Holding the Line

Sustaining Readiness in South Korea.

Refinery to Flight

The Long Journey from Crude Oil to Jet Fuel

Deploy and Dispose

DLA Disposition Services Conducts Annual 

Exercises to Hone Its Ability to Dispose of 

Unneeded Equipment and Supplies

LOGLINES

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

DLA AND THE WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT

 INTO THE

FIRE Continuing Support

 to Wildland Firefighting

 with Federal, State

 and Local Partners

The Right Solution — On Time, Every Time November / December 2017
DLA DIRECTOR 

Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams

DLA VICE DIRECTOR

Ted Case

CHIEF OF STAFF

Renee L. Roman

DIRECTOR, PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Joseph M. Yoswa

DEPUTY DIRECTOR, PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Patrick H. Mackin

MANAGING EDITOR

Phil Prater

SENIOR EDITOR

John R. Bell

WRITERS

Beth Reece

Dianne Ryder

LAYOUT AND DESIGN

Paul Henry Crank

LOGLINES

THE OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION OF THE 

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY 

Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams

Director, Defense Logistics Agency

From the Director

I

recently joined DLA senior leaders to finalize our updated strategic plan, 

which you can read about in the “A Conversation with ...” section of this 

magazine. Collectively, we explored a concept important to the motivation 

and success of our workforce: why we do what we do. I was introduced to 

this concept in books and videos by Simon Sinek, who argues that when the 

people in an organization understand why they do what they do, they perform 

better and achieve ever greater mission outcomes.

We discussed the “why” for DLA and came up with our own version: “We 

serve the warfighter and our nation.” The result was not so much a surprise 

as it was affirmation of what we’ve known all along: that we serve our country 

by supporting our military and other governmental agencies. 

Service to warfighter and nation goes back a long way in this organization, 

as we witnessed recently while inducting five new members into the DLA 

Hall of Fame. Each inductee served with incredible distinction, and their 

accomplishments are extraordinary and inspiring. When you read what they 

have to say about their time at DLA, you sense they deeply understood the 

“why” of what they were doing, which led to their amazing careers. 

In another article, we pivot to current events with a story about how DLA 

supports our warfighters in many of the most unstable areas of the world. 

Our employees focus on their missions with quiet dedication, knowing that 

the threat of conflict is always present. 

DLA also serves the nation through ever-increasing support to the whole 

of government, a growth that has prompted one of the major changes to 

our strategic plan. In this issue, we feature a story about DLA’s support to 

wildland firefighting efforts through the U.S. Forest Service. 

Another change to our strategy involves the importance of DLA’s global 

posture and our ability to deploy quickly in support of contingency operations 

across the U.S. and around the world. Several of our subordinate commands 

now have this capability, and we feature one of those teams as they train for 

expeditionary duty.

An article from DLA Energy pulls back the curtain and shows us exactly 

what it takes to get aviation fuel from the refinery to our military aircraft. 

You’ll be impressed with the incredible behind-the-scenes activity and 

support to produce and transport this precious commodity that fuels our 

warfighters and keeps our nation in the fight.

All these stories and much more highlight the great work being done by 

our extraordinary workforce around the globe in support of our customers. 

We at DLA are fortunate to be able to go about our work believing in 

something greater than ourselves. We serve with an unwavering commitment 

because we understand the “why” of what we do: “We serve the warfighter 

and our nation.” Happy reading! LL

LOGLINES is the authorized publication for the Defense 

Logistics Agency’s workforce of federal civilians, activeduty military and Joint Reserve Force augmentees at 

agency activities worldwide and industry customers of 

DLA. Contents of this publication are not necessarily the 

official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, the 

Department of Defense or the Defense Logistics Agency. 

LOGLINES is prepared electronically, using desktop 

publishing applications; no commercial typesetting 

costs are involved. Photos not credited are courtesy of 

agency sources. Submissions and correspondence may 

be sent to the address below:

Headquarters, Defense Logistics Agency 

Office of Public Affairs, 

8725 John J. Kingman Road, Suite 2545, 

Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6221

DLA ON THE WEB www.dla.mil www.facebook.com/dla.mil

SUBSCRIBE TO LOGLINES MAGAZINE

If you would like to be on the Loglines mailing list, 

please email loglines@dla.mil with your name, 

organization and complete mailing address.
Fantastic Five ..........................................02

Five new honorees joined the Defense Logistics Agency Hall 

of Fame as the class of 2016, in a ceremony at the McNamara 

Headquarters Complex. 

Into the Fire ............................................10

The Defense Logistics Agency continues its critical support 

to wildland firefighting, working with federal, state and 

local partners. 

Soaring Surplus ..................................... 13

In the years following World War I, surplus in the form of 

the Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” helped two aviation pioneers get 

their start.

Package Deal .......................................... 16

From high-tech parts to fragile equipment, DLA Distribution’s 

packaging specialists make sure it’s protected, packed and labeled 

the right way.

Holding the Line .................................... 18

In a distant location where the U.S. military helps hold the 

line for freedom, DLA is there, helping them stay ready. 

Refinery to Flight ...................................28

Fuel reaches warfighters and other DLA Energy customers 

after a long journey, helped along by many expert hands.

Deploy and Dispose ..............................34

Since 2013, DLA Disposition Services has conducted 

annual exercises to hone its ability to dispose of unneeded 

equipment and supplies, no matter where on earth.

10

28

18

34

Features

Departments

A Conversation with ... .........................25

Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams

DLA NewsWire .......................................32

I am DLA ..................................Back Cover

Jesse J. Romandia

www.twitter.com/dlamil www.youtube.com/dodlogisticsagency
page

2 www.dla.mil

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

HONORING EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE

Deborah

Greger

All the accomplishments and firsts 

tied to Deborah Greger’s legacy are 

reasons enough for recognition, but if 

the people who knew her are any judge, 

it’s her leadership skills that earned her 

a place in the Defense Logistics Agency 

Hall of Fame.

Speak to Greger’s co-workers, and in 

the same breath they mention how she 

ended her 31-career as the first woman 

and civilian to lead DLA Information Operations’ Logistics Information Services, 

odds are they will want to talk about 

how she supported her team as well.

Even before she reached her top 

position with DLA, people like Cris 

Miranda took notice of the way Greger 

led. Miranda, now a liaison for national 

stock number codification with Logistics

Mary

Studevant

She gave employees advice like 

“Never let them see you sweat” and 

“Always dress appropriately.” But for 

all her talk about appearances, Mary 

Studevant had a reputation as a hard 

worker who showed up early and was 

often the last to leave. She was inducted 

into the Defense Logistics Agency Hall 

of Fame for her significant contribution 

to DLA, the Aviation workforce, their 

military customers and the community. 

Studevant grew up in Kenbridge, 

Virginia, a small farming town where 

most girls grew up to be teachers or 

government workers.

“Going to work for the government 

was the most convenient thing to do 

because, at the time, you took the Civil 

Service exam, and if you passed you

THE DEFENSE LOGISTICS 

AGENCY INDUCTED 

FIVE LEADERS INTO ITS 

HALL OF FAME IN A SEPT. 

21, 2017, CEREMONY 

AT THE MCNAMARA 

HEADQUARTERS 

COMPLEX. SEVERAL 

CURRENT AND FORMER 

SENIOR LEADERS FROM 

THROUGHOUT THE 

AGENCY ATTENDED, 

AS WELL AS DIGNITARIES 

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE 

AND THE FAMILIES 

OF THE HONOREES.

FANTASTIC 

— continued on page 4 — continued on page 4
page

November / December 2017 3

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

Retired Army Lt.

