By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
STUTTGART, Germany, July 3, 2012 –
Several robust programs at U.S. Africa Command are helping to ensure that when
African partners pull together to support shared security interests, they have
the logistical capabilities they need to deploy and sustain their operations.
Building the capacity of individual
African states and regional organizations has been a cornerstone principle at
Africom since its inception. “The shorthand for that is, ‘African solutions to
African problems,’” Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, Africom’s commander, told American
Forces Press Service.
Ham said he’s been encouraged to see
Africans increasingly rising to the challenge, particularly in support of
counterterrorism and peacekeeping operations.
But Melissa Jordan, program manager for
the command’s theater logistics engagement program, recognizes that willing
forces aren’t sufficient if they don’t have the logistical underpinning to back
them up.
“You cannot deploy or employ your
resources in the deployed environment if you don’t have a strong logistics
structure at your home station,” she said. “If your vehicles are dilapidated,
if your aircraft aren’t maintained well, if your equipment that supports major
end items is not maintained and accounted for, if you don’t have a strong home-station
logistics structure in garrison, then you simply aren’t able to sustain a
deployment.”
In short, logistics ultimately can be a
valuable force enabler or a critical failure point. “We want to help our
partners achieve the former, so we develop, implement and deliver training
activities to bridge that gap and help them get there,” Jordan said.
“Everything we are doing is to help that African partner.”
The training focuses on three primary
logistics skill sets: how to deploy, how to sustain -- which in military terms
is called “employment” -- and how to optimize major resources, she explained.
Africom’s African Deployment Assistance
Partnership Team program, called ADAPT, has been helping to prepare partners
for deployments since 2009.
Conducted through four two-week
engagements over a two-year period, the program focuses on air cargo loading
and deployment. The instructors teach partners, among other skills, how to
palletize their cargo, design a load plan and prepare vehicles and rolling
stock, Jordan said.
With this capability, the Africans have
more control about how their equipment is loaded when United Nations aircrews
arrive to transport them to operations, Jordan said.
“That is important, because when they
get off the aircraft at the deployed environment -- whether it is Somalia or
Sudan or Sierra Leone or wherever they are going -- it is really important for
them to know what is coming off first, and be able to directly start using it,”
she explained. “So we are helping those partners manage their own deployments
much better from the beginning.”
U.S. Army Africa soldiers initially
taught the ADAPT program, but U.S. Air Forces Africa airmen have taken over the
air cargo and air deployment training instruction. This, Jordan said, enables
U.S. Army Africa to teach new courses related to ground deployments using
surface platforms, Jordan said.
“That’s really important to our partner
nations conducting counterterrorism operations,” she said. Partners who may not
always use aircraft to deploy need to be able to conduct their own security at
borders or over the road, she added.
Jordan noted, for example, that the
Guineans opted to deploy by ground to support U.N. peacekeeping operations in
Côte d'Ivoire, because it offered more flexibility than air deployment.
Regardless of how partners deploy,
another Africom program, called PILOT, or Partnership for Integrated Logistics
Operations and Tactics, is teaching the integrated logistics operations and
tactics African forces need to sustain their operations. “Sustaining logistics
operations in a deployed environment is no small task,” Jordan said. “There are
so many elements involved, and you have to think about them all before you go.”
The three-week PILOT program, taught by
U.S. Marine Forces Africa, focuses on what happens after forces arrive at a
deployment site.
“Once they get to the deployed
environment, it’s how to offload the aircraft, stage the equipment and move it
forward to sustain military operations while they are deployed,” Jordan said.
The training also focuses on maintenance, supply-chain and equipment
accountability capabilities.
One problem for many African nations is
that, although they may have plenty of vehicles, they may lack the logistics
and maintenance organizations to support them. So Africom introduced two
additional programs to fill the void.
The newest, Vehicle and Equipment
Maintenance Team, or VEMAT, is helping partner militaries build vehicle and
equipment maintenance capabilities. The training goes beyond direct maintenance
and includes instruction on setting up a maintenance or repair-parts shop,
planning oil filter and fuel filter changes and devising a system to resupply tires,
engines and other major parts.
“VEMAT builds a culture of [preventive]
maintenance and resource accountability,” Jordan said. “And that is really
important when we are talking about maintenance scheduling. We help them with
the supply-chain solution so they can manage their end items.”
U.S. Marine Forces Africa personnel
administer the training over five phases through what Jordan called
“experience-based learning.”
“We don’t spend a lot of time in the
classroom doing PowerPoint,” she said. “We spend a lot of time doing hands on.”
This type of training, she explained, has proven effective despite language
barriers and other traditional education challenges.
U.S. Air Force Africa conducts another
program called LOGMAT, or Logistics Management Assistance Team training, which
concentrates on aircraft maintenance and the logistics systems required to
support it.
In addition to strengthening individual
partner nations’ logistical capabilities, these programs are fostering regional
cooperation among militaries so they are able to work together one deployed.
“That’s important, because the Africans don’t typically deploy by themselves.
They deploy regionally,” Jordan said. “So bringing them together for courses
like LOGMAT gives them an opportunity to dialog in how they conduct their
logistical operations.”
“We are building capability, one
logistician at a time,” she said. “But that regular interoperability is
compounded every time we bring them together.”
As the training progresses, Jordan said,
she’s also encouraged to see the best African partner-nation students emerging
as instructors. One student-turned-instructor, from Nigeria, believed so deeply
in the logistics program that gave up his scheduled rest and recuperation leave
during his deployment to Somalia to return to the schoolhouse to teach.
These African instructors will be the
ones to lead the logistics program forward as they increasingly outnumber U.S.
instructors, she said.
“We are talking about experienced
peacekeepers, experienced officers who are highly educated in logistics. And
they are the people we are transferring ownership of these courses to,” Jordan
said.
“And that is our end goal: to help them
become self-sufficient and for this training to last beyond our presence,” she
said. “That way, our investment lasts beyond our contribution. And that
self-sufficiency is exactly what the Africans want as well.”
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