GEN Ann E. Dunwoody is the commanding general of the

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1 The new (AMC) headquarters at Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: AMC began operations from the building last summer after relocating from Fort Belvoir, Va., under congressional base closing and realignment mandates that collocated AMC with several of its subordinate commands. Inset is a photograph of GEN Ann E. Dunwoody, the commanding general of AMC. Dennis Steele GEN Ann E. Dunwoody is the commanding general of the (AMC), headquartered at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., having taken command in November of She is the first woman in the U.S. military to attain four-star rank. At the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, GEN Dunwoody commanded the 1st Corps Support Command and deployed the logistics task force that supported the first deploying Army units in Afghanistan and stood up the Joint Logistics Command in Uzbekistan to support Combined Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan. Subsequently, at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, she commanded the Military Traffic Management Command (redesignated as the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command), and as its commander supported

2 An Interview By Dennis Steele Senior Staff Writer the largest Army wartime deployment/redeployment movement since World War II. She went on to command the Combined Arms Support Command and then serve as the U.S. Army s Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, G-4, before joining AMC as its deputy commanding general. For soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, if they drove it, flew it, shot it, ate it, wore it, talked on it or used it to stop blood loss, AMC has played a major role in loading it, getting it to them, fueling it, fixing it or getting it back from the theaters of operations since 9/11. After serving 37 years in the Army, GEN Dunwoody plans to retire later this year. The current AMC deputy commanding general/ chief of staff, LTG Dennis L. Via, has been nominated by the President to succeed her. Q: AMC has played a large role in the drawdown of Operation New Dawn in Iraq and is playing a large role in sustaining Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghani stan. From your perspective, provide an update. GEN Dunwoody: As I watched GEN Austin and Deputy Secretary of Defense Carter furl the colors when we closed our operations in Iraq, I was surprised when my eyes filled with tears during the ceremony. I reflected back with pride on the contributions and sacrifice our service members, our civilian corps and our families made over the past 10 years, both to support the war, and to complete the responsible drawdown plan. This last decade has been tough. It s touched almost every sustainer and every logistics organization in the Army, but we have much to be proud of. Hands down, our greatest accomplishment was and is our ability to support our joint warfighters in Iraq and Afghani - stan, regardless of the many other demands placed on AMC. I think it s important for folks to remember that our drawdown in Iraq was one of the largest retrogrades in U.S. history. AMC supported that effort while being engaged on two fronts Iraq and Afghanistan, while also sustaining contingency operations in places like Haiti, Pakistan and Japan, and while completing the largest BRAC in history. At the same time, we continued the reset of the Army s and our joint partner s equipment after a very hard decade at war to regenerate combat power for future deployments. This meant operating our Depots, Arsenals and Plants at three times the rate we ran them at the height of the Vietnam War. One of our key initiatives in support of the end of Iraq operations was the establishment of our Responsible Reset Task Force (R2TF). It s a forward-deployed, three-star AMC presence, commanded by the AMC Deputy Commanding General. R2TF served as a large catcher s mitt in Kuwait for all the equipment coming out of Iraq to ensure March 2012 ARMY 25

3 An AMC technician at Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa., tests an optics system being repaired. we could not only track it, but return it, repair it, dispose of it or redistribute it. That s a tough mission to accomplish from a CONUS-based headquarters. In fact, because we were forward deployed, we were able to support efforts to ship equipment directly from Iraq to Afghanistan. More than 50 percent of the equipment needed for the Afghan surge came from equipment coming out of Iraq a tremendous cost avoidance. This deployable command post-r2tf is now a model for the coming Afghan drawdown as we shift our focus to provide the same level of support for Operation Enduring Freedom. Management of equipment on this magnitude would not have been possible in the past because the automation tools did not exist. Now, because of advancements in automated systems and forward deployed logistics capabilities, we were able to see the equipment and as a result, we could repair the equipment in theater, and we could ship the equipment straight to Afghanistan instead of shipping from the United States. R2TF s mission was fully integrated with our ARCENT and CENTCOM joint partners in A soldier wearing a developmental helmet is seated inside the sphere room (named for its spherical loudspeaker configuration) at an AMC test facility located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. The sphere room is designed to create an auditory virtual space, allowing complex testing of the effects of sound on helmets and other equipment. theater. In fact, one of the things I m most proud of is how today s AMC really does serve as an extension of the CENTCOM and ARCENT families and is a full member of that great, joint logistics team. There will be new challenges as we transition efforts in Operation Enduring Freedom. For example, as we departed Iraq, we were fortunate to have Kuwait to act as a hub for our equipment retrograde effort. We won t have that in Afghanistan. For those who have not been there: Afghanistan is a land-locked country the size of Texas with less than two percent of the road network and 20,000-foot mountains. Recovering and retrograding equipment will be challenging. We ll want to achieve the same kind of visibility, accountability and velocity of equipment retrograde that we did in Iraq. Q: Concerning the Iraq retrograde operation, currently, is there a backlog of equipment that you have to work through, or is it done? GEN Dunwoody: Unlike Desert Storm, there are no iron mountains left in Iraq. There are no piles of containers. If you ve studied the famous Red Ball Express from WWII, you understand that what we had to do in Iraq was equally historic. Just to give you a visual, if you had put all the equipment in Iraq in a single convoy, it would stretch over 2,000 miles. The last of that equipment will come out of the Kuwait staging area at the end of February or early March. Throughout the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn, we deployed, sustained and redeployed a total of 314 brigade-equivalent units 26 ARMY March 2012

