KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany -- Senior military leaders from the U.S. and European nations traveled across five countries April 25-28 to find the best way to quickly bring together forces spread across the continent.
Nearly 100 senior military logisticians and unit commanders visited sites in Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania to get eyes on where U.S. Army equipment and ammunition is stored, assembly areas, and to discuss plans for development and current shortfalls.
"The first thing is to get a common understanding," said Maj. Gen. Duane Gamble, commanding general, 21st Theater Sustainment Command. "This is our opportunity to talk through it and have everybody then see what more they can do, what we may have missed."
With a heavy focus on increasing deployment speed, the group visited new and proposed Army Prepositioned Stock sites, ammunition storage facilities, and areas where incoming Soldiers would live.
"It's based on a deterrent capability up front, but also a demonstrated ability to move in and assemble quickly," said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general, U.S. Army Europe. "To demonstrate you can do that, you need a place to move in to. That's why we need all these places out there that we can come into, and fill up bunkers with ammunition. The fuel is there, places for people to live, and the maintenance. That's what this is all about, to not have just enough to hold what is living there now, but to have the capacity to come in and build up."
Moving equipment across Europe is not a new task for the logisticians involved. Throughout the Cold War, US, British, German and other NATO and allied forces moved equipment regularly and proficiently said British Army Brigadier Allan McLeod, deputy chief of staff support, Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. While the basics are the same as in the 1980s, the addition of Eastern European countries offer unique challenges in infrastructure, storage capacity and assembly areas.
"It's a clean slate to do things," said Lt. Col Coleman Johnson, commander, 497th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion.
Based in Powidz, Poland, the composite battalion recently arrived to support and enhance logistics operations across the theater and have found the area offers a lot of space to grow for future operations.
"The Polish own a lot of this land out here," Johnson said. "The logistics hub that we have is very nice. It can house right now about 700 troops and we will be ramping that up to about 1,600 in the next 30 days. It's a very capable facility."
In addition to potential growth, physical limitations, such as the number of available rail cars, and legal and political issues, like crossing borders and moving military equipment, were all addressed as part of the trip. Working with allied partners in Eastern Europe was identified as a key part of improving the efficiency and ability to gather the needed troops and equipment spread across Europe.
"Ultimately, what we want to get to is an executable plan on the shelf that we can execute with reflexive competency," Gamble said.
While some parts of the plan are already in the works, like the use and expansion of sites in Poland and Romania, the leaders discussed ways to move ahead in fixing the logistics gaps found during the trip.
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