Gen. Kathleen Gainey 

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Kathleen 

Gainey said she was surprised and awed 

to be nominated as a 2016 Defense 

Logistics Agency Hall of Fame inductee. 

Before Gainey served as DLA 

Distribution’s commander from 

June 2002 to June 2004, when the 

organization was known as the Defense 

Distribution Center, she knew little of 

DLA’s mission.

“I was amazed at how parts, 

equipment and supplies that we needed 

always showed up,” she said.

“I never understood the role of DLA 

until I deployed to Albania with Task Force 

Hawk and never fully understood the 

span of responsibility until I got into DLA.” 

As commander, Gainey established 

new standards for performance and 

Larry

Wilson

With the right attributes and helpful 

mentors, a person can lead others to 

great things even without being an expert 

in the technical aspects of their work.

Larry Wilson is proof of that. 

After starting in the government 

as an intern, Wilson rose through the 

ranks of the newly formed Defense 

Logistics Agency Information Operations 

to become its executive director of 

enterprise solutions. He managed this 

despite having worked up to then as an 

editor of a policy magazine and public 

affairs officer, with no background in 

information technology. 

Once in this leadership position, he 

drove the division to make long-needed 

reforms and to develop systems relied 

on today across the agency.

Donald

Peschka

Donald Peschka has a place on the 

Defense Logistics Agency’s Hall of Fame 

wall, yet the former deputy director of 

DLA Energy’s Bulk Fuels division said he 

is “shocked” to have been nominated. 

“I was extremely surprised, because 

I know and have worked with a lot of 

people on that wall,” Peschka said. He 

was under the impression only very 

senior leaders were nominated to the 

DLA Hall of Fame, though his own 

accomplishments and enduring legacy 

have earned him several honors.

Peschka served in DLA Energy as 

an Air Force major and a civilian from 

October 1983 to December 2004, when 

he retired. During his tenure, DLA Energy 

— along with DLA Headquarters 

 FIVE

— continued on page 6 — continued on page 7 — continued on page 8
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

Deborah Greger

— continued from page 2

Information Services, was a selfdescribed outsider about to retire from 

active duty when he joined Greger on 

the team supporting the mine-resistant, 

ambush-protected vehicle program.

“I was immersed in that program 

with Deb Greger, from the rapid 

provisioning of the repair parts to 

supporting the program in southwest 

Asia,” Miranda said. “She always 

supported us 110 percent. And when I 

say ‘us,’ I mean the DLA workforce and 

the customers.”

Anything needed to help the group do 

their job better, whether it was training, 

conferences or deployment, got full 

backing from Greger, Miranda explained. 

Being easily approachable was 

another valuable resource in Greger’s 

toolkit, he said.

“We could reach out to her any time 

we needed to; there was no red tape or 

needing to go through anyone else to 

get to her,” Miranda said. “I could directly 

connect to the senior management 

about an issue and have it resolved right 

there and then, instead of having to go 

through multiple layers.”

That sentiment was echoed by Oriel 

Paulino, a program analyst with Logistics 

Information Services.

“Something big and amazing about 

Deb was that she was a very personal 

and approachable boss,” Paulino said. 

“It seems that she knew all of us, what 

we did, our problems, our abilities and 

our names.”

That openness was something 

Greger said she strived for.

“We all have many challenges 

throughout our careers,” Greger said. 

“To overcome them, whatever they 

may be, requires an environment 

that encourages communication.... 

I tried to be as open, accessible and 

personal as possible. While not always 

easy or comfortable, I tried to create 

an environment of trust and mutual 

respect, especially during times of 

disagreement and adversity.”

Greger began developing those traits 

in 1982 as she worked in what was 

then known as the Defense Logistics 

Service Center and, later, the Defense 

Reutilization and Marketing Service. 

Her work evolved into cataloging 

modernization, where a team focus 

showed its strengths.

“I learned early on about the value 

of teamwork during a major cataloging 

modernization in the late 1980s and 

early 1990s,” Greger said. “Since that 

time, I truly embraced the power of 

teams in meeting diverse challenges, 

from system implementations to 

issues such as nuclear weapons 

identification, process improvement 

and climate culture.”

Building on those lessons of 

teamwork, Greger’s responsibilities grew 

as she became the first director of the 

Logistics Initiatives Office, where she 

managed all developmental logistics 

information programs for what was 

then the Defense Logistics Information 

Service. With an array of programs like 

the Department of Defense Electronic 

Mall, the Universal Data Repository, 

Asset Visibility, and the Cataloging 

Reengineering System, she had a 

huge impact, according to Raymond 

Zingaretti, the current Logistics 

Information Services director.

Managing those programs “on time 

and within budget, has led to important 

advancements within DLA and DoD in 

the areas of medical logistics, electronic 

commerce and environmental controls,” 

Zingaretti said. “Development of the 

CRS program turned the estimated 

long-term benefits savings of the DoD 

cataloging consolidation in [Battle Creek, 

Michigan,] into a reality.”

Then, as Greger scaled the ranks 

of Logistics Information Services, she 

became responsible for the overseeing 

the array of services that fall under 

the office, such as the DLA Customer 

Interaction Center, federal and 

international cataloging, and several 

cataloging-related logistics applications. 

She developed an alternative budget 

strategy with a costs savings of 

$51 million. She also served as the 

U.S. representative to NATO Allied 

Codification Committee 135 to help with 

the NATO Codification System policy 

and data exchange standards used by 

nations around the world.

“Her outstanding commitment to 

customer service, resource stewardship 

and professionalism has enabled her to 

succeed at each stage of her career, to 

serve as a role model to future leaders, 

and to ensure Logistics Information 

Services and DLA provides dedicated 

support to the warfighter,” Zingaretti said.

When it comes to role models, 

Greger noted that she is especially 

honored by acceptance into the 

DLA Hall of Fame because of the 

reputations of its prior inductees.

“Many of my mentors are on that 

wall,” she said. “I am truly honored 

and humbled to have earned a spot 

beside them.”

For those seeking mentorship of 

their own, Greger offered her own 

words of advice.

“It’s not enough to know what 

you do and do it well,” she said. “You 

have to know why you are doing it, 

how it benefits the DLA enterprise and 

ultimately the support of our military. 

Make relationships, learn and contribute!”

— Christopher Goulait

Mary Studevant

— continued from page 2

were called in to work,” she said.

She started out as a part-time clerk with 

the Internal Revenue Service in 1962. 

A year later, she and her husband, who 

was serving in the Air Force, moved to 

Hawaii, where she continued her federal 
page

November / December 2017 5

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

service at Hickam Air Force Base. 

When they returned to Virginia in 

1966, Studevant began her 30-year 

DLA career as a secretary with what 

was then Defense Supply Center 

Richmond, now DLA Aviation, where she 

progressed through many positions. But 

in 1973 she took a nine-year break to be 

a stay-at-home mom.

She returned to DLA in 1982 

as a trainee in contracting and took 

advantage of every training opportunity 

available, attending evening classes 

and earning a bachelor’s degree from 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

and a master’s degree in business 

administration from the University of 

Richmond, completing a pre-graduate 

fellowship at the University of Virginia 

and attending Harvard University’s John 

F. Kennedy School of Government. These 

opportunities were the catalyst that 

moved her up the career ladder.

Studevant’s passion for 

learning inspired one of her 

earliest contributions to the 

agency. During her 17 years of 

procurement experience, she 

developed the agency’s first 

contracting intern program 

at DSCR to ensure newly 

hired employees completed 

a structured program of 

on-the-job training that 

aligned with Department of 

Defense standards. It was 

an important step in a time 

when media reports were 

lambasting Pentagon officials for buying 

$700 toilet seats and paying too much 

for other supplies.