4 and, to meet the President s mandate, retrograded more than 2.4 million pieces of equipment. The sheer size of the responsible reset operation cannot be overstated: It was equivalent to closing down a city two and a half times the size of Annapolis, Md. The troop movement to Kuwait was akin to evacuating the entire population of Quincy, Mass., and moving it to Washington, D.C. If we stacked every container that left Iraq, the stack would be 51 miles high nine times the height of Mt. Everest. This was a truly PhDlevel logistics mission on a historic scale. Q: How has AMC evolved since the start of combat operations to provide operational support? GEN Dunwoody: Institutional adaptation has been critical in AMC s success. Over the last 10 years, we ve really operationalized AMC to link the industrial base to the operational force and to focus on supporting the Joint Force and our Combatant Commanders. Since 9/11, we ve built tremendous new capabilities for the joint warfight. For example, our Army Field Support Brigades, Army Contracting Brigades and Transportation Brigades are all now aligned with each of the COCOMs in order to respond to the needs of the Joint Warfighter across the logistics spectrum. Although we are not a joint headquarters, the support AMC provides to joint forces is significant. As GEN Odierno has said, we can never stop asking ourselves, Are we joint enough? Today s AMC is able to think joint, plan joint and sustain joint. That kind of approach is a must for us as we move into a new decade. These new capabilities, along with R2TF, serve as AMC s face to the field allowing us to better support our CO- COMs and the Army Service Component Commands, while ensuring that we get the equipment back into our depots in order to generate combat power as quickly as possible. Now, at the same time we were adapting the operational arm of AMC, we were working to adapt AMC s generating arm in order to better synchronize the distribution and redistribution of equipment. I m proud to say that back in March 2011 the Secretary of the Army designated AMC as the Army s Lead Materiel Integrator (LMI). The LMI approach to materiel management is a transformational model for the Army and will change how the Army equips our warfighter. Because we ve been at war, our focus has been on getting the right equipment to our warfighters and getting it to them fast. That s absolutely the right approach, but it s also expensive and it can lead to inefficiencies. So, for all the right reasons, we ve developed multiple organizations in the Army that manage materiel; we have multiple piles of stuff being managed theater sustainment stocks, theater-provided equipment, Army prepositioned stocks, left-behind equipment, prepositioned deployment training sets and we have multiple information systems used to manage our equipment. With the designation of LMI, we ll leverage state-of-the-art automation to establish one distribution manager, one source for managing repair, and one authoritative database, all working together to provide the kind of visibility we need visibility of every piece of equipment across the Army. LMI will allow the Army to optimize supply against demand, based on Department of Army s priorities, policies and strategy to minimize friction and make distribution decisions in minutes or hours instead of weeks or months. Another area where we ve made significant changes is in contracting. The 2007 Gansler Commission report was a good wake-up call on the state of our contracting capability. That report, along with our field commanders, reinforced the message that there was a difference between acquisition and contracting. We had let our contracting capability erode, while at the same time contracting requirements skyrocketed in support of the war, and we Mine resistant, ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles are lined up for shipment after being withdrawn from Iraq. The Responsible Reset Task Force spearheaded the massive operation that brought equipment from Iraq, repairing or upgrading it and transporting it to where it was most needed. In-theater repair and transportation accounted for much of the equipment necessary for the U.S. Army s surge operation in Afghanistan. 28 ARMY March 2012

