In New Guinea, logistics and construction activities were coordinated by task force engineer staffs. These were often hastily assembled and had not always been able to meet the demands imposed by base development in such a challenging theater of operations. The scale of operations in the Philippines was much greater, so for this purpose the Army Service Command (ASCOM) was formed in Brisbane on 23 July 1944. Casey was appointed to command ASCOM. In his absence, Sverdrup became MacArthur's chief engineer. Although part of USASOS, ASCOM operated under the control of Sixth Army, moving as far forward as combat operations allowed, developed new bases, and operated them until USASOS was ready to take over, at which point the units under ASCOM simply reverted to USASOS, allowing a seamless transfer of command. For the Battle of Leyte Casey's ASCOM had 43,000 men, of whom 21,000 were engineers.