Responsible Iraq Drawdown— Rapid Afghanistan Buildup Third ... · combat efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Third Army simultaneously is orchestrating the Iraq drawdown and rein-forcement

Each morning, shortly after sunrise and following the last strains of

“Reveille,” the theme song from the movie “Patton” echoes across

Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, harkening back to Third Army’s iconic

leader and World War II heritage. The camp is home to Third Army’s

forward headquarters, and it is the sustainment nexus for America’s

combat efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third Army simultaneously is orchestrating the Iraq drawdown and rein-

forcement of the war in Afghanistan while supporting and supplying the

18 ARMY n February 2010

Responsible Iraq Drawdown— Rapid Afghanistan Buildup

Third Army: Directing TrafficAt the Crossroads of Two Wars

February 2010 n ARMY 19

Text and PhotographsBy Dennis Steele

Senior Staff Writer

First-generation mine resistant am-bush protected (MRAP) vehicleswithdrawn from Iraq await shipmentto Army training centers at a CampArifjan, Kuwait, holding yard.

day-to-day operations of both. Thescale and complexity of Third Army’ssustainment operation is astronomical.If U.S. military personnel deployed toOperation Iraqi Freedom or OperationEnduring Freedom eat it, shoot it, driveit, sleep in it or draw electrical powerfrom it, Third Army/U.S. Army Centralhad a role in getting it to them, alongwith thousands of other items and re-pair parts needed for combat. The paceis unrelenting—in Afghanistan, it is ac-celerating—and the stakes are alwayshigh.

To bolster U.S. operations in Afghan-istan and help turn the tide againstthe Taliban, Third Army deliveredsome 10,000 vehicles to Afghanistanduring fiscal year (FY) 2009. Since lastJuly, it has transferred 1,770 tons ofammunition and more than a millionindividual items, valued at $90 mil-lion, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

This year, it will coordinate move-ment of the additional 30,000 troops


Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized)go through a final round of training at a Third Army

facility in Kuwait before heading into Iraq.

A soldier washes a truck at CampArifjan to prepare it for shipment

back to the United States.

Worn and dam-aged tire assem-blies from Iraq willbe refurbished inKuwait andshipped to wherethey are mostneeded. Approxi-mately 4,000wheel assembliesare shipped toKuwait each monthfor repair.

SFC Henry Scott,1181st DeploymentDistributionSupport Battalion(DDSB), SurfaceDeployment andDistributionCommand, checksprogress as a shipat a Kuwaiti port isloaded withequipment fromIraq for shipment tothe United States.

SPC Jacob Gage,1140th Transpor-tation Company,

prepares a truck forcustoms inspection

at a Camp Arifjanwash rack.


ordered to Afghanistan by President Barack Obama alongwith the equipment they will need to fight and the in-creased amount of supplies needed to sustain them—likelya 30 percent overall sustainment spike.

Meanwhile, Third Army is continuing the job it startedlast May to retrograde what Third Army officials describeas a staggering amount of combat vehicles, equipment andsupplies from Iraq, including:

n 60,000 shipping containers, which placed end to endwould stretch from New York City to Richmond, Va.

n 41,232 pieces of rolling stock.n 13,450 short tons of supplies.n 135,500 U.S. military personnel, which is approxi-

mately the population of Savannah, Ga.Some of the retrograde materiel will be sent to Af-

ghanistan. The rest will return to the inventory. Retrogradeequipment from Iraq—rebuilt and upgraded—is an essen-tial part of plans to refit the Army.

Third Army is the operational orchestrator for the overall-theater U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) sustainmentmission, and it has control of the theater checkbook thatpays for it. Paymaster authority carries with it a responsi-bility to save money wherever possible—measures that arephysically apparent in the Iraq equipment retrograde,which has resulted in savings calculated in the billions ofdollars by repairing, upgrading and shipping critical items


A medevac helicopter from Company C, 5th Battalion, 158thAviation Regiment (C/5-158 Aviation), kicks up a cloud of dustas it takes off during a training flight in Afghanistan. ThirdArmy oversaw transportation of the company’s personnel,helicopters and other equipment from Iraq to Afghanistan.

