POWIDZ, Poland – Matthew Hahnefeld has been a valued member of the Army team for 29 years. He started out as an infantryman in 1996 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He was also a UH-60 Black Hawk crew chief in Germany and at Campbell for about five years, total. In 2004, he transitioned from active-duty Army service to the Tennessee National Guard and simultaneously took a contractor position with U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command as a maintenance manager working the aviation reset program at Campbell.
After 11 years as a crew chief – both in the Army and the National Guard – and 16 years as a contractor with AMCOM, he transitioned to Army civilian employee in 2020. First working as a quality assurance representative at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and then back to Campbell, Hahnefeld accepted a position with Army Field Support Battalion-Poland in 2024. Now, he’s the battalion’s business support specialist at the Powidz Army Prepositioned Stocks-2 worksite in Poland.
“Here at AFSBn-Poland, I handle everything contract related at the site. Day-to-day, I’m responsible for contract surveillance and submitting reports to the contracting officer at the 409th Contracting Support Brigade and U.S. Army Contracting Command at Rock Island, Illinois,” said the 47-year-old AFSBn-Poland contracting officer representative, or COR.
Hahnefeld, who has been married for eight years and has seven children – four of them he and his wife adopted – said at the Powidz APS-2 worksite he’s responsible for supporting three main contracts.
One of the contracts he’s responsible for handles the maintenance for all the APS-2 armored and tactical vehicles and equipment sets there – an entire modernized Armored Brigade Combat Team’s worth of APS-2. But, he said, this is only until the Poland Provided Logistics Support maintainers from the 33rd APS Battalion fully assume this extremely critical APS-2 maintenance mission.
The second contract Hahnefeld oversees, which is currently being descoped, is the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command and U.S. Army Materiel Command contract responsible for training the Polish 33rd APS Battalion servicemembers. Hahnefeld said the final training course was completed recently, and once fully descoped the contract will be closed out.
The third and final contract Hahnefeld is responsible for as AFSBn-Poland’s COR supports the electronic security system as the site. This includes all the electronic intrusion detection systems there – such as cameras, sensors and more – and it includes the technicians who maintain everything and ensure the systems remain fully functional.
“I love it here,” said Hahnefeld, who has a bachelor’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and grew up Waterford, Michigan. “Currently with the hiring freeze, like everybody across the Army, we’re short staffed. We’re having a hard time onboarding a full staff at this moment, but everyone is pitching in and covering where they can – covering down and covering up – and everyone is excited about this extremely important mission providing APS-2 support to NATO and the eastern flank of Europe.”
The Powidz APS-2 worksite encompasses 650,000 square feet of humidity-controlled warehouse space, a vehicle maintenance facility, and various supporting structures, plus 58,000 square feet of munitions storage nearby. It’s estimated that APS-2 worksites in Europe like Powidz can help reduce deployment timelines for an Armored Brigade Combat Team from 60 days to as little as a week or two.
AFSBn-Poland – one of four battalions assigned to the 405th Army Field Support Brigade – is responsible for the Powidz APS-2 worksite. APS-2 sites like Powidz provide a critical deterrence capability to U.S. Army Europe and Africa, U.S. European Command, and NATO as well as additional combat power during contingency operations.
The 405th AFSB is assigned to U.S. Army Sustainment Command and headquartered in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The brigade provides materiel enterprise support to U.S. forces throughout Europe and Africa – providing theater sustainment logistics; synchronizing acquisition, logistics and technology; and leveraging U.S. Army Materiel Command’s materiel enterprise to support joint forces. For more information on the 405th AFSB, visit the official website and the official Facebook site.
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