The Patriot Files Forums  

Go Back   The Patriot Files Forums > Branch Posts > Army

Post New Thread  Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 02-04-2020, 01:01 PM
Boats's Avatar
Boats Boats is offline
Senior Member
 

Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Sauk Village, IL
Posts: 21,784
Arrow US Army wants to expand prepositioned stock in Pacific

US Army wants to expand propositioned stock in Pacific
By: Jen Judson - Defense News - 02-04-20
Re: https://www.defensenews.com/land/202...ck-in-pacific/

Photo link: https://www.armytimes.com/resizer/rZ...N7RUDBMAHY.jpg
U.S Soldiers from 1-27 Infantry Regiment, Wolfhounds, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division get on line on Platoon Live Fire lanes on August 26 2019 at Puslatpur Marine Base, Indonesia. (Photo by Maj. Leah Ganoni/US Army)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army wants to expand its prepositioned equipment in the Indo-Pacific region, according to Gen. Gus Perna, the Army Materiel Command commander, told reporters during a Feb. 4 Defense Writers Group event in Washington, DC.

While the service believes its Army Prepositioned Stock — or APS — is adequate in Europe as it heads into a major division-level exercise there this year, the Army is “already working on ways to expand APS out in the Pacific,” he said.

Both the Defender Europe and Defender Pacific series of exercises this year will help determine if the APS stock in both theaters are right-sized and located in the right spots.

After his predecessor laid some groundwork, the new U.S. Army Pacific Command commander Gen. Paul LaCamera, who assumed the positioned in November 2019, is working through a strategy, Perna said, “in combination, of course, with support of the [combatant command] commander out there.”

Once the leaders in the Pacific have a plan, they will brief the Army secretary and chief on courses of action and they will decide the path forward. Then, Perna said, his command will execute the establishment and expansion of APS in the Pacific as directed.

AMC is also figuring out how to tackle Defender Pacific, which will run at a smaller scale to its companion exercise in Europe, but will expand in fiscal year 2021 as the European version scales back.

“Defender Pacific will have added challenges due to the sheer difference in timing and distances, as well as terrain,” Perna told Defense News in December. “We will have to move troops and equipment much farther than in the European theater, which means it will take more time to get there.”

That means, for logisticians and maintainers, predicting requirements much further out, he added.

Additionally, communications will be a challenge with a 14-hour time difference. “The exercise will put to the test our 24-hour operations center and support systems,” he said.

The Pacific also requires different weapon systems and combat enablers in its APS. And unique to the Pacific will be a chance to test the Army’s sealift capabilities as opposed to the rails and roads in Europe.

Perna also stressed one thing neither theater will likely see again any time soon are the “activity sets” the Army experimented with in Europe and South Korea as operations ramped up in both regions.

The service ditched activity sets in 2017 as they were only intended to serve as a bridging strategy where soldiers deployed from the continental United States to a combatant command area of operations could draw the equipment out of storage there and train on it.

“In my opinion, that was an efficiency drill and I was 100 percent against them,” Perna said. “Activity sets and APS are two different things. Army Prepositioned Stocks serve a primary purpose to allow the president of the United States to make decisions and us to execute rapidly and, in that light, the equipment will be ready and it will be capable of going out and executing its mission,” he said.

“An activity set is a bunch of equipment people use to train on,” he added.

When it comes to current APS, “it is ready. Every piece of equipment works,” Perna said. “We have gone to great length to make sure that a unit can get on a plane and fly over and draw that equipment rapidly. It’s not going to be hindered with bureaucracy and it’s going to have all of its capability so that it can get to where it needs to be immediately.”

About this writer: Jen Judson is the land warfare reporter for Defense News. She has covered defense in the Washington area for eight years. She was previously a reporter at Politico Pro Defense and Inside Defense. She won the National Press Club's best analytical reporting award in 2014 and was named the Defense Media Awards' best young defense journalist in 2018.
__________________
Boats

O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
sendpm.gif Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

All times are GMT -7. The time now is 12:05 PM.


Powered by vBulletin, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.