United States Transportation Command

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill., (USTCNS) --- A recent initiative spearheaded by the Central Command’s Deployment and Distribution Operations Center (CDDOC) is improving the flow of forces into and throughout the command’s theater of operations.

The lack of visibility and oversight of the movement of forces into and within the theater was impacting the efficiency of the deployment process. The problem stemmed from the inability to see who or what was coming into the theater with enough lead-time to proactively plan for reception and onward movement.

The answer was to address this concern by managing unit movements from origin to final destination.

Prior to the ‘Single Ticket’ initiative, onward movement of arriving units was not coordinated and planned until the unit reached the theater at an intermediate location - still short of the final destination. The CDDOC became the CENTCOM subordinate unit with authority to synchronize, prioritize, coordinate and direct the force flow process.

The CDDOC is the result of a proposal by the Commander of U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) and DOD’s Distribution Process Owner, Gen. John Handy. This ‘battlestaff’ team, representing all of the Service’s material commands, USTRANSCOM, U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), and Defense Logistics Agency deployed in January this year to the USCENTCOM theater with subject matter experts armed with the latest information technologies that connect to national providers in the United States.

Air Force Col. John “JJ” Torres is now second in command at the Air Mobility Command’s Tanker Airlift Control Center and was instrumental in spearheading the initiative (Single Ticket) while serving as a member of the CDDOC.

According to Torres, the flow of forces from a strategic level was working well. The Single Ticket process was born out of the idea to try and mirror what worked on the strategic level and apply it to bridge the gap to the theater level.

"In so doing we were better able to link together the inter- and intra-theater airlift systems," said Torres. "It was a win-win for the warfighter and lift providers."

Single Ticket enforces a single process for all passenger movement across strategic and theater action agencies and eliminates redundant tasks. The visibility of troop movement now extends from the Aerial Port of Embarkation (APOE) all the way to the final (in theater) Aerial Port of Debarkation (APOD). The force closure velocity has increased and the time spent by troops at intermediate locations has been drastically reduced.

“During the OIF-2/OEF-5 rotation, we were able to watch the flow of forces all the way to final destination. In previous rotations, we lost visibility after forces arrived at their intermediate theater transit points," he said. "Single Ticket allowed the theater airlift planners to see what was coming up to 96 hours out and therefore more efficiently schedule airlift onward movement, and it gave strategic planners improved visibility into the intratheater movement process."

Delay in force closure was reduced 67%, from 72 hours to under 24 hours. It also eliminated the effort required on the part of individual customers to facilitate their own transportation solutions. This process was used for the simultaneous deployment and redeployment of the 25th Infantry Division, 10th Mountain Division, and 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, transporting over 15,000 troops. It was also utilized most recently with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force troop swapout which completed last week (Oct. 15). 45,000 Marines were moved into/out of Iraq under the Single Ticket process with an average dwell time of only 29.5 hours at the intermediate transit point of Kuwait.

‘Single Ticket’ initiative improves the flow of forces

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