USTRANSCOM officer recognized for logistics excellence
The Defense Logistics Conference, the award sponsor, brings together logisticians from private industry and the military. Conference organizers created the Defense Logistics awards to recognize people and organizations for contributions to support the Department of Defense and the warfighter.
Curtis is chief of the U.S. Central Command Branch, part of USTRANSCOM's Operations and Plans Directorate. He is responsible for coordination and strategic synchronization of global air, land and sea transportation in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn and Operation Enduring Freedom. He also supervises the long-range planning, daily operations, validation and sustainment operations for the USCENTCOM area of responsibility.
He and his team were responsible for the command's transportation milestones of accomplishing the President's directed surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan and 80,000 troop withdrawal from Iraq. He simultaneously managed the accelerated delivery of 6,500 Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicles into Afghanistan and handled a more than 50 percent increase of transportation requirements for USCENTCOM.
Tom Kane, vice president of Defense Government Programs for Atlas Air, nominated Curtis for the award and provided a personal example of Curtis' high level of support to the warfighter.
"In his role, Lt. Col. Curtis' team was faced with the daunting task of delivering (thousands of) M-ATVs to Afghanistan with a required delivery date of yesterday," Kane said.
"These vehicles are extremely mobile and afford the necessary protection for today's warfighter. His team masterminded the CONOPS (concept of operations) that tested and proved that commercial Boeing 747 aircraft could contribute and expeditiously deliver these lifesaving vehicles with high reliability. This has allowed USTRANSCOM to increase the delivery schedule and still fulfill other mission priorities," he said.
Kane added that those efforts helped reduce the congestion and logjam of aircraft into Bagram and that USTRANSCOM was able to take full advantage of the non-stop delivery.
Curtis was typically modest about his award.
"Everyone deserves credit for the tremendous day-to-day logistics that are occurring," he said, "especially those in support of the warfighter. Successful logistics into the AO (area of operations) can't be pinned on any one individual, or any one organization. Successful logistics into CENTCOM belongs to the entire logistics enterprise, military and civilian alike. Everyone collectively does their part to meet the tremendous requirement."
"I believe I was singled out because I'm the individual recognized because of my interactions with people and organizations inside and outside of USTRANSCOM. USTRANSCOM never loses sight that our job is to support the warfighter."
"As a Marine," Curtis added, "I never forget that our actions directly and indirectly support that PFC in the foxhole."
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