SSG Shelley Jo Broadhead, a flightmedic assigned to C/5-158 Aviation,

checks with her pilot as the aircraft iswarmed up for takeoff from the NATO

air base at Kandahar, Afghanistan.

directly to Afghanistan and using much of the rest to fillequipment shortfalls in the Army’s general inventory andtheater prepositioned stocks.

BG (P) Phillip E. McGhee, director of resource manage-ment for Third Army, said the command achieved $3.8 bil-lion in “cost-avoidance savings” during FY 2009. Accord-ing to BG McGhee, since the 2003 launch of OperationIraqi Freedom FY 2009 was the first year in which costs de-creased from the previous year. “The goal this year is to re-duce costs by $2.1 billion through efficiencies,” he said.


A worker at the Defense Distribution Center DepotKuwait, one of 25 Defense Logistics Agency distributioncenters located worldwide, sorts items retrograded from

Iraq to be returned to the supply inventory.

Soldiers board anAir Force C-130

aircraft afterpassing through

Third Army’sreception, staging,onward movement

and integrationfacilities in Kuwait.

An Air Forceloadmaster at anairbase in Kuwait

guides a palletaboard his aircraftfor transportation

within Third Army’stheater of

operations.

Individual items that could be transferred from Iraq toAfghanistan are put through cost-benefit modeling thatdetermines whether it is cost-effective to move them toAfghanistan. For example, the cost of moving a concrete T-wall section would be 260 percent above the cost of payingfor a new one to be cast in country.

Third Army operates as a split headquarters with a largeforward element deployed to Kuwait and its U.S.-basedheadquarters at Fort McPherson, Ga. The Fort McPhersonheadquarters will move to a new command-and-controlcenter being constructed at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.,home of 9th Air Force, to better integrate planning and op-erations with its CENTCOM Air Force counterpart.

To accomplish its mission, Third Army partners withother commands and agencies such as the Defense LogisticsAgency, U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) and AMC’sArmy field support brigades that operate in theater. It coor-


Above, trailers andshipping containers

are lined up at aKuwaiti port for

loading aboard aU.S.-bound ship as

an Army unit isredeployed fromIraq. Right, MSGDuane Emerson,

1181st DDSB,checks items off the

load plan asequipment is

loaded for seashipment back to

the United States.

Above, workers upgrade equipment on a Husky metaldetecting and marking vehicle at the 401st Army FieldSupport Brigade (AFSB), Army Materiel Command,maintenance facility at Kandahar. Below, one of thefirst MRAP all-terrain vehicles to arrive in Afghanistanawaits distribution at the 401st AFSB facility.

dinates strategic transportation withthe Surface Deployment and Distribu-tion Command and 9th Air Force/U.S.Air Force CENTCOM; the Army’s 1stSustainment Command provides themuscle to move and distribute materielafter it lands, and to fix it if it breaks.

Several joint task forces also sup-port Third Army’s mission, includingthe team that operates an expansive mine resistant ambushprotected (MRAP) vehicle repair facility in Kuwait and isthe forward-deployed element of the Joint Program Office-MRAP. The operation repairs or overhauls MRAPs retro-graded from Iraq and feeds them into Afghanistan; about800 MRAPs have been refurbished at the facility andshipped to Afghanistan since last June.

In addition, more than 750 first-generation MRAPs thathave been replaced by more advanced models for frontlineuse will be transferred from Iraq to the Army’s combattraining centers. (Because of critical combat needs, noMRAPs were originally allotted to train Army brigadesheaded for Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Not just high-value combat vehicles are being returned to


We cannot let any soldier go without ammunition,food or water for a single day. The number-oneThird Army mission is to sustain the fight in two

joint operating areas, Iraq and Afghanistan.The number-two mission is to be prepared to go fight

in any country other than Iraq and Afghanistan—nonotice, be prepared to go do that tonight, and to com-mand and control all the forcesthat GEN [David H.] Petraeusmight give to us to conduct thatoperation.