“The new program enabled us 

to be sure our folks were certified to 

do the things they did and had the 

training that would help them make 

smart business decisions. It went on 

to become a template for training 

throughout the agency,” she said.

Agreements Studevant made 

with two community colleges and 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

also paved the way for employees to 

take college courses relating to their 

contracting duties. 

“Many employees said they couldn’t 

go back to college because they had to 

get home and take care of their kids. But 

with these agreements, all they had to 

do was walk across the hall to receive 

college-level courses. We even put 

together a program where students were 

reimbursed for tuition, and later we paid 

the cost for them up-front,” she added.

In 1994, former DLA Director 

Vice Adm. Keith Lippert selected 

Studevant to serve as his chief of 

staff. She supervised the command 

staff and supported four consecutive 

commanders, advising them on 

strategic planning while also overseeing 

the activity’s equal employment 

opportunity and small business goals.

As activities throughout DLA 

strived to improve warfighter support, 

Studevant was key in pioneering the 

Strategic Management System, which 

helped Defense Supply Center Richmond 

measure day-to-day operations with a 

combination of metrics and performance 

indicators. The system led to the first 

“balanced scorecard” that all DLA 

activities used to measure success and 

is a forerunner to similar systems used 

across the agency today. 

Studevant’s leadership and attention 

to detail led to Defense Supply Center 

Richmond being recognized as a premiere 

location for executive-level conferences, 

former DLA Aviation Commander Air 

Force Brig. Gen. Allan Day said when 

Studevant was inducted into the DLA 

Aviation Hall of Fame last year.

She coordinated command conferences with an eye on even the smallest 

details, but two weeks before hosting 

one Joint Logistics Commanders’ Conference in Richmond, the leaders decided to 

move the event to Northern Virginia.

“It was quite a challenge, but after 

driving to check out several locations, I 

was able to negotiate the meeting location, meals, rooms and everything that 

went with planning a conference with the 

Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner. 

Even with very short notice, 

it was recognized by the 

leadership as one of the best 

conferences ever,” she said.

After a reorganization 

at Defense Supply Center 

Richmond in July 2001, 

Studevant became deputy 

director for Support 

Services, now DLA 

Installation Support in 

Richmond. It was in this 

position where she was 

charged with overseeing the 

local infrastructure when 

terrorists attacked the nation on 9/11. 

The agency had already established a 

Continuity of Operations Program, but 

events of that day helped Studevant and 

other leaders tighten the plans for doing 

business in emergencies. 

Like most former employees, people 

are what Studevant remembers the 

most about her years with the agency. In 

particular, she recalls those who taught 

her the value of mentoring, as well as a 

special evening at the White House.

The DLA Hall of Fame Class of 2016 (L-R): Retired Army Lt. 

Gen. Kathleen Gainey, Donald Peschka, Mary Studevant and 

Larry Wilson. (Not pictured: Deborah Greger)

Teodora Mocanu
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

“When Vice Adm. Lippert received 

his second star, he was pinned at the 

White House. He, his family and a few 

select people were invited to have 

dinner there, and he invited me,” she 

said. “I still have fond memories of 

that occasion.”

“Another mentor I remember, 

and one who taught me so much, 

was Frank Lotts. Frank encouraged 

me to take time to walk around, talk 

and listen to your people. 

He shared that if you 

take care of your people, 

the key performance 

indicators would take care 

of themselves.”

Angela Curtis, a 

human resources 

specialist for DLA’s 

Human Capital Program 

Development Office, 

worked for Studevant 

as a corporate planning 

officer. She was 

inspired by Studevant’s 

transparency and ability 

to help those following her footsteps 

become strong leaders.

“The test of true leadership is when 

one can admit to making mistakes, 

accept responsibility and not place 

blame. Mary’s uncanny way of doing 

this made it possible for employees 

throughout DLA to learn how a true 

leader can be transparent and trusted at 

the same time,” she said. “She was a role 

model for all employees, and particularly 

for the women at DLA.” 

Retirement has given Studevant 

more time to pursue her greatest 

pleasure: mentoring young people at 

local schools. 

“Somewhere along my career I had 

someone tell me there was no better 

use of time than through mentoring,” 

she said. “I feel like this is my way of 

giving back to the great mentors that I 

had throughout my career.” 

— Beth Reece

Retired Army Lt. Gen.

Kathleen Gainey

— continued from page 3

direct support to the warfighter during 

the initial surge of troops into Iraq. 

“We just became overwhelmed in 

the DDC,” she said. “I’m proudest of 

how we got 300 more people to meet 

surge requirements in time to get the 

new workforce trained up and ready. 

Because you can’t just hire people and 

say, ‘OK, now go to work.’”

It was at this time DLA Distribution 

formed its emergency essential program, 

which enhanced the organization’s ability 

to deploy civilians in contingencies. 

“We had a group of people willing to 

go and wanting to do the right things,” 

she said. “We did have to look more 

carefully at the medical side, to make 

sure we were sending people capable of 

going into austere conditions.”

Regarding the quality of the people, 

their willingness to serve and desire to 

work hard, Gainey said there was no 

difference between the civilians and 

military members who deployed.

Providing distribution support in 

theater and in a “non-doctrinal manner” 

was extremely challenging, Gainey said. 

“There was not a distribution point 

forward in Iraq to send to — or a fully 

enabled group of people capable of 

receiving and doing the distribution,” she 

said. “The organization that was there 

was very much a shell organization 

and not a trained [group] that had been 

working together historically.”

Gainey established a combat theater 

distribution platform in Bahrain, which 

allowed forward positioning of critical 

inventories and direct 

delivery to allied units 

engaged in combat. 

This innovation saved 

money and time and 

freed up aircraft to supply 

emergencies. 

“We had to change 

how we were moving 

supplies forward; we didn’t 

have a really good central 

site to move them forward 

into Iraq,” she said. “We 

created the mixed pallet 

and pure pallet to try and 

speed the throughput 

process.”

Gainey said that process afforded 

DLA Distribution to respond more 

quickly and provided a more efficient 

method of shipping aggregated supplies 

to the right unit.

“We changed the metrics to meet 

the requirement,” she said, explaining 

how instead of measuring how fast they 

could move one part, they consolidated 

items to send in bulk packages. 

Gainey defines her success by the 

number of people who have told her 

that she and her team made a difference during her time as DLA Distribution 

commander. She also credits many coworkers and supervisors with improving 

her performance as commander. 

DLA Distribution’s former deputy 

commander, Phyllis Campbell, was softspoken, but a “powerhouse,” Gainey said. 

“She was very authoritative and 

articulate, but only spoke when she had 

DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Darrell Williams and DLA 

Command Senior Enlisted Leader Command Master Chief 

Shaun Brahmsteadt flank the DLA Hall of Fame Class of 

2016 (L-R) Retired Army Lt. Gen. Kathleen Gainey, Donald 

Peschka, Mary Studevant and Larry Wilson.

Teodora Mocanu
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November / December 2017 7

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DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

something to say,” Gainey said. 

“She was just a wonderful 

example of leadership and making 

things happen.” 

Gainey also spoke highly of a fellow 

DLA Hall of Fame member, former DLA 

Director Vice Adm. Keith Lippert.

“He was very much a person 

who empowered me — who gave 

me guidance when I needed it and 

never made me feel stupid but always 

challenged me,” she said. “He made me 

understand the role of metrics and how 

they can either direct right behavior or 

wrong behavior.”

