6 Special report


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The redeployment juggernaut


Two years in the planning and two years to complete the process - the redeployment of the UK’s force in Afghanistan is a massive undertaking. In the second of her articles from Camp Bastion, Liza Helps looks at what is required.


T


ented camps seemingly disappear overnight leaving nothing but empty hollow compounds, a few collapsed Hesco walls and the faint rectangular outlines on the dusty ground


marking where once a couple of thousand soldiers lived cheek-by-jowl for some eight years. The pace is relentless; there is no stopping the


redeployment juggernaut, everyone is on task 24/7 to sort, pack up and send home some 5,000 TEUs worth of materiel and 3,400 vehicles valued at £4 billion. The task has been two years in the planning and,


when completed, will have taken two years in operation to fulfil at a cost of £300 million. Around 160 military personnel are currently solely


focussed on the redeployment effort. In addition to this the Theatre Redeployment Pool can send up to a maximum of 500 specialist personnel into Afghanistan focused purely on redeployment activities; these personnel deploy only when there is a specific requirement for them to be there. A further 1,000 personnel support the redeployment effort in addition to their normal role. But in truth everyone, in one way or another, is


involved; from the Ammunition Technicians signing off ordnance to be disposed of in theatre through controlled explosions, to the locally employed nationals (LEN) assisting in the scrapping, disposal and packaging of non-contentious materiel, to the infantry units on the ground packing up a forward operating base (FOB) ready to return at the end of their tour. As at 31 March 2014, 1,753 vehicles and major equipment (VAME) and 2,734 TEU of materiel had so far been sent back including 578 Protected Mobility vehicles such as the Mastiff – a heavily armoured six- wheel drive patrol vehicle used for operations and the British-made Foxhound specifically designed to protect against the threats faced by troops in Afghanistan such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) thanks to its V-shaped hull. The level of detail and the preparedness is


impressive and is a direct result of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) having been taken to task in 2011 by both the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office, regarding its supply chain set up and in more recent years for failing to provide enough evidence to support its valuation of £10 billion of military equipment. Air Commodore John Bessell Commander of Joint


Force Support at Camp Bastion says: “Years ago it was a culture that the military was almost, somehow, devoid of the need to be accountable for what it was doing but that is not the case now. Now, what we are doing is accounting for everything, at every step of the way.” Lt Colonel Robert Cosgrove of the Royal Electrical


and Mechanical Engineers (REME) has a unique overview of the process having been in from the start; planning the redeployment ahead of its beginning in October 2012 as lead logistics planner at Joint Army HQ in the UK. He says: “All [redeployment] policies implemented make sure we follow Proof Of Good Order (POGO) – providing documental evidence that everything has been done in the right way and that everyone is fully cognisant of that fact and that everything is done with mindfulness to best value for the taxpayer.” And none of that can happen without dedicated


infrastructure to support it. “A couple of years ago,” I am told as I am given the redeployment tour of Camp Bastion by Major Lucy Anderson, commander of the Reverse Support Chain (RSC) Squadron, “none of this was here.” She points to the RSC compound with its linear ordered ‘goods-in’ and ‘goods out’ entrances, its


May 2014 logisticsmanager


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