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U.S. Army SUrfAce Deployment AnD DiStribUtion commAnD

2014

materiel mover

maj. Gen. thomas J. richardson

commanding GeneralU.S. Army Surface Deployment and Distribution command

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Major General Thomas J. Richardson assumed command of the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., on March 27, 2012.

Richardson was born in Saint Louis, Mo. He entered the U.S. Army upon graduation from Stephen F. Austin University in 1980, and was commissioned in the Quartermaster Corps.

He has held a wide variety of command and staff positions during his 31-year career. The general recently returned from Iraq where he was the J4 for U.S. Forces – Iraq. Other key assignments include: commander, Land & Maritime DLA; U.S. Pacific Command J4; executive officer to the deputy commander, Army Materiel Com-mand; commander, 64th Corps Support Group; Deputy J4, U.S. European Command; and commander, 296th Forward Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.

His military education includes the Quartermaster Basic and Advance Courses, Combined Arms Staff School, Army Command and General Staff College, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He holds a Bachelor degree in Business Administration from Stephen F. Austin State University; a Master of Military Arts and Science from U.S. Army Command and General Staff College; and a Master of Science in Strategic Resource Management from National Defense University.

His joint assignments include: commander, Defense Supply Center Columbus, Defense Logistics Agency, Columbus, Ohio, from August 2009 to September 2010; director for Logistics, Engineering and Security Assistance, J-4, U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii, from June 2007 to August 2009; and, joint logistics staff officer, and later, chief, Logistics Operations Division, and later deputy director, Logistics and Security Assistance Directorate, J-4, U.S. European Command, Germany, from June 1999 to July 2002.

Richardson’s operations assignments include: director, J-4, U.S. Forces-Iraq, Operation New Dawn, Iraq, from October 2010 to December 2011; commander, 64th Corps Support Group, Fort Hood, Texas, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq, from June 2003 to June 2005; and, Task Force S-4 observer/controller, Operations Group, Combat Maneuver Training Command, Seventh Training Center, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Germany, and support

operations officer, Seventh Army Training Command Mobile Train-ing Team and Operation Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia, from August 1989 to June 1992.

His decorations and badges include the Defense Superior Service Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters); Legion of Merit (with Oak Leaf Cluster); Bronze Star Medal; Meritorious Service Medal (with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters); Army Commendation Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clus-ters); Army Achievement Medal; and Parachutist Badge.

Q: Describe SDDC’s role in the Afghanistan retrograde.

A: As the Army service component command to U.S. Transporta-tion Command, we touch almost 90 percent of all cargo along the USTRANSCOM transportation pipeline through various modes of transportation, including trucks, rail, planes and ships. According to 2013 Defense Department estimates, more than 700,000 pieces will need to be moved out before the president’s 2014 deadline. That includes everything from mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles and HMMWVs to unit equipment, and more.

That said, a vast majority of equipment will be moved out of Afghanistan, and no matter what you call it—retrograde, reset, redis-tribution, redeployment or resupply—and no matter what service

Major General Thomas J. RichardsonCommanding General

U.S. Army Surface Deployment and Distribution Command

Materiel MoverManaging Cargo Movements Efficiently and Seamlessly

Q&AQ&A

www.MLF-kmi.com U.S. Army Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command | MLF 8.1 | 1

U.S. ArMy MILITAry SUrFACE DEPLOyMENT AND DISTrIBUTION COMMAND

2014

Maj. Gen. Thomas RichardsonCommanding General

Virginia KingDirector, Personnel

& Logistics

Col. James RupkalvisCommander

Col. David BanianCommander

Command Sgt. Maj. Cedric Thomas

Command Sergeant Major

Stacy ParrishDirector, Intelligence

Command Sgt. Maj. Scott Reed


Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin McKeller


William BuddenDeputy to the Commander

Col. Glenn BacaDirector, Operations

SDDC HEADQUARTERS

BRigADES

DiRECTORATES

596TH TRAnSpORTATiOn BRigADE595TH TRAnSpORTATiOn BRigADE

Col. Matthew ReddingCommander

Command Sgt. Maj. Cynthia Howard


598TH TRAnSpORTATiOn BRigADE


Bruce BuslerDirector

Brig. Gen. Garrett YeeDeputy Commanding General

for Mobilization

Debbie Harvey-DavisDirector, Strategy & Analysis

Curt ZarganDeputy Director

Col. David GaffneyDeputy Commander

Capt. Darrell MathisDirector, Information

Technologies

Melvin HollandDirector,

Strategic Business

Col. Ines WhiteChief of Staff

Linda WilsonDirector,

Resource Management

Capt. Aaron StanleyDirector,

Personal Property

Brig. Gen. Michael MannCommanding General

Command Sgt. Maj. Joseph Brown


DEplOymEnT SUppORT COmmAnD (U.S. ARmy RESERvE)

TRAnSpORTATiOn EnginEERing AgEnCy

Col. Jason VickCommander

Command Sgt. Maj. Alveno Hodge



Col. Shannon Cox Commander

Command Sgt. Maj. Claudia Shakespeare



owns it, USTRANSCOM and its service component commands are responsible for moving the cargo.