Selecting the right people, 

putting them in the right job and 

empowering them to do those 

jobs are elements Gainey said are 

hallmarks of great leadership — 

things she was able to accomplish 

during her time at DLA Distribution.

Gainey even attributes her many 

honors and awards to the efforts of her 

coworkers and various “unsung heroes,” 

especially her Hall of Fame induction.

“It’s a recognition of the incredible 

workforce at the DDC that just gave their 

all,” she said. “They were some of the 

most helpful, hardest-working people 

I ever was associated with — military 

or civilian. It was an honor to work 

alongside them.” 

— Dianne Ryder

Larry Wilson

— continued from page 3

Out of Many, One

Wilson joined DLA Information 

Operations in 1996, after finishing a 

Senior Executive Service development 

program and a Brookings Institution 

fellowship on Capitol Hill. He saw that 

a few systemic problems had long 

stymied the agency’s IT operations.

In the 1990s, every major DLA 

field activity had its own IT budget and 

bought whatever it wanted.

“We joked that if somebody built a 

technology, someone somewhere in 

DLA bought it,” Wilson recalled.

This meant one division produced 

documents in WordPerfect while 

another used Microsoft Word, and 

another still used WordStar — so 

that one division often couldn’t read a 

document created by another.

Wilson remembered discovering 

a closet piled with 8,000 copies of a 

software program — only to be told the 

work unit that bought it had decided not 

to use it.

No one had the authority to change 

that, Wilson said — until then-DLA 

Chief Information Officer (and eventual 

Vice Director) Mae DeVincentis created 

his SES position, tasked with unifying 

— or “operationalizing” in technology 

parlance — DLA IT processes, policies 

and hardware.

“We wanted consistency, policy 

conformance and technological 

compatibility,” Wilson explained. “And we 

wanted it to be measurable. In short, we 

wanted IT — in all of its variations — to 

be much more of an enterprisewide 

solution” he said.

So he asked for his site directors to 

submit ideas that were working in their 

units and submit them to be considered 

as DLA-wide IT policies or practices.

Once those were in place, Wilson 

began having regular reviews to track 

performance in each field activity.

The Beginning of Better

One of his first tasks was to 

consolidate the agency’s menagerie 

of service contracts, software and 

hardware. No longer could divisions buy 

different brands of computers. 

In addition, “we had a shop in the 

headquarters where they would repair 

the computers,” Wilson said. “In fact, 

the people in one [Major Subordinate 

Command] were actually building their 

own computers!” He put a stop to that.

Wilson also tasked his deputies 

to develop a single, simple contract 

for computer purchases. The contract 

had to include contractor repair or 

replacement within two days, with 

all the software installed and the 

employee’s files recovered.

This one change saved DLA $18 

million over only four years. And it 

led to the creation of a single division 

responsible for enterprise licensing.

Wilson’s reforms also included 

a policy for workplace use of the 

internet, suddenly commonplace 

in the mid-1990s thanks to the 

new World Wide Web. Developing 

and coordinating a DLA-wide policy 

took over a year but was so on 

target, it became the basis for the 

Defense Department’s internet 

policy, Wilson said.

Wilson was a pioneer for 

modernization efforts, successfully 

implementing many groundbreaking 

programs, including the Enterprise 

Telecommunications Network, 

Demilitarized Zone for business-critical 

websites, numerous Information 

Assurance partnerships, and a major 

production and sustainment center 

for DLA’s ERP implementation, the 

Business System Modernization. BSM, 

now known as the Enterprise Business 

System, replaced numerous DLA legacy 

systems, some dating nearly to the 

punch-card era. 

He even created the EAGLE 

timesheet system, still used by the 

entire agency.

All this standardization improved 

what even then he realized was the primary IT criterion, Wilson noted: security.

Finally, Wilson led the DLA IT 

workforce to consistently measure, 

record and analyze its work. Work units 

had been measuring outcomes using 

different metrics — or not at all — and 

there was no broader analysis from the 

enterprise level.

Fixing this led to consolidating 

funding and unifying staffing under the 
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

new organization. “I went from having a 

headquarters staff of dozens to a staff 

of more than 3,100,” Wilson said.

Leading by Listening

But bringing all those workers 

under one organization didn’t solve the 

longstanding morale problem, Wilson 

said. But first he needed to get candid 

answers from the workforce.

Wilson leveraged the highly critical results of a DLA climate-culture survey. “We 

got obliterated,” he said. The comments 

had a common theme: a lack of trust in 

management, with allegations of unfair 

hiring and promotion practices hiring and, 

conversely, an “Everyone gets a trophy” 

approach to performance awards.

“We called it peanut-butter 

management,” Wilson said. “Everybody 

got a little piece of the peanut butter 

spread across the bread,” even if they 

didn’t deserve it.

This was meant to keep the peace, 

“but it had exactly the opposite effect,” 

Wilson recalled, since those putting in 

extra effort saw no more recognition 

than the person doing the minimum.

Wilson began visiting the field sites 

regularly, some as often as four times 

per year. He led town-hall events but 

realized many employees were reticent 

to ask candid questions in front of peers 

and supervisors.

So Wilson added non-attribution 

small-group discussions — some with 

just supervisors and some with only 

the employees.

“It worked,” he said. Both groups 

were more candid and gave Wilson a 

sense of the common complaints. He 

then brought those to the management 

team, to develop action plans.

Wilson also started what he called 

“Food for Thought.”

 “I picked one person a month to 

have lunch with me,” he explained. “In 

exchange for me buying them lunch, 

they told me what they were thinking. 

There were no rules; you could talk 

about whatever you wanted.”

Although the first employee chosen 

“immediately thought I was going to fire 

him,” the lunches became a great way to 

get the views of those doing the handson work, Wilson said.

He next addressed the discontent 

with performance awards by requiring 

that managers write a brief justification 

for each award, to ensure fairness. 

“I looked for internal consistencies 

and logic about why someone was 

getting an award,” he said.

Support From Above

Wilson noted he was only able to 

achieve these things thanks to the 

encouragement and guidance of his 

mentors. DeVincentis and current Vice 

Director Ted Case — who both served 

as chief information officers in Information Operations — were “extraordinarily generous” with their time and 

insights, he said.

Case noted Wilson’s personal touch 

as a leader. Despite ending up with more 

than 3,000 employees, 

“Larry made each one feel 

appreciated,” he recalled.

That Wilson did so without a 

background in technology further 

impressed Case. 

“Larry could always make the very 

difficult understandable and always with 

a touch of humor.”

And that humor served him well in 

leading people, Case noted. “Larry had 

a natural talent to attract the best and 

most talented folks, and they loved to 

work with and for him.”

DeVincentis called Wilson “a truly 

indispensable senior leader” through 

his 20 years at the agency, the force 

behind “significant improvements in 

IT employee leadership and training 

practices that continue to pay great 

dividends for DLA.” And yet he managed 

to meet each employee personally to 

discuss individual development plans, 

she noted.

“It is impossible for me to overrepresent Mr. Wilson’s contribution to 

DLA’s mission,” DeVincentis said.

— John R. Bell

Donald Peschka

— continued from page 3

— moved from Cameron Station in 

Alexandria, Virginia, to Fort Belvoir, 

Virginia, while the Defense Fuel Supply 

Center reorganized, becoming the 

Defense Energy Support Center. 

Peschka successfully guided 

this transition for the Bulk Fuels 

business team while maintaining a 

100 percent on-time success rate for 

contract awards.

“I honestly think [leadership is 

about] listening to the people you have 

working for you, understanding their 

needs and responding to those as you 

can, but keeping in mind that your No. 

