command. As it turned out, this was the first time in 10 years that the Red Cloud was anchored at Charleston, ASLAC officials said. The Red Cloud was involved in the movement of cargo for Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
The fully loaded ship departed port on Jan. 29, sailing down the Cooper River into the Atlantic Ocean. In about 30 days it will arrive in its area of responsibility.
A lot of preparation, coordination and maintenance are conducted prior to an LMSR's arrival. Once anchored at "Wharf Alpha," at Joint Base Charleston, ASLAC has 109 days to get the ship back out to sea loaded with equipment in TM (Technical Manual) 10-20 standard. This means it's fully mission capable and ready to hand off to a unit when needed, ASLAC officials explained.
While meeting the deadline is very important, so is safety.
"There's a lot of moving parts and this puts safety on the front burner. Moving this equipment is inherently dangerous, not just moving to the wharf, but moving it around the port and moving it on the ship," said Bob O'Brien, general manager of ASLAC. "It's a very condensed area … it's a lot of equipment that needs to go on the ship. So safety is paramount."
ASLAC facilities are located about nine miles from the wharf. The equipment is convoyed and stage adjacent to the ship.
Currently the APS-3 program has a total of six LMSR ships and two ammunition ships. All LMSRs also carry ammunition, O'Brien said.
ASLAC's primary mission is to repair, maintain, and configure Army equipment into unit sets. It then places the sets aboard ships strategically placed around the globe, O'Brien said.
ASLAC's higher headquarters is the 406th Army Field Support Brigade at Fort Bragg, N.C. That brigade's higher headquarters is the Army Sustainment Command at Rock Island Arsenal, Ill., which is part of the Army Materiel Command, located at Huntsville, Ala.
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