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Afghanistan 9


transport costs of materiel returning back to the UK and landing up in the wrong place. So in February 2013 a team [from LCS] deployed out to Camp Bastion to assist in the process of starting to speed up the redeployment of kit back to a specific warehouse as opposed to stuffing an ISO full of whatever with UK slapped on the door. The aim was to radically reduce the amount of double handling at the other end, saving man hours and saving transport.” As well as going forward to operating bases to assess specialist equipment and advise on the best way to return it to the UK the LCS also identify materiel and equipment that can return directly to other units or indeed go straight to a depot without having to go to the Returned Stores Group (RSG).


Identification Identification of materiel and equipment is made that much easier via the £183 million Management of Joint Deployed Inventory system (MJDI) which allows complete visibility of all materiel deployed in theatre and helps optimise stock holding. This is in turn linked back to the base support


systems through the Boeing/Anvil Deployed Support System (Anvil DSS FOC) which came on line on 31st October 2013. “This system works in real time and we are able to


look back to the UK to say exactly where kit that we are redeploying should go,” explains Major Sharpe. The Anvill DSS FOC is just one part of an overall plan


by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to create a fully integrated end-to-end supply chain and to get rid of a toxic legacy of more than 200 software applications which had been used to manage logistics data when The Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force all had independent supply chains. All materiel and equipment is assessed on an item by


item basis. WO2 James Puttock a technical warrant officer with RSC says: “Everything is receipted on to MJDI from there it goes on to an e-compendium spread sheet which goes back to the UK. We are then told whether the kit is going to be disposed of in theatre, sent back to the UK (another Unit or back to the depot) or reissued to a battle group or infantry unit already out here.” “Once a decision is made to redeploy kit then it


(50mm downwards) providing 10 tonnes of salvage which was put into bags, boxed and palletised for redeployment. The machine has been a good investment, indeed other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops such as the Australians have also taken advantage of it to get rid of ammunition that cannot be returned with the proviso being that the UK keeps the salvage. “The machine has speeded up the process


considerably,” says Major Anderson which is just as well she adds: “because there was enough stock built up [in November 2013] to keep the machine running six days a week until May 2014.” Prior to the machine’s introduction all surplus and out of date ammunition had to be disposed of via controlled explosions. Assisting the RSC are specialists from the Logistics


Commodities & Services (LCS) who run the depots in Bicester and Donnington in the UK. The primary role of the LCS operation, which is run as part of the Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) organisation, is to support operations and force generation by undertaking procurement and inventory management of all non-explosive commodity items, including food, clothing, fuel and medical supplies. This also involves the storage and distribution of these commodity items, together with all other non-explosive stock across defence. Major Steve Sharpe, LCS Forward, explains: “Our role


is to speed up the redeployment of materiel going back to the UK. After extraction from Iraq it was identified that a large amount of money was being wasted in


Liza Helps


... but the actual ammunition itself is far too unstable due to the climatic conditions it has endured.


moves to the POGO lines, once cleared there it goes to the dispatch area and it is logged out from RSC through the Visibility in Transit Asset Logging (VITAL) system and it’s at this stage that the Unit is given a Clear RV and both Unit and kit is technically free to return to the UK.” All kit and materiel is issued with bar code tickets


which identify what it is, what condition it is in and where it is going. The system also creates a due in date i.e. when it is due in back at the depot so that those at the depot in the UK have a better knowledge of what is arriving and in what condition. Once the ticket is scanned back at base the system automatically updates a number of other systems that clear the issue voucher from the Units and this then speeds up the process for account closure.


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