To handle this monumental task, SDDC in 2012 unveiled a new approach to logistics called velocity volume distribution retrograde [V2DR]. V2DR is designed to balance the volume of cargo with the velocity in which the cargo needs to travel. It does this by identifying early what cargo is being shipped and which routes and modes of transportation will be used to expedite the movement of cargo out of Afghanistan.

V2DR focuses on getting equipment out of Afghanistan faster, best value contracting and aggregation of cargo at key sites to reduce movement cost.

Q: What does your forward deployment footprint look like in Afghanistan now?

A: To handle the numerous issues involved with transporting hun-dreds of thousands of pieces of equipment, traversing dozens of countries and multiple modes of transportation, personnel assigned to our 595th and 598th Transportation Brigades are located through-out EUCOM and CENTCOM areas of responsibility to closely manage cargo operations on the Northern Distribution Network, Pakistan ground lines of communication and multimodal sites. Personnel assigned to the 595th provide face-to-face transportation expertise at major forward operating bases, redistribution property account-ability team yards, and several U.S. embassies and multimodal sites within that theater of operations. It’s important to note that we could not do our mission in Afghanistan without the support of hundreds of reserve soldiers who routinely deploy to those AORs in support of our mission.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing SDDC as the tempo increases? Were these challenges anticipated and planned for? Have there been any unexpected issues, and how have you responded?

A: To ensure the success of our forces exiting Afghanistan, U.S. forces must overcome significant obstacles. Aside from the mountainous terrain, undeveloped road networks and enemy attacks, we must deal with a variety of other political, environmental and operational constraints.

Moving cargo out of Afghanistan is extremely complex, especially considering the number and types of supply routes, or what we call ground lines of communication, or GLOCs. A majority of the cargo travels out of Afghanistan through Pakistan. However, we also know, based on recent history, that we can lose that option. Within the past couple of years, the PAKGLOC was closed for more than a year, and more recent protests along that border have slowed or halted cargo movements.

That said, we have other options. That’s where the Northern Distribution Network comes into play. This northern route stretches from the Baltic ports in the northern part of Eastern Europe to Afghanistan, traversing through Russia and more than a dozen other countries.

SDDC also uses a multimodal approach. We have contracts that allow us to move cargo by air to one of our multimodal ports, where the cargo is transferred to an ocean vessel for the final leg of its jour-ney to the United States. Multimodal is significant because it gives us flexibility. If we can’t move it out by land, we can fly it out.

Every day brings new challenges. However, despite these obsta-cles, our transportation experts at SDDC are prepared to meet the president’s December 31, 2014, withdrawal deadline—not surprising when you consider this command has been responsible for moving a vast majority of military cargo into and out of Afghanistan since operations there began more than a decade ago.

Q: Even though deeply involved in retrograde activities, what are your other global initiatives?

A: Although our primary focus has always been on the warfighter, we are also planning for the future—ensuring we are properly structured, relevant, cost effective and positioned to sustain the warfighter of tomorrow.

In October, SDDC realized Phase 1 of a new business transforma-tion initiative that we call POST-PB, a course of action that describes the command’s effort to integrate the processes and systems involved with planning, ordering, shipping, tracking, paying and billing of international, domestic and personal property transportation. The ability to perform life cycle management of every shipment, to include independent government cost estimates, was a key com-ponent that drove the need for POST-PB transformation. Given the dynamic nature of global distribution and deployment, and our role in managing the Transportation Working Capital Fund and safe-guarding taxpayer dollars, we recognized the need to do business better.

Looking toward the future, we are working on a variety of sig-nificant POST-PB supporting tasks, including brigade and battalion restructuring; standardized and normalized business processes; improved contract supervision and acquisition; headquarters func-tional realignments; strategic business plan development; a new active/reserve component integration strategy; and more.

As part of the first phase of the POST-PB process, in October we stood up the centralized booking office at our headquarters. Central-izing booking is the first step in aligning our business processes to our 2015 goals. This gives us enterprise visibility and allows our brigades to work directly with customers on requirements. It also allows them to best use their resources to ensure quality assurance of the contracts in their areas of operation.