The third mission is to helpshape the future by working withall the countries in the region andtrying to improve their capabili-ties—individually and as part-ners—throughout the region.

When you look at sustainingthe current fights, the number-one priority is to ensurethat we have sufficient infrastructure and equipment inAfghanistan for the soldiers who are fighting there, andthe second is to draw down Iraq responsibly.

I think one thing we soldiers keep in mind the most isthat whatever we do in terms of conducting operationsaround the world—even if it’s pulling out of a countryover time—we have to do that in a responsible fashion.We owe that to the American people and to the people

of Iraq. The Army chose the phrase “responsible redeploy-ment” primarily to tell everybody that we are going to actresponsibly in this; we’re not just going to pick up andleave. Drawdown is a term that doesn’t have doctrinalmeaning, but it encompasses everything that we currentlyuse in our doctrine: resetting the force—moving equip-ment to depots or here in theater, where we do much of the

rebuilding ourselves; retrogradingequipment back to the continentalUnited States so that it goes back tothe training centers; and redeploy-ing units back home. It encom-passes all of that.

This is significantly different fromthe Gulf War. First of all, we onlyhave about 15 to 20 percent of theequipment in Iraq that we had herewhen we were done with the fight-

ing in 1991. The quantity is much less. The second point isthat we know where it all is. We have a handle on it. It’s onour inventories. It’s being counted. It’s on hand receipts topeople. So we have a plan over the time allotted by the se-curity agreement with the Iraqis—that is, by the end of2011—for drawing out that equipment so GEN [RaymondT.] Odierno and his troops get to keep the equipment thatthey will need to fight, if they should have to keep fight-ing. At the same time, we’ll pull out what they don’t need

Third Army’s Missions: The Commander’s Perspective

LTG William G.Webster Jr., ThirdArmy commander,was interviewedat Third Army’sforward headquar-ters, Camp Arifjan,Kuwait.

A newly emplaced relocatable building(RLB) is ready for occupancy at

NATO’s Kandahar base. RLBs have thesame proportions as a containerized

housing unit (CHU) but are shipped flatwith the walls folded inside. Severalcan be stacked and shipped in the

same space required for a single CHU.

the inventory, however. Third Army contractors examineevery item retrograded from Iraq, down to the smallest andseemingly most insignificant piece, for serviceability, re-pairability and value, even if value is gauged by recoupingmoney through surplus disposal sales.

The munitions stockpile in Iraq decreased 41 percent bythe end of FY 2009. According to BG John R. O’Connor, Third

Army’s director of logistics, 600 to 700pieces of equipment are coming out ofIraq each month, with the pace ex-pected to double in the future, andmore vehicles will return as troop num-bers drop.

To achieve its support mission, ThirdArmy maintains a reception, staging,onward movement and integration(RSOI) operation in Kuwait that facili-tates unit and individual-personnel

movements in and out of Iraq. Troops from both Iraq andAfghanistan also travel through Kuwait for their 15-day en-vironmental morale leaves (formerly known as rest andrecreation leaves) sometime during their deployment. Offi-cials said that the annual personnel throughput of Kuwait’sTheater Gateway life-support area is larger than the popula-tion of Baltimore, Md.


as quickly as we can, fix it, and send it over to Afghanistanor return it to the Army.

We try to keep cost in mind as we do everything. Thelast thing a trooper on the front line wants is to get some-thing that is cheap, or not enough of something that isneeded, and think it’s just for economic reasons. We’re notdoing that; we’re making sure the troopers get everythingthat they need. At the same time, if there’s a less expensiveway to accomplish the same thing, then we’re looking forit. We do cost analysis, first, of virtually every decisionthat’s made in theater.