1 passion for the day is supporting the 

people giving their lives for our country,” 

he said. “You don’t let anything get in 

the way of that.” 

Peschka said warfighters and other 

remote customers may not know or 

understand the complexities of DLA’s 

business, but they know to come to 

DLA when they need something. 

“What makes me most proud is the 

fact that each day when I went in that 

office, I tried to put aside everything 

else that was going on in my life to 

concentrate on one thing only: the men 

and women of our armed forces, who 

rely daily on everything that DLA does,” 

he said. 

Peschka’s commitment to 

supporting the warfighter is deepseated and something he tried to 

impart to his subordinates. It was 

reinforced by mentors like former DLA 

Energy comptroller, Thomas Hickey, 
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DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

another DLA Hall of Fame member. 

“I worked for him when he worked 

for the Air Force as the head of the 

Missile Fuels division,” Peschka said. The 

division was responsible for supplying 

missile fuels not only for the Air Force, 

but also for NASA. “Working for him was 

probably one of the most enlightening 

experiences of my life.” 

Another former DLA Energy 

comptroller, Carol O’Leary, began her 

career as Hickey’s secretary, Peschka 

said. “She didn’t have a degree, but she 

went to the ‘University of Tom Hickey,’” 

he joked. “Anybody who went there and 

survived was an exceptional employee!” 

Peschka credits Hickey with helping 

him to understand the important role of 

civilians in the workforce as well. 

“A lot of military people have 

struggled to have the right interface 

with civilians,” he said. “Hickey taught me 

civilians are really valuable [assets]. Yes, 

they see things differently, but their job 

is really important.”

By the time Peschka retired from the 

Air Force in 1984, he had worked with 

many civilians while detailed to McDonnell 

Douglas and at DLA. During his 20-year 

civilian career at DLA, he mentored many 

employees who still work for the agency. 

“A number of people in senior positions today in DLA worked with me or for 

me, and I’m very proud of that,” he said. 

“I’ve kept my belief that we should be doing the best we can for our military forces, 

and that’s what I hope that every DLA 

employee does.”

When Peschka retired, he did not 

seek further employment. 

“When I retired, I actually retired – I 

didn’t go to take a different job or to 

keep working,” he said. “In fact, I was 

asked by a number of contractors to 

come to work for them, but I just said, ‘I 

retired – I’m just going to enjoy my life.’”

Even post-retirement, Peschka was 

honored with the Under Secretary of 

Defense for Acquisition, Technology and 

Logistics and Contracting legends award 

in January 2016 and was inducted into 

DLA Energy’s Hall of Fame in May 2016.

Although Peschka is retired, 

he’s stayed busy giving back to his 

community. He found a new passion as 

a master gardener volunteer for Prince 

William County, Virginia. 

“I spend a lot of time doing that — 

and I had no idea that was going to take 

so much of my time and that I like it so 

much,” he said. 

He also volunteers for the Prince William County government, on its extension 

leadership council, an advocacy group for 

environmental, financial, nutrition, parenting and other education programs.

Ultimately, Peschka defines his level 

of satisfaction and success is defined 

through his family ties.

“I’ve passed the right ideas of what’s 

important in life to my two daughters,” he 

said. “They have been very successful in 

raising my grandsons and granddaughters and have passed the same kind of 

guiding principles on to them.”

— Dianne Ryder

DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Darrell Williams and DLA 

Command Senior Enlisted Leader Command Master 

Chief Shaun Brahmsteadt flank the DLA Hall of Fame 

Class of 2016 (L-R): Retired Army Lt. Gen. Kathleen 

Gainey, Donald Peschka, Mary Studevant and Larry 

Wilson. (Not pictured: Deborah Greger)

Teodora Mocanu
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

THE FOREST SERVICE 

PROGRAM HAS 

GROWN AND NOW 

INCLUDES 344 

FIREFIGHTING ITEMS 

Into the Fire

Story by Dianne Ryder

DLA WORKING WITH FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL PARTNERS

T hrough September 2017, more 

than 49,000 wildfires across the 

United States burned more than 

8 million acres, destroyed billions of 

dollars’ worth of property, took scores 

of lives and injured countless people, 

according to the National Interagency 

Fire Center. 

Fighting these fires requires 

thousands of employees from multiple 

federal, state and local agencies. And 

they often need critical equipment 

delivered in short order to remote areas.

Fortunately, the Defense Logistics 

Agency has been part of the fight since 

2014, working closely with the U.S. 

Forest Service, state governments 

and local fire departments to get the 

firefighters and their support staff the 

equipment they need.

DLA does this by supporting the 

Forest Service’s nationwide National 

Interagency Support Cache system. 

Each regional support cache stockpiles 

fuel for wildfires, such as fallen leaves or 

pine needles and dead branches.

Hill has been with the program since 

its inception. 

“We took over management of 

the Forest Service program through 

a logistical reassignment from [the 

General Services Administration] in May 

2014,” he said. 

The task previously fell to the 

GSA, which managed the program 

for 50 years. 

When the program transferred, there 

were 296 items being managed. The 

program has grown and now includes 

344 firefighting items for the Forest 

Service, Hill said. The items are sourced 

through DLA Troop Support, DLA 

Aviation, and DLA Land and Maritime, 

assisted by people in DLA Distribution 

centers, primarily the one in San Joaquin, 

California.

Steve Dubernas is the newly 

appointed chief of the DLA Whole of 

Government Support Division. He’s 

already visited the National Interagency 

items like gloves, goggles, fire-resistant 

clothing, canteens, hardhats, hand tools, 

chainsaws, radio kits and other critical 

equipment to meet short-term needs.

This is a particularly important 

partnership each June through November, 

the wildfire season, said Jon Hill, DLA 

customer account manager and the 

liaison officer to the U.S. Forest Service.

He said the number and intensity 

of fires can vary greatly based on the 

summer heat, the amount of rainfall, 

high winds and the presence of potential 

DLA works closely with the U.S. Forest Service, state governments and local fire departments to get firefighters like the Silver State Interagency Hotshot Crew, shown fighting a blaze in the 

Stanislaus National Forest, California, the equipment they need.

Mike McMillan, U.S. Forest Service
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November / December 2017 11

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San Joaquin/Tracy DLA Distribution firefighting equipment 

waits to be shipped to the California Department of Forestry 

and Fire Protection.

Firefighting supplies are loaded onto a Bureau of Land 

Management Alaska Fire Services truck after arriving at 

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. More than 127,000 pounds of 

supplies for Alaska firefighting efforts were delivered by the 

60th Air Mobility Wing from Travis Air Force Base, California. 

Fire Center headquarters in Boise, Idaho, 

to get a firsthand understanding and 

coordinate with his counterparts.

“A month into the position as division 

chief, you begin to realize quickly you’re 

supporting a customer who is literally 

saving lives on a daily basis,” he said. 

“This is a mission DLA needs to support 

as a critical interagency partner.” 

Dubernas was struck by the 

challenge inherent in the smoke 

jumpers’ mission.

“Firefighters actually jump into 

[areas threatened by fires] from aerial 

platforms to cut fuel away ... to try to 

stop the fire from burning over homes 

and doing more damage,” he observed.

The NIFC supports state and 

local firefighters who work to protect 

infrastructures all over the country. 

“We work very closely with them to 

maintain their critical reorder point levels 

on fire equipment,” Dubernas said.

Hill added, “We participate in a daily 

Forest Service call with the National 

Interagency Support Caches ... and I have 

several representatives in the [DLA major 

subordinate command] whose criticalitem listings we look at. There are 25-30 

high-priority, recurring items; we monitor 

those items. And as we see stock levels 

getting low, we initiate a replenishment.”

