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Whether it’s munitions, meals, or bubble wrap, USTRANSCOM gets it from factory to foxhole.

This nation was born on the back of a blockade. As the French navy sealed off the shipping lanes to Virginia, Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army cornered Lord Charles Cornwallis’ British forces. Because Britain’s Royal Navy could neither resupply nor evacuate the British army, Cornwallis was forced to surrender, concluding the American War of Independence. History likely would not have been rewritten, however, if a British frigate had slipped through and delivered Cornwallis a stock of the 18th-century equivalent of bubble wrap.

“I could take you back to Hannibal and the elephants,” says Gen. John Handy, USAF, commander of U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), referring to the Carthage general who attacked Rome in 218 B.C. using elephants to transport his supplies through the Alps. “There is no occasion in history where a conflict was executed without good logistics. Sustainable logistics wins conflicts.” Sometimes all by itself, as the 1948 Berlin Blockade proved.

Logistics—the supply and movement of troops —might be the backbone of any military, but it seldom is ramrod straight. Bureaucratic hang-ups during World War II gave rise to a veritable black market among supply ships in the Pacific. The TV series M*A*S*H elicited knowing laughs from veteran supply sergeants everywhere when Radar traded Col. Blake’s barbecue grill for penicillin. Even today Handy talks of bubble wrap and file cabinets showing up on high-priority manifests of C-17s bound for Iraq. “I could give you an example of dirt [transported] for totally legitimate reasons,” he says—just not high-priority reasons.

In modern warfare, America’s armed forces are responding to conflicts faster than ever. Supply lines circumnavigate the globe, and distribution must be—and can be— accomplished in a matter of hours. (C-5 cargo planes only appear to be flying at elephant speed.) In modern warfare, logistics cannot afford bureaucratic delays. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld therefore tasked USTRANSCOM to become the distribution process owner (DPO) for all of DoD. Now, instead of merely moving supplies and troops, USTRANSCOM is responsible for the whole equation (distribution = supply + transportation), partnering with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and Joint Munitions Command to track supplies from factory to foxhole.

In the beginning

That USTRANSCOM received this authority makes historical and, well, logistical sense.
In a major 1978 exercise, the United States and NATO lost the “war” when mobilization and deployment plans fell apart. That led to a new office, the Joint Deployment Agency, to manage deployment and execution. But without authority over transportation, the agency’s efforts fell short.

In 1987, DoD used its new compounding authority under the previous year’s DoD Reorganization Act to consolidate all air, sea, and land wartime transportation into one command—USTRANSCOM. Encompassing the Army’s Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, and the Air Force’s Military Airlift Command (MAC), USTRANSCOM was based at Scott AFB, Ill., to take advantage of MAC’s expertise in command and control.

Put to the test almost immediately with the Gulf War, the command and concept proved so valuable that DoD decided to expand USTRANSCOM’s purview to peacetime, too. Today, USTRANSCOM, encompassing 156,000 people in the three component commands, is as purple as they come. “We’re so integrated, people don’t think about it,” Handy says. “Our goal is to present to the war fighter a seamless transportation and distribution system. They just want their stuff, and it’s our job to get it to them when they want it.”

But a seamless transportation and distribution system still is a holy grail under quest. On the ground—whether that ground is a foxhole, airfield, or seaport—supply and distribution has been happening in what the command calls “stovepipe fixes” among individual units. Supplies were being ordered and delivered at cross-purposes. With its new DPO authority, USTRANSCOM is stepping in to make the whole U.S. military supply chain one network.

“USTRANSCOM is not just about planes and ships and ports and rail systems and trucks— it’s about information technology,” says Lt. Gen. Bob Dail, USA, who recently has been promoted to deputy commander of USTRANSCOM, after serving almost two years as director of operations. “We move information in addition to moving troops and platforms.” That information, specifically, is where items are located at any given time in the supply line.

The command’s vision, Dail says, is that soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors at the “forward node in the distribution network” can access the supply network so that “things [a soldier has] requested—or things he needs that have not been requested—he can see coming in to him.”
 

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