An article was released on the Army's Homepage about an interesting aspect of war that is usually over looked; the reacquisition of commercially leased shipping containers. Since their incorporation into military logistics during the Vietnam conflict, shipping containers have become a staple for units transporting equipment into theater. This is especially true in our decade long conflict in the Middle East given the massive amount of equipment that is needed to sustain a modern Army.
These shipping containers are not the property of the U.S. Army though, they are almost all commercially leased. As with any item leased it must be returned by the due date or the customer will pay hefty fees. To tackle this growing issue the 113th Sustainment Brigade was deployed to Afghanistan in support of the Joint Sustainment
Command - Afghanistan's Mobile Container Assessment Team, or MCAT,
program. The MCAT mission is to locate lost shipping containers (commercial and
government) and reduce unnecessary spending and detention fees paid by
the U.S. government to commercial carrier.
One member of the 113th, Spc. Jeffrey Brewer, describes some of the most interesting uses for these containers; "They have become small shops, bridging material and bridges
themselves, showers, latrines, offices, perimeter barriers, living
quarters and the list goes on." This main problem regarding this issue are the massive amount of fees that compile month to month, such as those when you don't return a movie to Redbox. So far Spc. Jeffrey Brewer and his teammate, Staff Sgt. Tyler Isenhour, have recovered 82 commercial containers that were previously unaccounted for and worth
more than $1,245,000 in government property and detention fees.
With media and the majority of the attention in war generally siding towards the front lines it is important to not forget about the aspects making all of those victories possible, the logistical pipeline. A pipeline that with the assistance of the 113th Sustainment Brigade is becoming more and more efficient each day. Maybe after a few more containers are recovered we can use those saved fees and finally buy the government more paper...
-W.C.
Yea I can attest that we did whatever we wanted with CONEX's. I personally buried one 8 feet below the Earth in Afghanistan with a backhoe to create an 81mm mortar proof ASP/mortar storage. Two more got blow up by enemy 81mm mortar fire on our COP (filled them with dirt and made them part of our perimeter) and another two "disappeared" (along with everything inside) in transit through Pakistan. All were civilian CONEX’s as the only government ones we had were for sensitive equipment and weapons. That's five missing in just one Company…
ReplyDeleteThis is particularly interesting when you consider the looming effects of sequestration and defense budget cuts. I believe that as combat operations in Afghanistan start to decline we will see a heavy emphasis on reverse logistics and the recovery of equipment and property back to the home front. In many instances we have seen how instrumental contractors have been in transporting such equipment yet they have no legitimate financial or occupational investment in this property which is why we see the 113th Sustainment Brigade tasked with this recovery effort. Certainly an interesting concept to keep an eye on.
ReplyDeleteI've personally heard of several examples of the issues associated with CONEXs. A friend of my brother was recently deployed last year and went through the entire stockpile of CONEXs on their base to try and get full accountability of what was inside them all. Some of these CONEXs had been there since 2007 (keep in mind he was deployed within the past year) and most of them were civilian contracted. Because of this, our Army had been paying for them on a weekly/monthly basis for the past 5 years, yet nobody took any initiative to ask where they were all located. My brother's friend put out notice for everyone to get their stuff out of the CONEXs and accounted for in the next 30 days. After that elapsed, he broke them open and returned everything that was inside them in order to get them available to get out of the base. Several million dollars worth of equipment that was unaccounted for was reintroduced into the system. This is just another example of the problems associated with civilian contracted CONEXs, and I agree that this search-and-locate mission is essential for a now resource-restricted military.
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