Interesting info on supply logistics
Military logisticians learned a painful lesson during 1991 Gulf War, when half of the 80,000 shipping containers sent to the region had to be opened so that supply officers could find out what was inside. This time, equipment and supplies arriving at Shuaiba, a port just south of Kuwait City, are tracked by computer on a system modeled after the one used by Federal Express.
The 90,000 troops inside Iraq drink an average of 400,000 gallons of water a day -- enough to fill 26 backyard swimming pools, says Maj. Gen. Dennis Jackson, director of logistics for U.S. Central Command. The military's tanks, helicopters and other equipment consume 15 million gallons of fuel daily, about the same amount the entire state of Florida uses in a day, he says. One Abrams tank, which gets less than a mile to a gallon, needs about 300 gallons every eight hours.
As of a week ago, the military has shipped to the region about 13 million Meals Ready to Eat, the prepackaged MREs that troops carry in their rucksacks. Most of them are at supply bases in Kuwait.
The modern-day equivalent of the Red Ball Express, the supply train of trucks that followed Gen. George Patton's troops as they raced across Europe during World War II, uses just-in-time methods to keep troops in ammunition, fuel and food. The Red Ball Express, whose 23,000 members were mostly African-American soldiers, kept allied troops stocked for months after coming ashore in Normandy on D-Day.
Using bar codes and radio frequency boxes attached to shipping containers to track supplies down to the smallest box of lip balm, today's military has moved the equivalent of 150 super Wal-Mart stores 8,000 miles by sea from the United States to the battlefield in Iraq, Jackson says.
The radio boxes, which contain inventory lists, register their whereabouts whenever they pass any of 70 receivers posted throughout the region. The receivers read the magnetic signature on the containers and relay that data to a supply database.
From Kuwait, hundreds of military trucks ferry supplies to the front in convoys of 20 to 30 vehicles that can stretch more than a mile. Nearly two dozen of these convoys are on the road on any given day.
Traffic is so heavy that controllers back in Kuwait determine which convoys get top priority in order to avoid bottlenecks on the few roads that run north and south toward the Iraqi capital.
The vehicles usually take 24 hours to reach the front lines, which are now about 50 miles south of Baghdad. If the lines were secure and there were no attacks, the trip would take 18 hours, says Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Boles, the logistics chief for ground forces in Iraq. Logistics officers at the front can order supplies on laptop computers connected to rear bases by wireless communications.
In part because the Pentagon pushed deployment to be as fast as possible, the military is hundreds of trucks short of what normally would be allocated for an operation of this size. To cope, it has bought or leased hundreds of private Kuwaiti trucks. Army engineers also have ''borrowed'' Iraqi fuel tankers.
Troops have set up small supply depots roughly every 50 miles along the 300-mile-long line, with the farthest logistics hub about 20 or 30 miles behind the most forward units of the 3rd Infantry Division. The depots allow front-line troops to get provisions without going back to the main supply hubs in Kuwait. Each is ringed with barbed wire and by dirt berms 6 to 8 feet high. Aviation units also have established forward helicopter refueling stations.
Larger supply hubs are being set up as Iraqi air bases and ports are captured, shortening the supply line for some troops. U.S. forces are bringing in supplies at a captured air base at Tallil outside Nasiriyah. Supply ships may soon dock at the southern port of Umm Qasr.
Trucks meet half way
Because the main supply line has stretched so far, troops have devised several methods to make resupply efforts more efficient. To avoid driving 600 miles round trip, supply convoys can choose a midway point to hook up with empty trucks heading south. The crews then swap vehicles, taking the empty trucks back to Kuwait and the full ones to the front. Other convoys drop their loads at supply depots, where front-line supply troops pick them up.
Because fuel shortages can stop an advance, virtually every convoy has at least some 5,000-gallon fuel tankers, the number depending on where it is headed. Every day that the 20,000 soldiers of the 3rd Infantry are on the move, they burn up to 750,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
To help keep the forces moving, engineers in Kuwait have laid a 100-mile fuel pipeline and set up ''bag farms'' containing 9 million gallons of fuel in huge fiberglass bladders. Tanker trucks fill up there. Eventually, fuel stations will be set up farther north in Iraq to cut the driving time.
Water also is critical. Each soldier needs four gallons a day. Supply troops get that to them in a variety of ways: pallets of bottled water, ''water buffalo'' trucks that carry 400 gallons each, 3,000-gallon bags hauled on flatbed trucks and water processed from the Euphrates River and other sources by water purification equipment. Each reverse osmosis water purification unit can process 6,000 gallons of drinkable water an hour.
''We try to think of everything, and then we think about what's the thing we haven't thought about. What will change in the plan that will cause us to make adjustments?'' Jackson says.
The logistics chief says even the most fluid battlefields have at least some degree of predictability that he combines with what he calls ''just-in-case'' reserve supplies. He can predict with a degree of certainty how much water, food and fuel will be consumed. He pushes that forward to the front without units having to request it.
But with the lines strung out, and with the rear less than secure, logistics units have been slowed.
''The last 50 kilometers are the toughest in logistics,'' says Boles, the logistics chief for ground forces in Iraq. ''That's where our papers get graded.''
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