SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (USTCNS) --- U.S. Transportation Command's deputy commander spoke to the Scott-St. Louis chapter of the National Defense Transportation Association, addressing the past, present and future of defense transportation here today.
Army Lt. Gen. Daniel G. Brown, addressed more than 150 local NDTA members during a membership luncheon at the Scott Club here.
Brown highlighted advances in defense transportation during the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, the Berlin Airlift, Vietnam War, and the Gulf War and detailed present and future developments.
From transportation in the Revolutionary War, which Brown defined "(as) a volunteer soldier who moved and was transported at about 2.7 miles per hour…," to the Gulf War which required the movement of more than 500,000 personnel to the Gulf, military transportation has evolved to an ongoing global responsibility.
Since the Gulf War the military has changed considerably.
Today's force has "reduced in size by nearly 34 percent. In some cases some services have reduced as much as 40 percent of their force structure," said Brown.
"It's a force that has deployed 55 times since Desert Storm," he said. In each of those deployments, the military turned to USTRANSCOM to help deploy and sustain our military personnel. "During the past ten years deployments are up nearly 300 percent…between 1958 and 1989 we deployed U.S. forces only 12 times in support of our national military objectives."
The force is being called upon for a variety of missions.
"The military is being asked to fight fires in Idaho, hurricanes in Venezuela, earthquakes in Turkey, and deploy forces to places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Somalia, Haiti and Panama…," Brown said.
Today's force is "better educated than ever before," Brown said. In the Civil War, the average age of a soldier was 21 and he had a 6th grade education. Today, nearly "100 percent of the enlisted force…has a minimum of a high school degree." About 74 percent of lieutenant colonels and above hold masters degrees, he added.
Moving both forces and their follow-on sustainment faster than ever before is a focus today and will continue to be in the future.
"The task last year at this time was (to) deploy approximately 5 and 1/3 divisions 8400 miles in 75 days. In the future, we want to be able to move 1 brigade anywhere in the world in 96 hours, a division in 120 hours and 5 divisions in 30 days," he said. The Air Force "challenge is to deploy up to 5 expeditionary Air Force units …in 15 days."
To meet the airlift challenge, the Air Force is considering a number of options to include purchase of additional C-17 aircraft, modernization of the C-5s… Brown said. Additionally, he said "there…are a number of other actions that need to be taken."
Near-term improvements for defense transportation include the purchase of the container roll-in, roll-out platform (CROP)and other intermodal transportation systems.
Military Sealift Command will also take delivery of the last of 20 large-medium-speed roll-on roll-off ships "in the fourth quarter of ༾…When we receive that last ship we will have over 130 percent more surge sealift than we had in 1990 when we went to Desert Storm. It is significantly improved capability," said Brown.
Future possible transportation improvement may include systems such as quad-tilt rotor aircraft that could move forces and supplies faster, devices that can weigh equipment to improve loading on aircraft, dirigibles which could carry large over-size cargo rapidly, and high-speed fast sealift ships.
Brown became the deputy commander in chief of USTRANSCOM in Oct. 1999. He graduated from Furman University and holds a masters degree from the Florida Institute of Technology. Among his many assignments, he commanded the Army's 7th Transportation Group during Operations Desert Shield and Storm.
