8 Special report


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waiting to happen that could end in tragedy, something that each of the five men who spend all day everyday sorting the casings by hand is well aware of. They, and their warrant officer supervisor, have the right to make even a superior officer, take back all a Unit’s ammunition casings to double check if they find a live one on the sorting trays. With hundreds of thousands of small-arm


ammunition casings to sort and account for the men carry out their task with dexterity and an incomprehensible speed. While much of what is to be redeployed will cost money to bring home the return of the brass ammunition casings actually makes money because the value of brass is high. Some 400 tonnes of brass ammo casing with 100 pallets of ammo boxes valued at £250,000 was returned to the UK in the first six months of redeployment. While the ammunition casings can return to the UK


Ammunition casings can return to the UK...


relishing the challenge and the responsibility. He did a dangerous goods course before deploying but with the intensity of the operation out in Theatre is now fast becoming an expert. Indeed Major Anderson says: “Skills wise what you gain in six months out here out on ground would take about two years back in the UK – the tempo is much faster out here and you are working seven days a week: day in and day out.” There are jobs that are seemingly mundane but carry


a high level of responsibility such as sorting through the hundreds of thousands of brass ammunition casings to be returned to the UK. Should a single piece of unfired ordnance get through then it is an accident


Case study A medical emergency


“The biggest challenge is getting the kit back and making it available at the same time and while everyone else can send there kit back to one place, because what we have is medical, we are sending our kit all around the world.” Welcome to the world of the Major Graham Moger and Major


Ian McAuliffe two men whose job it is to keep the world renowned Role 3 hospital in Camp Bastion running while at the same time packing up and accounting for every bit of military medical equipment in Afghanistan. This is about as FMCG as you get. “In just six months,” says


Major McAuliffe, “we have used 65,000 items of kit at a cost of over £1.1 million.” In electro-medical equipment alone there are over 1,500 items


from monitors to suction units to CT Scanners and defibrillators worth in the region of £6 million. All of this has to be redeployed but at the same time the hospital and indeed all medical services must carry on as usual. Equipment is not just found in the hospital it is in the


individual medical packs that each soldier carries with him or herself at all times, it’s in the vehicles, the ambulances, on the planes and helicopters with the Unit medics and the Medial Emergency Response Teams (MERT). “When you think about it; it’s pretty unique – we are involved


from the very front line where the soldiers are on the ground through to the individual casualty landing back in the UK,” says Major McAuliffe. Major Moger nods and continues: “The tricky piece for us is to


make sure that they are supplied with the right kit making sure that they do not have too much so that it goes out of date or indeed that they have too little which could prove fatal. It is a hard management piece to make sure that everyone has got enough for anything that is going to happen if it does happen.” The climatic conditions do not make the job any easier


comments Major McAuliffe. “Dust and heat are a big problem obviously because once it hits a certain a temperature then a lot of drugs can’t be used. So we have got cold storage issues especially trying to move drugs around the whole of the country. Major Moger explains how it is done: “Drugs will go cold


storage packed then into reefers like large cool boxes or in an ISO container which has got a refrigeration unit attached. And it is that balance of getting the right drugs forward in the right amount at the right temperature within a certain time frame that makes the job interesting. “And if that isn’t enough to start with on a normal day,” adds


Major McAuliffe, “then we are also in full swing to redeploy…” Major Mogers says: “It is a fine balance of taking down capabilities at exactly the right time in line with the drawdown of the population. We can only do that when the population at risk reduces. We do not want to lose too much too soon. We still have got to deliver an effective medical service in theatre.” With regard to what gets redeployed and what does not that,


decision is taken through Permanent Joint Head Quarters (PJHQ) back in the UK where medical experts will have the last say and make the ultimate decision as to what should happen mindful of value for money for the UK taxpayer. “Once a decision is made to redeploy equipment then the


logistics chain kicks in,” says Major Moger. “Every piece of kit,” states Major McAuliffe, “that goes back


from here is obviously prepared to the highest standards. It doesn’t leave us unless it is good to go the other side.” Major Moger agrees: “It has got to leave here ready to go


straight out to a unit so we have to prepare it free from infection, box it correctly, and, for example, make sure our medical dental support specialists have prepped the equipment and done their checks, put their paperwork inside it so it can go back to Warehouse 33 or wherever it has to go for reissue. All POGO.”


November 09 logisticsmanager


the actual ammunition itself is far too unstable due to the climatic conditions it has endured. Ammunition Technicians, experts in all matters explosive, also get in on the redeployment act and will assess what ammunition needs to be destroyed through controlled explosions and what can be used for training in theatre for each Unit. It’s the casings from the ammunition used by the various units that get sorted by hand by the soldiers back at the RSC. While some ammunition has to be disposed of via


controlled explosions a lot of small-arm ammunition is fed through the Transportable Ammunition Destruction System (known fondly as the Popcorn machine due to the metallic popping noise it makes as it digests ordnance) that can process up to 4 tonnes a day. At the end of last year the machine was getting through 20 tonnes of small ammunition a week


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