Transportation is one of the largest variable costs for any DoD organization. Whether it’s a program manager shipping parts, a depot moving equipment and parts in and out, or the Defense Com-missary Agency moving commissary goods across the globe, trans-portation costs are substantial. That said, if we can make significant reductions in overall transportation costs, we can affect the budgets of all our armed services. However, to reach those savings, efficiency needs to be part of every SDDC employee’s mindset. Maybe we only see a 5 percent savings in one area, but 5 percent of a large number is another large number.

As an example, by aggregating more cargo at CONUS ports we are realizing an average of $930,000 a month in cost avoidance by using rail versus truck.

Q: What processes and tools do you use to ensure asset visibility with a worldwide supply chain?

A: This is one of those areas where leveraging today’s technology, in this case cargo tracking, not only increases our mission effectiveness,

www.MLF-kmi.com4 | MLF 8.1 | U.S. Army Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command


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but relieves us of time-consuming manual processes due to its automation capabilities.

We’ve been using radio frequency identification devices on most everything we ship for about a decade now. Our commercial carriers provide automatic status updates to our business systems, which basically reports where our cargo is. We’re also tracking the location of commercial vessels with DoD cargo on board. And our soldiers and civilians on the ground and at strategic seaports are also updating the systems using handheld devices and laptops. This is beneficial not only to us knowing where our “stuff” is, but also to commanders in the field so they can make critical decisions based on knowing where their equipment is and when they’ll receive it without second guessing themselves or putting themselves further in harm’s way.

That’s a big part of our “Delivering Trust.”We’ve also spent a good deal of time improving our software

designed to track cargo. This ensures we, and everyone in the Defense Transportation System, receive real-time cargo status updates, while managing the supply chain at a macro level.

Integrated mission support for Surface Deployment and Dis-tribution Command, better known to logisticians as ISDDC, is another program we use to track government cargo. ISDDC pro-vides detailed operational awareness for surface cargo moving along commercial and military lines of communication. This system is key to the management of our routes into and out of Afghanistan. Logisticians and supply folks around the world depend on ISDDC’s responsiveness and accuracy.

Additionally, ISDDC is linked to another program we developed called IRRIS, or the Intelligent Road/Rail Information Server, which is more of a mapping capability. It’s kind of like a Google Earth for transporters, giving us, and our commercial trucking carriers, details of U.S. road and terrain activities related to our logistics mission.

Q: On a daily basis, how does SDDC coordinate and plan with USTRANSCOM and the other service components to ensure the smooth movement of supplies across the different services, com-mands and modes of transport?

A: Interestingly enough, this is the very reason we relocated from Virginia and consolidated with USTRANSCOM at Scott Air Force Base during the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Act [BRAC] movements.

The 2005 BRAC presented a win-win opportunity to bring us from three locations in Virginia to Scott Air Force Base and col-locate SDDC with USTRANSCOM and our sister component com-mand, Air Mobility Command. The move created a one-stop center with personnel from these organizations working side by side and can simply turn to each other to coordinate transportation require-ments versus long distance communication.

Q: In the past SDDC held an annual training symposium that brought the command together in concert with its industry part-ners. What are you doing to fill the space?

A: In prior years, we hosted an annual training symposium in which we included workshops as a foundation for exchanging ideas, and to educate and train transportation experts from the military to the commercial transportation industry.

Now we use industry working groups, telecoms and other meetings to do the same interface and coordination that we did at the symposium, with a lot less cost.

Q: Any closing thoughts?

A: It’s no small task to try and capture the global impact of SDDC on our armed forces and our nation. In addition to deploying and sustaining the warfighter, we move the household goods and vehicles of DoD servicemembers and civilians; we manage the military’s substantial container inventory; and our Transportation Engineering Agency provides expertise across DoD.

As much as this command has accomplished, we know the sun never sets on SDDC; there is still more to be done. As we reach the backend of operations in Afghanistan, rest assured this command will be fully engaged in the huge withdrawal of equipment from that area of operations. And as natural disasters strike around the world—much like the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010—we will be called upon to offer assistance to those in need. And as hundreds of thousands of military families move each year, we will continue to ensure the safe, secure delivery of their household goods and privately-owned vehicles.

Our soldiers and their families deserve no less than our best effort. I’m confident we will continue to amaze, just as I’m confi-dent we will continue “Delivering Trust” ... trust with commercial industry, trust with our war fighting customers, trust with our servicemembers and their families, and trust with the American public. O

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Richardson (right) commanding general, Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, hands the unit colors to Col. Matthew D. Redding during the change of command ceremony for the 598th Transportation Brigade at Sembach Kaserne, Germany, Aug. 23, 2012. Redding relieved Stephen L. Marshall of his post. [Photo courtesy of U.S. Army/by Elisabeth Paque]

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