DLA provides the materials through 

a system of 10 interagency support 

caches, the Forest Service equivalent of 

DLA’s distribution centers, Hill said.

At the end of each year, DLA and 

the Forest Service establish how much 

inventory to maintain for the coming 

year at DLA Distribution San Joaquin, 

based on stock levels from the previous 

year’s use. 

Then throughout the year, DLA 

monitors and responds to support to 

Forest Service preparedness levels, on a 

1-5 scale, from least to most prepared.

The level is influenced by the number 

of fires in a particular region, the number 

of fire-suppression crews deployed to 

manage those fires and the severity of 

the fire itself. 

As regional fires continue to spread, 

they have a distinct impact on the 

national preparedness level. And as they 

intensify, they require different levels of 

management and different suppression 

methods, Hill explained.

In the most severe fires, 

“evacuations are taking place, there’s 

structural damage and homes are being 

threatened,” he said.

The fire type also determines the 

types of incident-management teams 

that will deploy to help. Teams are 

rated as 1, 2 or 3, based on the level of 

help they’ll provide and how long they 

plan to deploy.

“For initial fires, a Type 3 team 

deploys and stays on site about 

12 hours,” Hill said. “They make 

assessments, coordinate fire and 

containment efforts and then turn 

[operations] over to the next-higher 

level, beyond that 12- to 16-hour mark.”

The Type 2 team has more training 

and more access to resources than the 

Type 3 team. The Type 1 team has the 

highest level of expertise, Hill said. 

“They are very well-trained with 

movement of on-site materials, 

personnel, equipment to containment 

areas and fire-suppression efforts,” 

he said. “And that team will generally 

consists of 27 personnel, with the ability 

to increase by 15 more.”

Nutan Chada

Sam Harrel/Bureau of Land Management-Alaska Fire Service
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

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— looking at demand levels, reorder 

points and some things that DLA can 

do to support the mission seamlessly,” 

Dubernas said. “We don’t want to 

go into an emergency contingency 

response scenario with the Forest 

Service; we want to have the stock 

levels that they can use to support these 

fires from June to November.” 

That requires management at all 

levels. And while Hill 

manages the program 

at the federal level, Tracy 

Shepherd manages the 

state and local level.

“Tracy works with 

those state and local fire 

departments that do not 

always gain the credit 

our federal firefighters 

get,” Hill said. “They play 

a very vital role in the fire 

suppression teams and 

what happens within 

their individual states — 

and Tracy champions 

those efforts.”

Both rely heavily 

on the major support 

activities as they 

perform this critical 

mission. Hill likens the 

work of all the firefighters to the 

warfighters DLA supports.

“They also put their lives on the 

line — protecting people, federal 

lands and government entities across 

the board,” he said.

Both Dubernas and Hill touted 

the importance of the program and 

its growing mission, a priority for the 

DLA director. 

Dubernas noted DLA’s support to 

wildland firefighting is just one way the 

agency partners with its sister federal 

agencies to help with disaster relief 

across the nation.

“Other agencies that have heard 

of us have not always known what 

our capability was,” Hill said. “We’re 

proud of what we’ve done to this 

point and for the program being seen 

for what it truly is.” LL

Even fires that start small can quickly 

escalate into large fires. The Detwiler 

fire in Southern California made national 

news in July when its reach spread from 

2,500 acres to 47,000 acres in just three 

days, Hill said.

“The Detwiler fire grew by 900 

percent overnight.,” he said. 

“I have access to Forest Service 

websites and monitor these different 

type fires,” Hill said. “But 

sometimes, the data 

changes from morning 

to evening, from day to 

day, from hour to hour. It’s 

quite comprehensive and 

widespread in terms of 

how those fires change.”

Because Hill keeps 

such a close watch on 

the changing data, he’s 

constantly engaged and 

ready to help DLA mobilize 

needed materials.

“I get a daily update 

that is an actual fire map; I 

can see how many critical 

fires are on there,” he said. 

“I will generally reach out 

to the cache managers 

in the area where we’re 

seeing a large spread of 

fires in a very short period, and we will 

intervene to help expedite materials 

going to them as needed.”

Hill said when preparedness levels 

reach 4 and 5, he sometimes must 

travel to the area to help on site.

“That involves the full array of 

looking at materials, reaching out to the 

various field activities, working with our 

distribution centers, being involved with 

the transportation aspects,” he said.

When severe fires intensify 

quickly, the Forest Service calls in 

additional resources and suppressionmanagement teams. 

“The Forest Service will then go in to 

action going through several iterations 

of fire crews until they get the right 

containment level,” Hill said. “The focus 

continuously shifts; while we’re having 

all these very severe fires in Southern 

California, we’re also having a large 

number of fires in the northern Rockies.”

While not all fires are Type 1, there 

are enough Type 2 fires to warrant 

the presence of more crews and 

equipment. When a fire has been 

suppressed, the resources are brought 

back into the interagency support 

system, cleaned up and dispersed to 

the next most severe fire.

Once a fire is contained, the 

Forest Service and DLA will continue 

to monitor it in case it jumps outside 

the containment area. And when full 

containment is achieved, the crew can 

be demobilized.

“It’s a matter of prioritizing their 

resources in the right way to support or 

suppress the most critical fires across 

the U.S.,” Hill said. “We are always going 

to face challenges, merely because fires 

have spread so quickly that resources 

we had projected [to last] through a fire 

season are exhausting rapidly.”

Dubernas agreed there’s room 

for improvement in DLA support, 

specifically by honing the critical-items 

list and increasing inventory levels 

when necessary.

“That’s something we’re going 

to work on with the Forest Service 

Margarita Rivera-Juarez and Hector Madrigal of the Warehousing Division of DLA Distribution San 

Joaquin, California, pack firefighting equipment to be shipped to the California Department of Forestry 

and Fire Protection in support of firefighting efforts.

Nutan Chada
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Soaring Surplus

Surplus military equipment is 

nothing new. Except for some 

new surplus, unused and made 

for wars that end before the supplies 

get used up.

When wars ended in the days before 

there was a Defense Logistics Agency or 

DLA Disposition Services, the armed services had to seek ways to get rid of piles, 

mounds, buildings and fields full of stuff. 

At the end of the First World War, 

there was the usual excess stuff of 

ground pounders and cavalrymen. 

But this time, there were also 

hundreds of surplus machines that 

dreams and unthought-of industries 

would spring from. 

Committees and boards and 

members of Congress struggled to 

figure out how to legally manage all 

that excess. 

There were the millions of pairs of 

uniform pants and coats for soldiers. 

Story by Kenneth MacNevin, DLA Disposition Services Public Affairs

WORLD WAR I EXCESS GIVES RISE TO HOBBY AVIATION, AIR MAIL AND SEEDS OF EQUALITY U.S. Information Agency

Photo Courtesy Charles D. Machon, Museum of Missouri Military History

Charels Lindbergh

By one published estimate, there were 

28 unneeded saddles for every horse in 

the Army.

And then there were those hundreds 

of contraptions made of wood and cloth, 

some hidden away in barns and large 

buildings, others disassembled and 

packed away in crates. Those waited 

for dreamers, daredevils and farm boys 

and city kids who spent the war at home 

reading all about them.

Excess aircraft they were. They were 

all over the country where there had 

been military aviation training. And the 

country had gone aviation crazy. 

Jenny, I’ve Got Your Number

Up in Minnesota, a mechanically 

adept but socially inept kid wanted one. 

