[This article was first published in the first issue of Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin, which was then called Army Logistician, volume 1, number 1 (September–October 1969), pages 20–22.]
As the result of a unique mission recently assigned to a systems contractor, the United States Army is pioneering a new approach to logistics which may open an entirely new role for industry and reduce a noncombatant manpower drain on the military.
Involved are the Pershing 1 and Pershing 1-A missile systems and the host of allied items which make up the highly sophisticated 400-mile-range weapon. The mission, in a nutshell, is replacement or the currently-deployed, track-vehicle mounted Pershing 1 ground support equipment with comparable, spanking new, Pershing 1-A items. One system is to be swapped for another.
Thus the name for the program is Project SWAP.
The logistics problem faced by the U.S. Army was to determine how to best reequip several artillery battalions with the updated system—quickly and with a minimum of confusion, paperwork, or turbulence. To complicate the problem, some of the battalions to be resupplied are in Europe where they are assigned critical fire missions in support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The trick is to make the switch without loss or target coverage during the changeover.
Also, stateside units and service schools must be supplied with the new missile system. While not in a sensitive deterrent situation, an efficient method of exchange is still highly desirable for these school units to avoid gaps in training cycles or in scheduled student courses.
Involved are thousands of individual line items of new, second-generation ground support gear which must be placed in the hands of operational Pershing 1 units to convert them to Pershing 1-A. To meet this innovative logistics challenge, a new concept was developed by the U.S. Army Missile Command (USAMICOM) at its headquarters on Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
The new approach bypasses the normal military supply system. Industry was called upon to produce, marshal, package, and deliver directly to the troops, full loads of ready-to-operate equipment, complete with spare parts and tools. Under normal supply depot procedures, some 20,000 individual requisitions would be required from unit supply officers to muster the quantities of equipment to be issued in such an exchange.
Not so under SWAP!
Of interest to logisticians familiar with the traditional supply pipeline and depot storage and issuing systems is the fact that SWAP will take place with minimal administrative responsibility falling upon the receiving units. Only a handful of the familiar requisitions will have been prepared and submitted by battalion supply officers. The result promises to be a saving of time and manpower—and a brand new role for industry.
Early planning for Project SWAP took into account the needs of many U.S. Army agencies and commands. It required some form of centralized control to insure interagency coordination and to pinpoint final responsibility. This overall responsibility and control was vested in the Pershing Project Manager for the U.S. Army Missile Command. Also playing a major role in pioneering this logistics concept is the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment Command, St. Louis, Missouri; the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command in Warren, Michigan; the U.S. Army Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; and the U.S. Army Weapons Command at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois.
The industrial firm selected to work with the U.S. Army Missile Command on this logistics innovation was the Martin Marietta Corporation, prime contractor for the Pershing system.
Project SWAP has four clear-cut stages. These coincide with the Army's Pershing 1-A deployment plans and dovetail with industrial production schedules. The four major phases include (1) planning, which started two years ago, (2) marshaling, recently completed, (3) exchange, which is now underway, and (4) disposition of obsolete equipment (in the future).
Phase two of the operation—marshaling—was conducted at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Assembled there were the major items of Pershing 1-A to include the new fast-reacting erector-launchers, improved programmer test stations, power stations, maintenance vans, and command units, most of which are manufactured by Martin Marietta at its Orlando, Florida facility less than 60 miles away.
From Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan came new five-ton cargo trucks, designated M656. The eight-wheeled vehicles, developed under contract for the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command, are basic carriers for the countdown and launch gear, and for the communications equipment. Also from Ford came M757s (modified M656s) to be prime movers for Pershing 1-A erector-launchers and for systems component test stations.
From U.S. Army Mobility Equipment Command (USAMECOM) sources came generator sets, air compressors and dozens of allied items. U.S. Army Electronics Command (USAECOM) suppliers shipped radio transmitters, receivers, and other communications equipment as well as test items and kits. U.S. Army Weapons Command (USAWECOM) chipped in with tool kits and ordnance gear. Other special ordnance was supplied by Picatinny Arsenal, Dover, New Jersey.
