This time last year I was writing a 'from the editor' about changes here at Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin. A review of the Combined Arms Support Command's Table of Distribution allowances had resulted in reductions and other actions that caused a near complete turnover of the staff of ASPB, and we were at less than half our normal manning, with about a month during which we were down to a staff of just one editor.
That staffing shortage required some changes in how we do business, some of which were great changes that we will hang onto, but some of which were not ideal. Those less ideal changes included a reduced acceptance of articles from the field and an overall reduction in our content both in print and online.
Fortunately as we move into 2020, we enjoy relatively robust manning and, while we are sticking with a quarterly publication cycle, each quarter will be filled with much more content than we were able to produce last year.
What this means for our readers is that each issue will be thicker and filled with more content from the field: more TTPs, lessons learned and other content from your sustainment peers across the enterprise.
Additionally, we will be resuming our previous practice of publishing online only content in addition to the content included in each print edition.
So, for you, the reader, you'll be getting more of what we think makes you pick up and read this publication.
For our contributors in the field, this will mean that we will be able to publish more of your submissions. Last year we were unfortunately turning away roughly seventy-five percent of submissions. This meant that there was a lot of good, relevant content that we weren't able to publish.
Going into 2020, we think we'll be at roughly the opposite ratio; we expect to accept the majority of submissions, while only turning away content that really isn't a good fit for our publication.
Better Visibility on Upcoming Issues
We also have a more developed vision of themes for upcoming issues and should be able to publish our themes several issues in advance. This will help our regular and new contributors to shape their submissions to the theme of a given issue. This will also mean that our content will be more on-point for our readers.
In this issue we focused on Allies and Partners. Our next issue, April to July, will focus on the topic of Building Strategic Readiness.
July to August will focus on Defining the Strategic Support Area. With upcoming major exercises such as Defender 2020 and all of its contributing and related efforts, a lot of you readers and contributors in the field will be living firsthand the experience of defining the Strategic Support Area. We hope many of you will capture those efforts and lessons learned and submit relevant articles on the topic. Deadline for submissions for this issue is May 1, 2020. Please visit our webpage at www.alu.army.mil/alog and check out the 'submissions' tab for more information on how to submit to Army sustainment Professional Bulletin.
To finish off this year, we plan to revisit an ongoing topic of interest, Modernization of Sustainment, for the October to December issue. Modernization of the entire Army continues to be a top priority of the current Army senior leadership. This issue will address how the sustainment community fits into, and contributes to, modernization. We hope those of you in the field living the modernization fight day-to-day will contribute. Are you in a unit that is undergoing significant change as part of modernization? Are you directly involved in the fielding of new sustainment equipment and systems? What lessons have you learned from past modernizations at the operational and tactical levels that would benefit your peers throughout the sustainment community? Help us answer these questions and more, by submitting your modernization focused content for our October to December issue. The deadline for submissions for this issue will be August 1, 2020.
Upcoming Surveys
We here at Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin want to make sure we are meeting the needs of our audiences. We take our best guess at selecting and publishing content, but we do that best when we have solid data and input on which to base that best guess.
To further that, we plan to conduct surveys and other information gathering efforts to help determine what content is most useful to you, our reader. What makes you pick up our publication? What makes you click our articles instead of scrolling past them? The more we are able to answer these questions, the better able we are to get you that content that you find most useful. Later this year you can expect to see some sort of survey online and perhaps also in a printed form. When you do, we ask that you take the time to fill it out. It will help us better determine the right content to deliver, and the right means by which to deliver that content.
To Our Contributors
Finally, I want to close with a direct note to our contributors, especially those regular, repeating contributors who spend so much time putting together great content from the field for submission to our publication. 2019 was a rough year. Frankly, we had to turn down a lot of your submissions that were good, well-written, and deserved to be published, simply because we did not have the capacity to publish them. Each and every time we had to send a note back to a contributor saying, "No, thank you," it was indeed frustrating. Frustrating because we knew how much work you had put into the effort, and frustrating also because we knew there was good content that wasn't making it to our audiences.
As I mentioned above, going into 2020, we now have a more robust capacity and can publish a lot more of what you submit to us. So, those of you who may have gotten a rejection letter for a submission in 2019, I would encourage you to try again this year. We plan on publishing a lot more, and we think we will have to say "No, thank you," a lot less!
Gregory E. Jones
Editor, Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin
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This article was published in the January-March 2020 issue of Army Sustainment.
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The Current issue of Army Sustainment in pdf format
Current Army Sustainment Online Articles
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