United States Transportation Command

Richmond, VA (March 5, USTCNS) --- Two hot spots for current military operations are the focus of a "war room" at Defense Supply Center Richmond, a field agency of the Defense Logistics Agency. DSCR is the Defense Logistics Agency's lead center for aviation.

The war room is the nerve center for DSCR's support for all aspects of Army aviation and the Air Force C-5 transport aircraft. Those two programs are particularly important as troops and equipment rotate in and out of the theaters of operation for Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

"We are focused on getting the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines back home while ensuring we use every possible resource to deliver replacement troops and equipment," said Col. David Hudson, chief of U.S. Transportation Command's operations division.

That force rotation effort ties in with DSCR's war room in two ways. First, Army aviation units need a steady supply of parts both to the theater of operations and after they return. Second, the C-5 has a big role in the airlift.

The Army portion of the war room has two aspects: meeting the needs of about a dozen aviation supply activities in the theater of operations and supporting the aviation portion of the Army's Reset program to refurbish equipment returning from the theater. Items affected by dust abrasion such as filters, bearings, canopies and gaskets are particularly in demand as about 1,000 helicopters go through the Reset program.

DSCR's proactive approach is to identify national stock numbers that DLA manages. The war room operatives use customer team software to pull data from the online Army supply database.

"A lot of information comes in," said Lt. Col. Joseph Anderson, chief of the Army customer team division at DSCR. "They have to assemble it, remove duplicates, prioritize it and pass it on to the item managers."

C-5 flight activity tends to increase every year in the late winter, said Ken Nordahl, contractor support team leader for Prometheus Co, which means the C-5 will have a "double surge" in March 2004 during flights to and from Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

The C-5 war room operation takes a look at short-term measures to reduce back orders and improve supply availability. In the longer term the war room is targeting future investment in items unique to the C-5. All of this has the additional benefit of examining how DSCR does business as a whole, according to Chris Knaggs, C-5 war room lead.

About one-third of the aircraft's national stock numbers are unique, making it a further challenge to provide parts promptly.

The war room staff meets every day with item managers from the Business Operations and Supplier Operations directorates. The staff puts up charts to display the status of critical items and issues.

Anderson and Knaggs pointed out that weapons system support managers and item managers at all three of DLA's Inventory Control Points -- DSCR, Defense Supply Center Philadelphia and Defense Supply Center Columbus -- have the biggest role in achieving timely support for the customers.

"There's a lot of people intensely involved throughout DLA," Knaggs said. "We're just providing a focus point for everyone's efforts."

DLA provides supply support, and technical and logistics services to the U.S. military services and several federal civilian agencies. Headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., the agency is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations.

Editor's note: This article was written by Scott Andreae, DSCR Public Affairs Office, with some information provided from an Air Force Print News article. Photo available for download at www.dla.mil/news.asp. Contact Marcia Klein for information about article at (703) 767-5064, or Marcia.klein@dla.mil.

Defense Supply Center Richmond war room focuses on Army aviation, Air Force C-5

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