Movement control on a nonlinear battlefield - movement control center established in Uzbekistan for Combined/Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan

Army Logistician, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Robert W. Petrillo, Daniel W. Carpenter

On 7 June 2002, an 11-soldier advance party from the 330th Transportation Battalion (Movement Control) arrived at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan after a long trip from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Our mission was to establish a movement control center (MCC) for Combined/Joint Task Force 180 (CJTF 180) operating in Afghanistan. Although CJTF 180 was built around the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, this operation definitely would not be a doctrinal corps movement control battalion (MCB) mission.

First, the CJTF 180 was a direct subordinate of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), so the MCC would have to fulfill both theater movement control agency and corps MCB missions. Second, the 330th would be working in a theater that relied almost solely on two modes of transportation--military air and commercial truck. Finally, rather than being part of a traditional corps support command structure, the MCC would be assigned to CJTF 180's Joint Logistics Command (JLC) and would be a subelement of its Distribution Management Center (DMC).

Establishing a Movement Control Center

Although our planning went through many phases and changes of direction, our focus remained on the DMC organizational structure and how the 330th could best fit into it. We felt that fully integrating materiel management, movements, and contracting under the control of a single commander would be the best way to ensure success.

The DMC's mission was to act as the distribution management support element for the JLC and provide staff supervision for the materiel management center and the MCC. The DMC also supervised the planning and coordinating of the time-definite delivery of units, materiel, equipment, personnel, and soldier support to, within, and from the combined/joint operational area (CJOA).

Procedures for setting up movement control operations on a nonlinear battlefield are a bit more complicated than those found in movement control doctrine. Field Manual 55-10, Movement Control, details the mission of corps MCBs and lays out the tactics, techniques, and procedures for establishing and managing movement control operations in the corps rear. The doctrine assumes that the predominant assets will be military trucks operating on a linear battlefield as part of the common-user land transportation pool, along with some Army rotary-wing aircraft and Air Force fixed-wing aircraft. Quite clearly, that would not be the situation in the CJTF 180 area of operations (AOR). The MCC and its subordinate movement control teams would operate in an AOR that was almost completely nonlinear and in which air operations, rather than line-haul operations, would dominate.

All of our planning and decisionmaking leading to the establishment of the MCC was based on the distribution principles found in FM 10-10-1, Theater Distribution.

MCC Operations

The three main transportation nodes in the AOR--Bagram, Kandahar, and Karshi-Khanabad--operated multimodal port activities. The two primary modes of transportation to the AOR were fixed-wing coalition aircraft (primarily U.S.) and commercial containerships. High-priority sustainment shipments and all units moved by air in the landlocked AOR. The vast majority of sustainment materiel moved by commercial container shipments to commercial ports or railheads, where it was loaded on commercial trucks for delivery to its final destination. The few military trucks in the AOR were used almost exclusively at the tactical level (brigade and lower).

Since the mission was nondoctrinal and we were not relieving another unit, we had to make our best guess when choosing the proper structure for the MCC. We did not want to underestimate the complexity of the mission but, at the same time, we wanted to avoid deploying more soldiers than we needed. As a starting point, we referred to the joint movement center structure outlined in Joint Publication (JP) 4-01.3, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Movement Control, and organized the MCC into three sections--Air Movements; Surface Movements; and Plans, Programs, and Requirements.

Thirteen more soldiers joined the advance party in July, for a total of 24. We committed to conducting a review of our manning after the first 30 days in operation and every 30 days thereafter. We figured that we would become more efficient as we gained expertise and set up systems. This indeed was the case. Our first review indicated that our efforts to establish management systems had borne fruit, and we could realign and reallocate personnel. The final MCC structure consisted of 18 soldiers--14 on the ground at Karshi-Khanabad, and 2 each at the air bases at Rhein-Main, Germany, and incirlik, Turkey.

More With Less

As a part of the JLC, we were able to reduce our footprint significantly. Rather than deploy the entire 330th Transportation Battalion Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment (51 people), we were able to rely on the JLC and its supporting corps support group for S-1, S-2, S-4, S-6, and legal functions. We were able not only to complete the mission with fewer personnel, but also to field more movement controllers through judicious use of dual hatting. For example, the chief of our Surface Movements Section was also the battalion S-4. He would revert to the S-4 role as required to support our logistics needs at Karshi-Khanabad or the requirements of our subordinate teams.