Logisticians Lament

[thedrifter]

Logisticians Lament



Mr. Hackworth,

Read your article "Shoestring Logistics" and unfortunately there is a lot of truth in what was written.

After Desert Storm, and interestingly at the beginning of the Clinton administration, there was a move a foot to reduce the stocks sitting at our depots. That has continued until this day. If one were to look at what was in our depots back then, and what's in them now, you'd see a remarkable difference, for the worse.

We've also moved towards interesting initiatives such as "just in time delivery", "direct vendor delivery", "Long Term contracts" I'm not sure how these things can truly support our military when a vendor is in the states, and they're deployed. Hell, FedEX didn't start flying into Bosnia until late 2000.

There are many things that affect our logistics posture: funding is number one. Right now, major components of helicopters, tanks, etc, are being prioritized for the CENTCOM AO, which means readiness for those fleets here in CONUS will degrade. Congress needs to increase DoD funding, but DoD needs to have better accountability for those dollars.

Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) impacts readiness as well. Because of regulations, imposed by who else, congress, need to be relaxed. Right now, there are requirements that the DoD logistics folks MUST comply with in procuring repair parts. And there are vendors that would die to make/build parts for the DoD but can't because of the FAR.

Congress and everyone else get the heebee jeebies when they see the stock piles of parts in the depots. But, need to understand that because we're doing more and more in contingency operations, we no longer can keep the parts that we do have on the shelves. We're driving more miles with our tanks, flying more hours in our aircraft and parts that manufactures and the military never thought might/would fail, are beginning to do just that. If the original vendor went out of business, it could take months, even years to find a company/vendor to make them. Then, we get to pay start up costs (that's why you see expensive repair parts).

A concerned logistician


http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c...38461338986002

Sempers,

Roger