Demands for support generated by different types of divisions.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. That axiom applies to the field of military science as much today as in the past. In spite of the Revolution in Military Affairs, we face many of the same issues today that commanders faced long ago; only the package is different.
Today's Army encounters the same types of problems General John J. Pershing faced when the United States entered World War I in 1917. Then, General Pershing had to decide whether to send U.S. troops to fill in the existing Allied forces or to send them to fight as a distinct unit. Now, U.S. military leaders must determine how to structure the time-phased force development list for early combat in various theaters. The Army must get the largest possible combat force deployed as quickly as possible. The Chief of Staff of the Army has launched a wide array of programs to reach that goal.
As time goes on, modern warfare is getting faster, heavier, and more lethal, and the volume of supplies needed by armies in the field grows. This trend shows no evidence of declining. Armies need thousands of tons of fuel, ammunition, parts, supplies, and equipment to stay abreast of trends. Transportation assets are required to move them all. At the same time, the Army must be ready to transport reinforcement units flowing into the country.
Now more than ever, unit commanders must have incredible foresight to deploy into a combat theater. Military units are complex collections of equipment and personnel. Over time, units have grown bigger, and equipment has gotten heavier. Compare the size of the M48 tank to the current M1 tank. The M1 tank is at least 30 tons heavier than the M48, and that comparison covers only one inventory item for a combat unit.
It takes detailed planning for a combat unit to move across the street or across the world. The first place planners look to trim things to make deployment quicker is the tail. However, that is not always easy because the logistics demands of war have grown with the size of the equipment. At the same time, the speed of operations has increased to the point that entire wars now can be concluded within days as opposed to the months that campaigns lasted during World War II. Current plans call for the Army to be able to deploy a corps to a future war zone within 30 days. That sort of timeline is unheard of in military history. The challenge facing the Army is immense. How do we move quickly to win the war while the war is underway?
The need to deploy forces quickly in a contingency is apparent in South Korea. Eighth U.S. Army (EUSA) has only 37,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea. To move units from the continental United States to Korea requires a sea voyage of 2 to 3 weeks or an airplane ride of more than 20 hours. The entire southern half of the peninsula, which comprises South Korea, is about a 6- to 7-hour car ride from north to south. Fifty years ago, it took the North Koreans a "wink of an eye" to get half way down the peninsula. Consider how much more quickly North Koreans could make the trip today.
The disparity between the time it takes U.S. forces to get to the theater and the time it would take enemy forces to overtake a country is not unique to South Korea. The Army faces this problem all over the world in all theaters. It is one of the major forces behind the Revolution in Military Affairs and the Army's redesign of combat units with new equipment, tactics, and doctrine.
Along with the Revolution in Military Affairs, the Army is experiencing a Revolution in Military Logistics. EUSA has several programs—many of them unique to South Korea—to improve combat support and combat service support in the theater.
The first of these programs is wartime host
nation support (WHNS). WHNS assets first became a
critical force multiplier during Operation Desert Storm,
when the Government of Saudi Arabia provided a wide
range of assets to accommodate the needs of U.S. forces.
Those assets included everything from tents and buildings
to cars and trucks—whatever was needed to help win
the war. U.S. military planners in South Korea saw
how well WHNS worked during Desert Storm and
decided to develop a similar program for use in the Korean
theater.
In 1991, Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney signed the WHNS umbrella agreement with South Korea. The agreement established a formal procedure for acquiring assets within the WHNS program. The program calls for South Korea to provide U.S. forces with various assets from the local economy during a war. It also outlines a joint payment plan for the assets between the United States and South Korea.
The definition of WHNS in the accord is "military and civilian resources and assistance provided by the government of the Republic of Korea for the reception, onward movement and sustainment of U.S. forces in times of crisis, hostilities, or war." The WHNS program's list of what the host nation will provide is extensive. It includes ammunition; petroleum movement; communications; security services; engineering; field services; facilities; field supplies; construction services and equipment; transportation vehicles; maintenance services; nuclear, biological, and chemical materiel; personnel services; a Korean Service Corps (KSC) battalion; Korean Augmentation to the U.S. Army; and direct-hire civilians.
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Demands for support generated by different types of divisions. |
The table above indicates the size of the supply demands a division generates. As the table shows, wartime demands on the Department of Defense transportation system are immense for sustainment tasks alone. Without WHNS, all of the materiel needed to sustain the Army in a theater will have to be shipped from the United States. Therefore, anything that will reduce the strains on the transportation system caused by that demand will help greatly.