Thousands of other items, ranging from welding sets to screw drivers, arrived at Cape Kennedy daily from industrial subcontractors, business firms, government depots and warehouses.
Under directions of U.S. Army Missile Command (USAMICOM) representatives, some 100 contractor engineers and technicians assembled the items into working units, integrated them into the overall system, and conducted demanding tests before declaring them workable, combat-ready Pershing 1-A equipment. Once so adjudged, the equipment was packaged into battalion loads, and prepared for shipment to the receiving unit.
At this point, Project SWAP entered the exchange phase.
For Pershing 1 units in the continental United States, including service schools at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, this meant preparing appropriately-sized packages for shipment by rail or truck.
For oversea units it meant packaging in a manner somewhat akin to a combat load, with ready-to-operate erector-launchers and other gear being shipped in a roll-on, roll-off mode. Sea-going vessels supplied by the government and or a size to accommodate enough new equipment to convert an entire battalion to Pershing 1-A are being used. Making the first trip in August of this year was the GTS Admiral William M. Callaghan of the Military Sea Transportation Service.
For the trip, vehicles were driven aboard the Admiral William M. Callaghan, a 694-foot, jet propelled, roll-on, roll-off vessel. Batteries had been installed. Water filled the radiators. The electronics gear was mounted in a tactical configuration, computers were installed, and umbilicals ready to hook up.
From the Port of Canaveral, each battalion shipload of Pershing 1-A equipment heads for the North Sea port of Bremerhaven. There it rolls off to be driven over-the-road to a staging area near Fischstein, Germany. Then the actual "exchange'' takes place for units stationed in Europe.
To maintain combat-readiness and insure target coverage during the swap period, the exchange is being conducted in increments. One at a time the Pershing firing batteries arrive at the staging area with reuseable Pershing 1 items.
Not to be swapped is the 34-foot missile or other selected pieces of gear common to both Pershing 1 and Pershing 1-A.
Within days, the battery is reequipped and the troops drive away with their new equipment. Meanwhile, another battery will be moving into the staging area to undergo the same transition. After a training and reorientation period on the new ground support equipment, the battalion is ready to resume its tactical mission.
Meanwhile, obsolete Pershing 1 tracked vehicles and the other equipment not useable in a Pershing 1-A unit are collected at an assembly area. At this point, Project SWAP will enter the fourth, and final phase of the program—disposition. Lists of excess and obsolete material will have already been prepared by the Project SWAP team and submitted to the appropriate item manager for disposal instructions. As directed, items will be shipped to designated depots for reissue where practical, for reconditioning of usable materials, or delivered to the nearest government property disposal office.
With completion of that phase, Project SWAP will have served its purpose and will be no more. The facilities will be inactivated and the people returned to their normal duties. When it is over, all Pershing battalions will have been updated with modem, fast-reacting ground support equipment which greatly increases their dependability and rate of fire. The old equipment will be gone. Unit supply bins will be filled with new parts. And all will have been accomplished in minimum time.
With normal supply procedures somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 individual requisitions would have been required from unit supply officers to supply depots to muster the quantities or equipment being issued under Project SWAP. Requisitions would have been submitted through channels to a variety of depots. Each would have shipped its individual items separately and at different times. The result could have been a major receiving, storage, and bookkeeping problem for each unit and an unacceptable long-range time period during which each battalion would have been weakened as a combat unit.
Project SWAP is designed to avoid this. The workload is carried by the Project SWAP team, not the user units.
Every indication is that SWAP is working, and working well. If it continues to do so, logisticians may have seen a new, dramatic approach to a delicate international equipment replacement problem—a seemingly impossible mission made possible.
COL Edwin A. Rudd was Pershing Project Manager from June 30, 1966, until June 30, 1969. He is presently serving in Vietnam.
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