5 found ourselves doing billions of dollars in contracting in theater. It was a skill set that we lost because of downsizing trade-offs. When we deployed into Iraq, few would have thought that we d be there 10 years, or would have imagined the scope and magnitude of the billions of dollars that we would do in contracting. We had to relearn the contracting lesson and reestablish that core capability. We can t afford to lose it again. We cannot underestimate contracting as a combat multiplier or weapon system on the battlefield. Contracting allows us to support Iraqi and Afghanistan First programs, which hire the local population and give them jobs while infusing money into their economy. It is a powerful tool for nation-building and helps enable combatant and field Commanders theater engagement and partnering strategies. In 2008, we stood up the Army Contracting Command, a two-star-level command. Now we have contracting support brigades that can deploy forward with trained and certified contract managers who can give oversight to the contracting business in theater. We ve hired and trained more than 900 new acquisition professionals to meet growing demand for contract operations. In addition, we re implementing initiatives such as our Service Contract Reform, a tool that will incorporate better buying power and optimization of services contracts across our Army. We are the only service that has a command and control capability associated with our contracting capability. In Haiti, we had our contracting team in place within 72 hours of the earthquake there and ready to do contracting services. That s a tremendous capability. We have come a long way in a short time, but we still have work to do. Another organization adaptation has been the realignment of Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) to AMC with operational control to our joint partners at TRANSCOM. With SDDC assigned to AMC, it allows us to control and synchronize the movement of equipment, supplies and services. The benefit of all these initiatives is that we have been able to connect what was historically the industrial, CONUS-based organization to the joint warfighter factory to foxhole, concept to combat. There s still more to do. Our vision for AMC 2020 is to be a globally networked, fully transparent materiel command that serves as a single entry point for the logistics needs of our Army. We want AMC 2020 to bring the full power of the national industrial base to our forward deployed forces. Q: Concerning Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO mission in Afghanistan, because we are now relying on the Northern Distribution Network, what are the additional costs and burdens on the logistics system and what part does AMC play? GEN Dunwoody: SDDC, one of our major subordinate commands, has a huge role, and keeps an eye on the PAK G-LOC (Pakistan ground logistics route) and Northern Distribution Network. The PAK G-LOC is closed right now, and it s somewhat astonishing in itself that it s been closed for more than 60 days and has had minimal impact on our ability to sustain and maintain. The Northern Distribution Network gives us options a safety net. TRANSCOM and CENTCOM have several proof-of-principle projects, and pilots, under way right now to study our abilities to use different, multi-modal routes. As you well know, multi-modal is much more expensive. Every time you handle load, unload, load equipment it is much more expensive. Q: Meanwhile, as AMC was supporting two major combat operations, the AMC headquarters was being moved from Fort Belvoir, Va., to Redstone Arsenal, Ala., under congressional base realignment and closure law (BRAC). What was entailed in that? An AMC contract worker inspects ammunition at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, Independence, Mo. The plant is a government-owned, contractoroperated facility, and it has produced millions of rounds of ammunition to support U.S. combat operations since 9/ ARMY March 2012