The present WHNS plan calls for providing U.S. forces with 5,105 vehicles, of which 1,443 are M915 tractor-trailer-like rigs. The M915 is almost a carbon copy of the commercial tractor-trailer truck and weighs 14 tons. If we had to ship those trucks to South Korea from the United States, we would need enough U.S. transportation assets to ship an additional 20,202 tons. WHNS allows U.S. forces to ship 20,202 tons of other essential war supplies or personnel to Korea in the critical first 30 days.
WHNS makes reception, staging, onward movement, and integration (RSO&I) possible. The RSO&I process must work for the United States to get its power from the continental United States into play in a theater. WHNS provides a critical boost to the process by allowing the United States to put more combat troops into the flow earlier.
The WHNS program is up and running. Information on the plan released in 1999 shows that the program will provide a large amount of assets for U.S. forces. The quantities of assets planned to be provided to U.S. forces from the Korean economy are shown in the table below.
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Assets that will be provided through the WHNS program. |
Whether or not these quantities are enough to support U.S. forces in time of war is questionable. The Republic of Korea (ROK) Government only approves approximately 35 percent of U.S. needs. This is because they must balance our demands against the output of their economy, the needs of their civilian populace, and the needs of the their armed forces. They also have to factor the political environment into their planning. While what they are providing may not be enough to meet all U.S. military needs, it will help greatly. In addition, it is commonly believed that once a conflict starts, the ROK Government will be more generous with what they approve.
WHNS items are critical to mission accomplishment. For example, everything in a war zone must occupy a plot of land. The terrain of South Korea makes this significant because every piece of land seems to be claimed for some purpose. All use of terrain must be planned. All requests for land and buildings must go through G3 and WHNS channels.
Determining what and how much will be provided by WHNS is a 2-year process. It is critical that U.S. units be proactive in this process. They must submit their needs through U. S. Forces Korea, which then sends them to the ROK Government for resolution. It takes about 6 months to run through U.S. channels and about 18 months to clear South Korean channels. If units miss the submission deadline, they cannot easily submit later. While there is a route for noncycle submissions, it is not as user friendly as the method described above.
KSC
Another critical program, similar to WHNS, is
the KSC. The KSC program uses Korean nationals to
perform various combat support and combat service
support functions for U.S. forces. These citizen
soldiers have no affiliation with the ROK Army. However,
ROK Army officers and noncommissioned officers lead
the units. The battalion core consists of U.S. military
personnel.
The KSC traces its history back to the Korean War, when, during the Pusan Perimeter days, Korean civilians carried ammunition from the ships to the front lines. This service proved to be priceless to the defending U.S. Army.
In peacetime, KSC personnel number around 2,000. They perform a multitude of tasks from driving buses to building shelters. The battledress uniform is their duty uniform. KSC soldiers receive paychecks from the U.S. Treasury for services rendered, and they regularly receive common task training.
KSC forces will grow to more than 20,000 in time of conflict. They are grouped in specialty platoons that perform tasks such as driving ambulances and buses, constructing bridges, and maintaining equipment. During the first part of a conflict, KSCs will be the only service assets available. KSCs can be thought of as the "muscle" of the WHNS program. Requests for these units must be submitted through the chain of command to the KSC battalion commander. He then decides whether the request should be met and if he can staff it or if he should request permission from the ROK Government to expand the program.
Another program in Korea that could help meet a logistics shortfall is the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), which is administered by the Army Materiel Command. Under LOGCAP, the Army contracts with a vendor to provide a variety of services. The contractor in turn hires either sub-contractors or local nationals to do the labor. EUSA is in the process of developing its LOGCAP program.
These are just three programs that have evolved as a result of overwhelming need. All three programs will be critical to survival in a Korean conflict. All three programs depend on individuals with foresight as planners. In logistics, as in combat, the individual soldier makes all the difference. ALOG
Major Thomas M. Magee, USAR, is the Wartime Host Nation Support Transportation Officer for the Des Moines, Iowa, Army Reserve element of the 19th Theater Support Command. He is a physical security specialist for the Federal Protective Service of the General Services Administration in Kansas City, Missouri. He has a B.S. degree in business administration from the University of Kansas and an M.P.A. degree in public administration from the University of Missouri. He is a graduate of the Military Police Officer Basic Course, the Military Police Reserve Officer Advanced Course, and the Combined Arms and Services Staff School.
This article expresses views of the author, not the Department of Defense or any of its agencies.