www.logisticsmanager.com Mission rehearsal Practice makes perfect…
The Joint Force Support (Afghanistan) Op Herrick 20 headquarter team is on its 18th rotation. Essentially that would be like having had 18 different sets of company executives over a 12 year period: in a civilian company that would be cause for the gravest concern if the company in question was still actually in business. However, the military is different
and, contrary to some reports, does actually learn from its mistakes. It does so through training. No one individual, or indeed any group including the JFS HQ team, is allowed to deploy to Afghanistan without meeting vigorous Theatre Entry Standards as set by the Permanent Joint Head Quarters (PJHQ). Those standards are deemed met by the successful conclusion of a Mission Rehearsal Exercise (MRX) which is where I met with the Brigadier and his team on an overcast Monday in May this year. This JFS HQ will be the last before
to the UK while other vehicles such as the Mastiffs and Jackals fly to an interim port where they are consolidated into shipments to be sailed home via RORO shipping. “The areas are arranged by what we can fly by which
outlet. The C17 has its own winch system. -the air craft can take pretty much anything,” says Squadron Leader Walker. “Land Rovers can fly back via contracted 747s and outsized equipment goes back via Antonov.” All materiel and equipment that comes to the JMU has
to be re-palleted and reorganised so that it can be transported back safely via air. All paper work is meticulously checked and rechecked and cross referenced with the VITAL consignment tracking system.
Meticulously calibrated “The load master will know what is expected to be transported whether that be general goods or ACTO for example and will organise it to keep trim on the flight.” Everything is meticulously calibrated and when the
vehicles are driven on board the magnificent huge grey C17 workhorses with surprising ease and dexterity, the whole process takes less than an hour. The vehicles are anchored down and every chain and
strap is double and triple checked before the flight departs. Whatever the item and whatever its route, it doesn’t
move until it’s been accounted for by the Force Movement Control Centre (FMCC), a unit of logistics experts who allocate people and freight to aircraft. Numbers illustrate the FMCC’s success in just one
month they moved more than 1,300 tonnes of heavy vehicles and equipment, from 6-tonne Jackal armoured vehicles to a 30-tonne vehicle recovery truck – or the equivalent of more than 100 double-decker buses. In order for this to be achieved the airfield itself has
to be running at top efficiency and with 14,000 air movement every month that in itself is a huge logistical challenge. Everything from the runways to the follow-me vehicles, as well as intelligence staff, air traffic controllers and ops have to be working at the top of their game.
logisticsmanager August 2014
the troops come home for Christmas and its ability to carry out this task effectively will stand as a lasting testament to all that has gone on before – no pressure then. While Op Herrick is essentially a
land-centric operation the 115 strong JFS is tri-service made up one third Royal Navy and Royal Air Force and a quarter civil servants with the balance Army. It is responsible for a raft of joint force responsibilities including personnel, engineering, medical, logistics, communications, intelligence, financial and commercial support to UK forces in Afghanistan and of course redeploying everyone and all their vehicles and equipment back before Christmas in lock step with the US forces based at Camp Bastion. At the same time the US-led Regional Command (South West) is commanding UK combat forces as part of the coalition task force. To meet this goal the Brigadier and
his core team have undergone mission specific training to ensure they are well prepared to deliver those lines of operation against a fairly uncertain strategic context. “We were initially warned off about
18 months ago that the core HQ from 102 Logistics Brigade would be the lead for what they call an Individual Augmentee HQ,” explains Lt Colonel Andy Thorne whose job it will be to act as a link man on an operational order level taking orders from PJHQ and translating them into something the troops on the ground can action at the same time looking at how the operational orders affect the sustainability of Op Herrick 20. A bit of a juggling act.
While the core staff came from 102
Logistics Brigade the majority came from different backgrounds, different regiments and even different services – a cohort of Lt Colonels from the Army, Wing Commanders from the Royal Air Force and Commanders from the Royal Navy who will come together temporarily as 102 Logistics Brigade six months before the deploy point known as D-6 (D minus 6). This disparate group will have a 6+6
(six plus six) which is six months of training followed by a six month deployment. It’s in the training phase that the new JFS will come together as a fully effective HQ. “We have effectively conducted three
or four formal training activities what we parochially call “Crawl, Walk, Run” process,” says Brigadier Amison. “The crawl was done in Sennelager in Germany at the Command & Staff Training (CAST) facility where we looked internally at our own HQ procedures, communication and battle rhythm (or daily routine) that evolved into a CAST exercise in the UK where we created a higher control (HiCon) and replicated those units that are beneath us lower control (LowCon) as well as incorporating the flanks such as Regional Command (South West), Kandahar, Kabul and PJHQ. This is where we walked; the exercise allowed us to start to think about dealing with events in a very collaborative way because what we have to do this year is work as an integrated team collaboratively and co-operatively with the flanking organisations such as Regional Command (South West). We will get in badly wrong if we simply operate exclusively.” The Mission Rehearsal Exercise
(MRX) is the run phase of this journey where the fledgling JFS HQ team was tested to ensure that it met those crucial Theatre Entry Standards. The team worked in real time tackling some of the events and activities that they were going to be faced with in theatre with access to those out in Camp Bastion for support via a secure telephone line. Everything is made as real as possible. Why go to such lengths? Because out
in theatre if something goes wrong peoples’ lives are at stake. Even with all the training there are two added complications for the new HQ team; firstly during the training process some of the individual augmentees deployed at different times. Essentially, says Lt Colonel Thorne, “we have not seen 50 per cent of the people that we are going to be working with in theatre; and secondly, the theatre is a highly dynamic place”.
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