Today, America and the international community depend on the US military to perform a wide range of warfighting, peacekeeping, and humanitarian missions. No matter what the mission, whether at home or abroad, this country's Defense Transportation System (DTS) enables it to quickly extend a "hand of friendship" or "the fist of war" to any location on the globe. The DTS, with its people, trucks, trains, aircraft, ships, information systems, and infrastructure, provides the United States (US) the most responsive strategic mobility capability the world has ever seen. It is USTRANSCOM's responsibility to manage this strategic global mobility system.
USTRANSCOM takes a holistic approach to managing the DTS, i.e., strategic transportation planning and modal operations are interdependently managed. When the unified commands, services, or other government agencies require strategic transportation they need to make only one call: to USTRANSCOM.
Because of USTRANSCOM's responsiveness and global reach, the command is in a constant state of activity. At every moment of every day, around the globe, USTRANSCOM's superb force of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen, and civilians is accomplishing a wide array of joint mobility missions. For example, during an average week USTRANSCOM operates 1,669 strategic air mobility missions transiting 52 countries, operates 22 military ocean ports in 13 countries, and has 20 chartered military ships underway. Thirty-six additional government-owned and chartered vessels, loaded with military cargo, are strategically prepositioned around the world, significantly increasing the responsiveness of urgently needed US military equipment and supplies during time of crisis. USTRANSCOM does all of this as a total-force team of active duty, guard and reserve personnel, civilians, and commercial partners, bringing the total synergy of US military and commercial transportation resources to bear in times of crisis, wherever in the world they may be required.
The capability of America's DTS is unparalleled in history. Never before has such a ready and capable mobility system existed in peacetime. But "readiness" and "peacetime" are often ambiguous terms when used to describe today's world environment. USTRANSCOM frequently finds itself operating at a near wartime tempo during peacetime. We are frequently called upon to surge to a combat operations tempo without benefit of our full wartime manning or activation of our agreements with industry for their surge capacities.
That said, even though USTRANSCOM is generally ready and capable, there are a number of challenges in USTRANSCOM's critical personnel, infrastructure, and equipment underpinnings that concern me now and, of even greater concern, challenges that could impair command capabilities in the future if we do not set about to correct them soon.
As you look at USTRANSCOM today, many of the visible features of the DTS are showcased daily around the world: the ships, aircraft, trains, and people who make day-to-day global mobility for the Department of Defense (and others) a reality. That said, many people are not aware of the wide variety of aggressive actions USTRANSCOM is taking behind the scenes to improve our transportation reliability and our global responsiveness to America's challenges. This statement serves as a "State of the Command" report and examines where we are, where we are going, how we are getting there, and the challenges we face. Ultimately, this statement is intended to portray the USTRANSCOM you see and know...as well as, the USTRANSCOM you may not see everyday.
For completed testimony, copy and paste this URL: http://public.transcom.mil/speeches/CINC_Seapwr_Final_.pdf