6 An Abrams tank undergoes repair and refurbishment at an AMC facility. GEN Dunwoody: What I m most proud of when it comes to BRAC is how our workforce continued to support the warfighter in both theaters and supported contingency operations around the globe all without missing a beat. It was incredible: two combat operations and contingency operations Haiti, Pakistan, and Japan all done at the same time of the BRAC move. Our BRAC mission a seven-year terrain walk is complete, and we did it on time and in many cases ahead of schedule. Not many people know that this last BRAC round was the largest in the history of the Army. In fact, at AMC, BRAC impacted one out of every six employees. Because AMC is mainly civilian, we were asking many of our folks to move for the first time in their lives. That s a tough decision. We had to recognize that and support our unique, talented workforce throughout the BRAC process. We also used BRAC as an opportunity to reorganize and posture ourselves for the future. We moved into our new headquarters building in June. In the building, we ve designed and implemented a world-class operations center that equals any of our commercial logistics providers. For the first time in Army history we have an integrated operations center providing near real-time visibility of the materiel and services our warfighters need. BRAC allowed us to take advantage of synergies in our organizations as we shifted our AMC centers of gravity to four locations: Redstone Arsenal, Ala.; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md; Warren, Mich.; and Rock Island Arsenal, Ill. For example, at Redstone Arsenal where our headquarters is located, we also have the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command, the Army Contracting Command, the Expeditionary Contracting Command, the Aviation and Missile Command, and the Logistics Support Activity. Now that BRAC s complete we can focus on enhancing our collaboration, while leveraging our new state-of-the-art technologies. Q: Regarding the recently announced new national strategy, what capabilities do you have in AMC to meet that strategy? GEN Dunwoody: I think the new strategy clearly reflects a strong commitment across the Army and DoD not only to confront the fiscal realities of a new era, but also to avoid the mistakes we ve seen during past drawdowns, like the hollow Army we experienced after Vietnam. We re looking at the second and third order effects of the decisions we re making today, to ensure that doesn t happen again. In fact, if we adapt for this new era in a bold and innovative way, I m confident we re going to be a tremendously capable organization, and AMC will remain wellpostured to support our joint forces as we implement our new strategy. As I ve told other folks, at AMC we re taking an Ends, Ways and Means approach to getting after the budget challenges and meeting the requirements of this new strategy. What I mean by that is, we know that our ends which I define as continuing to provide our joint warfighters the decisive edge through superior sustainment won t really change. But we know our means our resources won t increase and will most likely diminish. So the only thing we can do is to change the ways we do our business. Fortunately, we ve been looking at a number of ways to fundamentally change the way we do business while addressing opportunities to consolidate and optimize our capabilities. One thing we ve done, along with our partners at the [Office of] Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology (ASAALT), was to identify efficiencies and optimize how the Army does materiel development and sustainment. This was a Secretary of the Army-directed review, and it has made us take a hard look at ourselves. We know we can t afford to do business as we have in the past, and we know that we have to be good stewards of the taxpayers dollars. ASAALT and AMC have identified more than 60 different recommendations that will enhance the full spectrum of our materiel efforts. This effort wasn t just a budget drill though. It was as much about becoming more effective as it was becoming more efficient. We ve also aligned our core competencies through ef- 32 ARMY March 2012

7 AMC employees at the Red River Army Depot, Texas, over - haul a vehicle with - drawn from Iraq during the respon - sible reset opera - tion to ready it for reissue. forts like the transfer of installation Directorates of Logistics from our garrison commanders to AMC, along with realigning responsibility for the maintenance of TRADOC s training fleet to AMC. Instead of all of us doing our own thing in different headquarters, we re right-sizing the Army s maintenance and sustainment capability. Regarding a Pacific-Asia strategy, we already have flexibility. When we built this deployable command post, it was designed to go into Kuwait to help in Iraq. Now we re turning its focus on Afghanistan. It could, along with the rest of our new operational and deployable capability, go to the Pacific just as well. It is a capability that we want to institutionalize in the Army. By operationalizing our command and bringing AMC into the foxhole, our soldiers and civilians have proven themselves and earned the credibility and trust of our Joint Force commanders. Q: You have fought the whole war the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as a logistics general officer. What lessons learned would you share with your fellow logisticians? GEN Dunwoody: It s all about collaboration. Every person counts in this business. And you ve got to bring all the players together to make sure they understand the opportunities and capabilities. When visitors come to this headquarters, they are amazed at our new capabilities. Similarly, we have to make sure that we understand other service s capabilities so we can optimize and complement each other on the battlefield. Trust and communication help us to better understand each other; they enable us to resolve differences and build confidence and respect. Trusting relationships create environments where creative ideas and problem solving can flourish. At AMC, our success is founded on increasing our effective relationships among all of our key stakeholders ASAALT, our CO- COMs, our sister services and with industry. Trust is really a must for those of us in our business as we confront the challenges of the years ahead. Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add? GEN Dunwoody: First, I m so proud of our AMC workforce. Our success always comes down to our people. At AMC we have an incredibly talented workforce made up of more than 69,000 people and 97 percent are civilians. Thousands of those folks have deployed since 9/11 and many have skills and abilities that exist nowhere outside the Army. I really want AMC to be a champion for our Civilian Corps. Second, I m very proud of our logisticians and they should be proud of all they have accomplished. We have to realize that we have been an Army at war for 10 years, and we have a decade of soldiers and officers and NCOs that didn t come in with the same training or experience in property accountability that previous generations had. It s understandable we ve been a busy Army so now we focus on back to basics. We now have the tools, the time and most importantly the talented leaders to help us get back to the basics and fundamental principles in logistics and maintenance. Finally, we all understand there are some challenging times ahead as we confront an era of reduced resources, uncertainties and emerging threats. I am very honored and proud to have been given the opportunity to command AMC, which sustains our Army, the strength of our nation, as we provide America s warfighters with the decisive edge. I truly believe if we can accomplish all we have over the last decade, working together, we can overcome any obstacles in our future. March 2012 ARMY 33