And in Chicago, a manicurist would own 

one after achieving what seemed a truly 

impossible dream.

They both wanted a Jenny, a biplane 

with fore and aft seats, a Curtiss JN-4. 

That’s where the “Jenny” nickname 

came from. 

Nimble but controllable and slow, the 

humble Jenny had been a primary trainer 

for Army aviators in the United States. 

And the geeky kid? He was Charles 

Lindbergh. 

He knew how machines worked. As 

an unlicensed 14-year-old, he drove his 

mother from Minnesota to California, a 

 A pair of JN-4D ‘Jennys’ belonging to a National Guard unit in St. Louis, Missouri.
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

40-day road trip over what passed for 

roads in 1916. Then he drove her back 

home — another 40 days of driving 

— while figuring out how to keep the 

car running and repairing road damage 

when roadside assistance meant a 

farmer might come by with a team of 

horses to pull you out of a ditch. 

Lindbergh went to college but 

dropped out. He enrolled as an aviation 

student. He learned how to build and 

repair aircraft and their engines. But not 

how to fly solo — not yet.

He became a barnstormer. Before 

he had flown on his own, he was paid 

to stand on the wing of a flying airplane 

(probably a Jenny), hang upside down and 

jump off the wing wearing a parachute.

Finally, with some help from his 

father, he scraped together some money, 

climbed on his motorcycle and drove to 

Georgia. For $500 he got a Jenny with a 

spare engine and some other necessities. 

The Jenny was in flying condition — or 

would be after it was assembled. His 

was one of the many that at the end of 

the war had been crated for potential 

shipment to France.

And then, using what he’d learned and 

experienced as an aviation student and 

barnstormer stuntman, he taught himself 

to get off the ground and back down.

Eyes on the Sky-High Prize

As Lindbergh found the way 

to achieve his dream, that Chicago 

manicurist was still dreaming, with an 

audacity of hope.

She was Bessie Coleman, an African 

American woman who had come north 

to seek more opportunity. 

In recent years, many DLA 

employees in offices around the country 

have heard her story. One was a March 

2016 African American Heritage 

program in Battle Creek, Michigan. 

The audience was asked if anyone 

knew who Coleman was. “She’s a pilot” 

was the only response that came from 

the room until a woman sitting at a front 

table raised her hand. 

“I’m Gigi Coleman,” she said as she 

stood. She told the audience that Bessie 

Coleman was her great-great aunt.

The appearance had been secretly 

arranged. She came to the podium and 

told how young Bessie Coleman had 

been taken with the idea of becoming 

a pilot while in Chicago. But no pilot 

training program would take a black 

woman as a student. 

She said Bessie then learned from 

a World War I veteran in her family that 

in France it seemed there was more 

opportunity for black people, as well as 

for women.

Bessie Coleman took classes to learn 

French. With financial help from the 

founder of the famed Chicago Defender 

newspaper, she sailed to France, where 

she took flying lessons that led to her 

receiving an international pilot’s license. 

Gigi Coleman said that made Bessie the 

first African American woman licensed 

as a pilot.

Then Bessie got her hands on a 

Jenny and became one of hundreds of 

young fliers who started earning a living 

in aviation with that wooden clothcovered war surplus dream machine. 

Like Lindbergh, she too became a 

“barnstormer,” performing acrobatics 

at county fairs, flying passengers for 

sightseeing, or strapping on a parachute 

to jump from an aircraft. 

Gigi said that after Bessie was injured 

in one parachute jump, a family member 

tried to talk her out of flying again. But 

her great-great aunt responded that “up 

in the air she felt so free — the freedom 

she couldn’t get on the ground.”

The freedom she felt was short lived. 

Less than five years after receiving 

her license, she fell to her death while 

rehearsing an airshow in Florida. She 

HUMBLE AIRFRAME, 

PHILATELIC ICON 

By flying the first Air Mail, a warsurplus Jenny also made stampcollecting history. A surplus Jenny 

bearing the first airmail aircraft’s 

serial number was the central 

illustration on a 24-cent Air Mail 

stamp. There was a printing error, 

and a sheet of 100 stamps had the 

airplane printed upside-down. 

When one of the surviving 

“inverted Jenny” stamps comes up 

for sale today, they routinely bring 

around $1 million. A 24-cent stamp 

showing a $5,500 airplane selling 

for a cool million or more. 

If you tried to tell that yarn to 

the spirits of old barnstormers 

swapping stories around a heavenly 

hanger — they’d laugh you right off 

the cloud. 

–Kenneth MacNevin

Bessie Coleman stands on the wing of a World War I surplus 

Curtis JN-4 Jenny in an image thought to have been taken 

not long after journeying to France where she became 

the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license.
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November / December 2017 15

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DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

in a limited time aloft in a twoseater Jenny. 

One man was in front, the second at 

the controls in the rear cockpit. The third? 

The third lay flat on the biplane’s upper 

wing. To share piloting time of course, they 

just switched positions while in flight. 

The Jenny eventually left military 

service, both active and Air Guard. Barnstorming became old-school. Three pilots 

swapping positions in an open cockpit 

aircraft fell into some disfavor. 

No matter. A Jenny had cost the 

taxpayers less than $5,500. Their far 

lower cost as surplus meant Jennys were 

at the center of crowdsourcing, 1920sstyle. People were kick-starting their 

motorcycles. The Jenny kick-started an 

entirely new kind of business, industry 

and mass transit. 

Lindbergh went on to fly across 

the Atlantic to Paris and become what 

some consider the first true international celebrity. 

Like others who got their start in a 

Jenny, he also was one of the founders 

of a commercial airline. And along 

with other war surplus Jenny pilots, he 

showed the Army there was a place for 

citizen airmen. 

Some of the Air Guard units that first 

took flight in Jennys still fly two-seat aircraft, with space for two pilots but certainly no third pilot hanging on the wing. 

The successor to that first Air National 

Guard unit in St. Louis, now operates from 

Whiteman Air Force Base in western Missouri. They are flying worldwide missions 

in two seat B-2 Stealth bombers. 

So if you could scratch the carbon 

composite skin of that complex airframe 

costing millions of dollars, you’d find 

DNA from a Jenny. LL

wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and when 

her aircraft lurched, she fell out.

Air Mail and the

Air National Guard

But surplus Jennys became far more 

than platforms for stunts, safe or deadly. 

They were an aircraft of choice for the 

Air Mail Service of what was then the 

Post Office Department. Air Mail took off 

in 1918, when a trusty Jenny made the 

first delivery. 

The pilot got lost, was found, and the 

mail put on another aircraft. The next 

pilot was told to follow the railroad tracks. 

It was not the Jenny’s fault, of course.

As the years went on, Lindbergh 

continued to fly and became friends 

with other young aviators flying from 

a field in the countryside near St. Louis. 

He was able to overcome his shyness 

around other pilots.

He went to work for three brothers 

named Robertson who had formed an 

aircraft company and gained the right to 

run the Air Mail route from St. Louis to 

Chicago. They had created what would 

become an Air National Guard flying unit 

— one of the first. 

Their first aircraft? A Jenny, of course. 

The first members kicked in enough to 

buy that first aircraft and later were able 

to get three newer Jennys with more 

powerful engines from the military. 

Even as flying became a more 

routine business and more modern 

postwar Jennys were replacing the 

war-surplus aircraft, the sturdy, 

dependable Jennys still helped 

satisfy a craze to be flying. The unit 

history of that first Missouri Air 

National Guard unit tells the story 

of how three people got flying time 

FOR MORE ON THE JENNY, VISIT THE MUSEUM OF THE AIR FORCE AT 

WRIGHT PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, OHIO, OR ONLINE AT

 HTTP://WWW.NATIONALMUSEUM.AF.MIL.

