The CENTCOM Deployment & Distribution Operation Center and the Afghanistan retrograde

by Senior Master Sgt. George Thompson
386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

4/15/2013 - UNDISCLOSED LOCATION -- The CENTCOM Deployment & Distribution Operation Center and the Afghanistan retrograde

Former President Theodore Roosevelt stated "the best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Lee K. Levy II, Director of the CENTCOM Deployment & Distribution Operation Center and his select team of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are responsible for the retrograde of the more than 50,000 coalition (U.S. and NATO, of which 28,000 are U.S.) military vehicles from Afghanistan to be redeployed or pre-positioned in worldwide contingency stocks abroad.

"The folks here on our joint team are responsible for integrating strategic transportation with theater transportation," Levy said. "Our job is to marry those two communities up and make sure it's a seamless set of logistics and transportation from the factory or fort back in the U.S. all the way to the point wherever the soldier, sailor, airmen or Marine needs it at his or her FOB, COB or outpost."

The complicated task of moving equipment halfway around the world was explained with two simple action verbs.

"Our watchwords are anticipate and accelerate," he said. "How can we anticipate what the guy or gal in a foxhole is going to need and go faster and make sure the logistics machine is running at a high rate of speed."

Levy likened his team's mission to inner workings of an automatic transmission and explained the consequences of logistical failure.

"There's a thousand pieces in there some of its mechanical, some of its hydraulics, some of its electrical and it all has to work together every single day, every time," he said. "If we as a logistics and transportation team don't do that, the folks that are at the pointy end of the spear don't have what they need to execute the mission.

One significant mission levied upon the CENTCOM DDOC is the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces and equipment from Afghanistan by the 2014 Presidential timeline; but the team is also responsible for the logistics of the other 20 nations that make-up the U.S. Central Command's Area of Responsibility.

"If it's in the CENTCOM AOR on any given day we'll have some sort of engagement with the logistics infrastructure to make sure those parts of CENTCOM are dressed for success," he said. "We work very closely with AFCENT and their team and the air mobility division and the director of mobility forces to orchestrate that air movement inside of the theater and if need be we work backwards with TRANSCOM or with Air Mobility Command, the air component to TRANSCOM to make sure we have the right airlift assets in theater to move things around."

So how do you move things around a mountainous landlocked country the size of Texas and can't lessons learned from the retrograde of Iraq be used in Afghanistan?

"If you think Iraq was difficult, I would call that getting your bachelor's degree in logistics," Levy said. "Withdrawing from Afghanistan is getting your PhD in logistics and we are writing our thesis as we speak."

"When you look at the lines of communication both ground and air, when you look at the amount of equipment, when you look at the real estate, you look at the fact our primary mission it to train the Afghan National Security Forces to be able to do the job in their own country," he said. "Our measure of success is the Afghanis doing for themselves and not us doing it for them."

Another visible measure of success is retrograding from Afghanistan economically.

"Every time we move something it costs money, that's my tax money, it's your tax money," he said. "We never want to trade effectiveness for efficiency but we absolutely want to be mindful of cost."

"We will bring home the things it makes sense to bring home and we will either give them back to the services so they can reset them or they will go back to the unit and organizations that they came from and go back for preparation for the next conflict that hopefully will never come."

While the task ahead is daunting, Levy knows his joint team at the CENTCOM DDOC is up to the challenge.

"In the Air Force we talk about TFI, Total Force Integration, the folks we have here in the CENTCOM DDOC is total force integration personified," he said. "A lot of what they do is underneath the radar, it doesn't make the six o'clock news and that's fine but they help glue that logistics machine together."

"There is not a day where I don't take my boots off at the end of the day and say wow, we made a difference for somebody somewhere."