Evaluation group recommends improvements - Deployment support teams - Brief Article

Translog: Journal of Military Transportation Management, May-June, 2001

Sgt. Major Gonzalo Rivera-Rivera has a favorite story about a Military Traffic Management Command mission in Thailand.

Five of the seven ships chartered for the operation had inadequate tie-downs and lacked sufficient lashing gear.

As one of the ships was loaded, Rivera-Rivera said a crew went to work welding "D Rings" to the deck of the vessel to create lashing points.

"Can you imagine that?" said the sergeant major of the 599th Transportation Group, Wheeler Army Air Field, Hawaii.

That experience was one of many case studies used by a special Battalion Evaluation Group to review the procedures used by MTMC's deployment support teams. The teams, of varied sizes and compositions, travel to ports worldwide to load or discharge MTMC cargoes.

Team members--besides Rivera-Rivera--included Lt. Col. Robert Oliveras, Commander of the 832nd Transportation Battalion, Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico; and Lt. Col. Kirk Foster, Commander of the 838th Transportation Battalion, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

The evaluation group was chartered by Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Privratsky, MTMC Commander, to develop a process of continuing improvements to the mobile transporter teams.

As an example, during Operation Cobra Gold 2000, the MTMC team was composed of soldiers and civilians from all four 599th locations--Okinawa and Yokohama, Japan; Pusan, Korea; and Hawaii--and the 833rd Transportation Battalion, Seattle, Wash.

The group made its initial recommendations April 9 at the MTMC Commanders' Conference, at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel, in Dallas.

Prime recommendation was the development of a special "lessons learned" section on the MTMC Web site, in which detailed after-action reviews can be posted for other teams.

"We deploy teams on a regular basis, and they constantly represent our flag throughout the world," said Oliveras. "A Web posting will improve our situational awareness and highlight our current tactics and techniques.

"It will be a Deployment Support Team of Lessons Learned on the MTMC Web page."

Brig. Gen. Don Parker, Commander, Deployment Support Command, agreed.

"What we're trying to do is collapse everything into one page," said Parker.

Other recommendations included:

* Greater use of Army Reserve soldiers on deployment support teams.

"The next step is to integrate Individual Mobilization Augmentees and Reserve units," said Rivera-Rivera.

* Develop a battle book of infrastructure details on all ports used by deployment support teams.

* Leverage technology.

* Share and compare deployment checklists between MTMC ports.

"Every deployment support team mission is unique," said Oliveras. "The training is critical."

The board had additional comments on the standard 26-member deployment support team composition.

In practice, a team varies greatly in size and composition--a reflection of such factors as mission, cargo and geography.

In a joint single port manager and port operations mission, a team could be developed on a 16-member composition: Commander, 1; NCOIC, 1; marine cargo specialists, 6; transportation operations specialist, 1; transportation specialists 4; freight rate specialist, 2; and Worldwide Port System operator, 1.

In a single port manager mission, a team could be composed of six members: Commander, 1; information management, 1; Worldwide Port System operator; 1; marine cargo specialists, 2; and contract specialist, 1.

"We're not telling the commander what to do," said Oliveras. "These are merely possible templates a commander may consider for a mission."

Enormous challenges remain, said Oliveras.

Continuing challenges remaining for commanders include the cross-training of team members, the use of austere ports, poor communications and equipment failures, and the use of civilians in hostile environments.