US Army's Logistical System Upgrade

US Army's Logistical System Upgrade

Staying on-par with the Army of 2020

Ordering supplies, managing equipment maintenance, and maintaining accountability of what supplies units possess while deployed - or even while on training exercises - has historically been a very tedious yet important task. However, due to a new upgrade the US Army Europe is about to undergo, this logistical system is about to get a whole lot easier. After seven years of development, testing, and validation the Global Combat Support System-Army has finally made it to the field this past year.

In an effort to keep with the standards and requirements of the Army of 2020, the Global Combat Support System-Army will an enhance a commanders ability to conduct decisive operations by integrating their unit's property accountability, maintenance operations, and requisitioning processes into a single system that provides him near-real time actionable information to assess and improve the unit's existing combat power readiness.

Unlike the Army's current system, where each aspect of logistics is in its own separate accountability log offline, the GCSS-Army upgrade will possess a web-based capability. This will greatly increase the speed at which commanders can request supplies, send supplies, and gain knowledge on the stocks of supplies already deployed.

Outside of benefiting logisticians, this upgrade will also benefit soldiers in the field in a number of ways. Warehouses will no longer have time-consuming closeouts and will have improved forecasting and reduced customer wait times. Unit supply rooms will have a virtual picture of customer bins at the supply support activity, which reduces risk to soldiers by limiting the amount of movement around a battlefield.

Finally, GCSS-Army will be operating in conjunction with the General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) in order to create a financial system of record that will integrate logistics and finance capability. This integration will greatly increase a commanders ability to have a greater picture of what is available, thus increasing unit readiness.