For instance, we need generators, we need trucks, weneed all kinds of equipment in Afghanistan, not only forthe buildup, but right now. There are many who would sayto just ship equipment from Iraq straight over toAfghanistan. Well, for example, some of these generatorshave been running for five or six years … and we have tolook at how much life expectancy they have. We then takea look at the costs—which vary—between buying a newone and having it shipped to Afghanistan, or bringing itout, rebuilding it here in Kuwait, and then putting it on aship and taking it to Afghanistan. What is the most eco-nomical thing and what is the most beneficial to soldiers interms of time—that’s the choice that we make.

We saved the Army and the American taxpayers severalbillion dollars last year in cost avoidance. There’s no wayin the world we would let soldiers go wanting to save afew dollars; however, this cost savings is something thatwe’re pretty proud of, and it’s new in terms of thinking

about what something costs to decide how to provide atool or how to conduct an operation.

In Third Army, we know the theater probably betterthan anybody else. We have been here, continuously de-ployed as Third Army headquarters, since 1990. Wehave a good working relationship with the Kuwaitisand other partners in the region, and we receive excel-lent support from the government of Kuwait. We knowthat we can stand in the middle of the bridge and directtraffic—that is, providing Iraq what the commandersneed for the rest of their mission; removing those thingsthat are no longer needed for the mission, either fixingthem here or sending them someplace where they canbe refurbished; and sending the absolutely best equip-ment in the most efficient fashion to Afghanistan. We’rein the ideal position geographically as well as throughexperience to do that mission.

There are 20 countries in the U.S. Central Commandarea of responsibility. We have to be prepared for poten-tial fights.

In the other countries of the region, we are sharing planswith them, sharing information, sharing equipment tothe extent that we can so that we make them strongerand make them see a benefit in a partnership with theUnited States and a partnership with each other. By do-ing that, we strengthen our own alliance here againstpotential threats, whether they are from Iran, from bal-listic missiles, from terrorists or from other organiza-tions that want to bring harm to American interests.

Soldiers move bunks into a recentlyconstructed conventional barracksbuilding at Kandahar.

Third Army moves most equipmentand supplies for Operation Iraqi Free-dom by road from Kuwaiti ports, re-versing the route to get units out. Offi-cials hope to use additional ports,notably in Turkey and Jordan, to avoidbottlenecks as the Iraq drawdownpeaks.

(A northern supply route alreadyreaches into Iraq from Turkey, primar-ily carrying rations and other expend-able supplies for U.S. units in north-ern Iraq.)

The theater’s primary RSOI site sup-porting Afghanistan is located in Kyr-gyzstan, and it is a fairly straightfor-ward operation.

Equipment and supply transporta-tion to support Operation EnduringFreedom is geographically and politi-cally much trickier than transportingsupplies to Iraq.

The nearest available seaport is inPakistan, and most equipment travelsby two routes that, generally speaking,follow the same paths established bythe British to support their 19th-cen-tury wars in Afghanistan—roads thatwould be treacherous because of theterrain alone, but which also traverse aswath of territory traditionally claimedby warlords/bandits who have pliedtheir trade in the Hindu Kush for cen-turies, and who now may support theTaliban but are restrained by whatevercompensation they may be deriving byallowing the convoys safe passage.

While supply routes into Iraq wereextremely dangerous during the longheight of the conflict there and ThirdArmy convoys were assailed by impro-vised explosive devices, the route wasrelatively smooth, straight, flat and de-fendable—at least observable—to somedegree.

The degree of difficulty is exponen-tially higher on the routes leading intoAfghanistan. Nevertheless, convoy at-tacks are less frequent (but occasion-ally more spectacular) than during thedark days in Iraq, and convoy attacksin Pakistan’s frontier region and Af-ghanistan seem bent toward shake-


A soldier carries his gear up thestairs of a new double-stackedRLB living area at Kandahar.

To expand livingspace, a concretechannel diverts thenatural flow of awadi that runsthrough NATO’sKandahar base.

A C/5-158 Aviation Black Hawk medevac helicoptertakes off from a remote Afghanistan hilltop shortlyafter the company’s transfer from Iraq.

PV2 Bryan Kelly, assigned to 569thEngineer Company, 4th EngineerBattalion (Task Force Thor), 555thEngineer Brigade, checks hisBuffalo vehicle after a route-clearance mission in Afghanistan.


Left, SPC Darin Paineof the 569th EngineerCompany checks hisHusky vehicle. Thecompany providesroute-clearancesupport to forces basedat Kandahar and tokeep the base’s mainsupply routes open.Below, a memorial atTask Force Thor’sheadquarters honorssoldiers from the unitwho have been killed inaction since the 4thEngineer Battalion wastransferred from Iraq toAfghanistan.

Left, MRAP vehicles line the enormous joint MRAP repair facility in Kuwait. The facilityrepairs and upgrades MRAPs retrograded from Iraq, most of which go to equip U.S.forces in Afghanistan. Above, a worker at the facility updates a status board.

downs or outright robberies morethan warfare, which has been the waysince spice and silk caravans beganplying the trails.

Another road-supply route, fed byrail and established through negotia-tions with Russia, meanders into Af-ghanistan from the northeast and car-ries some sustainment materiel forAfghanistan operations. Pakistan’sports, however, remain the primarystrategic gateway.

According to Third Army officials,on a typical day more than 90 convoysare on the roads of Iraq and Afghani-stan, delivering about 2.5 million gal-lons of fuel daily (which the officialsdescribed as enough to fill every carin Washington, D.C.) and enough fooddaily for 750,000 meals.

Third Army’s area of responsibility(AOR) stretches from Egypt to Kazakh-stan and from Yemen to Pakistan—realestate that encompasses allies and bel-ligerents alike, where the economicvalue of the region is counted by thesupertanker load. It’s an importantplace to the United States and the West.

The AOR remains the battlegroundfor the two ongoing major conven-tional U.S. military operations in thewar on terrorism and for Coalition op-erations against terrorist cells in othernations of the region. Iran is in the geo-graphical mix, along with Syria, whichelevates the overall volatility in ThirdArmy’s AOR.

In addition to supporting the cur-


A welder at thejoint MRAP

repair facilityworks on a

vehicle.

A box of used fireextinguishers sits

in the sorting yardat Camp Arifjan.

Equipment items—often crammed intoshipping containersin Iraq and shipped

to Kuwait—aresorted and put into

the repair andreissue pipeline,saving billions of

dollars.

A convoy arrives at CampArifjan, transporting Bradleyfighting vehicles from Iraq.


rent fights, Third Army maintains a constant posture as theon-call command for any American land operation in theCENTCOM region that might be ordered other than in thecommand areas already established for Iraq and Af-ghanistan. It is prepared to meet that mission, but it pushesfor peace through exercises and dialogues with the mili-taries of many countries in its AOR to promote goodwilland better relations with the United States.

Third Army has maintained a forward presence inKuwait since the end of the Gulf War. Its continuedbuildup of regional institutional knowledge and long-termrelations has paid off in war, and someday it also couldpay off in peace. M

Left, contract workers at Camp Arifjan sort equipment comingfrom Iraq for reissue down to loose nuts and bolts. Below, workerssort unused medical supplies coming from Iraq. Loose medicalgear will not be used by U.S. forces; Third Army donates it for usein training medical personnel in other countries.

Above, Robert Wayne, chief of ammunition surveillance at ThirdArmy’s theater ammunition-storage area and theater ammunition-reclamation facility in Kuwait, double-checks quality assurance.Ammunition—from 9 mm pistol rounds to Hellfire missiles—isbeing retrograded from Iraq and inspected and reclaimed inKuwait. Much of it is shipped to troops in Afghanistan. Left,contract workers repackage mortar rounds to originalspecifications at the theater ammunition-reclamation facility.

Documents

Responsible Iraq Drawdown— Rapid Afghanistan Buildup Third ... · combat efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Third Army simultaneously is orchestrating the Iraq drawdown and rein-forcement