Charles Lindbergh at a St. Louis airfield after his Atlantic 

crossing, promoting the 35th Division, Missouri National 

Guard. The barrels and two small cans contained fuel for his 

transatlantic flight.

Photo Courtesy Charles D. Machon, Museum of Missouri Military History
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16 www.dla.mil

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

Package Deal

Proper packaging of materiel is 

an essential part of the Defense 

Logistics Agency’s mission. 

Members of a specialized team at 

DLA Distribution Warner Robins, 

Georgia, ensure the job is done right, 

no matter how unique or challenging 

the item.

“We get materiel coming in from 

different depots that’s not packed 

in accordance with the standard 

operating procedure, or dunnage — 

the materials to keep it preserved 

or mission ready,” said Jonah Blunt, 

material examiner and identifier for 

the Preservation, Packaging, Packing 

and Marking section.

Bobby Small, branch chief of the 

special assets division, explained the 

process in brief: “Items are sent to 

the PPP&M area for packaging. The 

packer verifies the materiel is packaged 

Story by Dianne Ryder

SPECIALISTS AT DLA DISTRIBUTION PERFORM CRITICAL FUNCTIONS IN PREPARING SUPPLIES FOR A 

DLA Distribution

correctly and forwards it to the warehouse for storage.” 

Several months ago, DLA Distribution 

put together an ad hoc, multifunctional 

team, including Blunt and packer Christie 

Williams. The group received a “Team 

of the Quarter” award for packaging 

and re-warehousing 1,800 work orders, 

consisting of about 6,000 units of 

materiel from one PPP&M section into 

one major PPP&M functional area. The 

project freed up several thousand square 

feet of warehouse space for use by 

central receiving or other functional areas 

at DLA Distribution Warner Robins Depot. 

Everything that comes into the 

packers’ hands is checked and often 

repackaged, based on packaging requirements for the item. Williams has been on 

the job less than a year, but Small said 

she has risen to the challenge.

“I perform a variety of tasks, 

including packaging and repackaging 

of non-hazardous material, such as 

selecting the proper container, using 

the correct method of packaging 

and cushioning and following the 

specific packaging procedures for 

the materiel,” Williams said. “It’s 

important to the warfighter they 

receive the correct materiel on time 

and properly packaged.”

Most of the materiel the packaging 

specialists pack are parts for aircraft, 

tanks and other vehicles. Pylons, 

which are used to hold fuel tanks on 

the aircraft, require extra cushioned 

packaging, Williams said.

“We have to have bags inside and 

pack it a certain way, so it won’t get 

damaged,” she said. 

The packers also affix a label to 

the package that includes information 

in accordance with Military Standards 

and Department of Defense 

Standard Practice Military Marking 

for Shipment and Storage guidance. 

Labels also include the national stock 

number, part number, serial number, 

nomenclature, quantity, unit of issue, 

military preservation method and 

date of unit preservation, as well 

as the Contractor and Government 

Entity, or CAGE, code.

Blunt has been with PPP&M for 

several years and uses a number of 

The DLA Distribution Warner Robins, Georgia, Preservation, 

Packaging, Packing and Marking Section Special Assets 

Division team (L-R): Ernest Melonson, Greg Bedford, Christie 

Williams, Jonah Blunt and Jettie Evans. They were selected 

as DLA Distribution Team of the Quarter for the 3rd Quarter 

2017. Teammates not pictured: Richard Langford and 

Michael Scott.
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November / December 2017 17

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATIONAlicia Friend

standards to help him perform tasks 

more efficiently. 

“I use technical specifications and 

websites to pack various types of DoD 

equipment to meet the requirement, 

as well as packaging and marking 

regulations to ensure equipment is in a 

serviceable condition for the customer.”

Two websites he uses are the Web 

Federal Logistics Information Service 

and Special Packaging Instructions 

Retrieval & Exchange System. WebFLIS 

provides essential information about 

supply items, including the NSN, item 

name and company data through a 

web interface connected to FLIS data. 

SPIRES is used to identify the design, 

materials required and construction of 

wood and fiberboard containers for Air 

Force materiel.

Small noted another tool that helps 

the packers is a new conveyor system. 

The old system hampered the way 

materiel was received and distributed to 

the packers, he said.

“Once we get the materiel in, we 

look it up in the Distribution Standard 

System, which will tell us what the 

method of packing is for that particular 

item,” he said.

 “In the past, [materiel] wasn’t coming 

in where we could segregate it quickly. 

We redesigned the area so it’s not 

cluttered and we can get the materiel to 

the packers in a timely manner.” 

Small said the packers also use 

mechanized handling equipment, 

including forklifts, heat sealers for plastic 

barrier bags, air guns to suck the air out 

of a barrier bag so it can conform to the 

part, and auto baggers for smaller items 

such as nuts, bolts and washers.

Williams said the auto baggers are 

great time-savers. 

“[Packers] used to have to count 

thousands of nuts and bolts by hand, 

but now they can just put it inside the 

auto bagger and it will automatically 

count and package them in individual 

packs,” she said. 

Materiel from the military 

services, central receiving, other 

depots and the DLA Distribution 

warehouse arrives in a trailer or on 

a pallet in the receiving area and is 

routed to the packers. From there, it’s 

sent to separate areas for packaging, 

depending on the characteristics of 

the materiel, such as the condition 

code, size, need for special packaging 

materials (for items such as precision 

measurement equipment) and 

whether an item is 40 pounds or less, 

meaning it can be hand carried.

Shipment of materiel is handled 

differently, depending on the urgency of 

its delivery. 

“Sometimes we get a plane 

that’s down and it needs a part; we 

have to pack that part and quickly 

get it to the customer,” Blunt said. 

In this case, the part would be sent 

without elaborate packaging on an 

emergency walk-through basis, so 

it can be transported as soon as 

possible, often within an hour if it’s a 

local delivery. 

“It’s very important to get the 

part out to the warfighter in correct 

condition and on time,” Blunt said.

Small said he’s pleased with 

the progress his team has made in 

efficiencies, but there’s always room 

for improvement. 

“We focus on continuous process 

improvement; we keep looking at our 

processes, and if there’s any way we 

can improve or make that process 

better, we do it,” he said. “A lot of 

improvements have come from the 

floor, so we’re always asking them to 

keep that in mind.” LL

Packer Christie Williams applies protective packaging to 

preserve the integrity of the item. 
page

18 www.dla.mil

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

Holding th

Story by Beth Reece

SUSTAINING READINESS IN SOUTH KOREA

A DLA Distribution employee readies cargo for delivery to one of 

the U.S. military’s 13 supply-support activities spread across South 

Korea. The agency uses dedicated trucks to deliver material daily 

from its warehouse in Camp Carroll. 

— Courtesy Photo

Members of the U.S. military have 

guarded freedom’s door on the 

Korean Peninsula more than 60 

years, ready to defend on a moment’s 

notice. Supporting them at U.S. bases are 

Defense Logistics Agency employees, 

quietly keeping U.S. Forces Korea ready, 

if called on, to make good on the motto 

“fight tonight.”

Terry Harrington, manager of DLA 

Disposition Services’ 24-acre disposal yard in 

Gimcheon, reflected on how even daily tasks 

have a greater meaning in this uneasy peace.

“We’re cognizant of ... just how precarious 

and unstable things truly are,” Harrington 

said. “I tell my people that whether they’re 

driving a forklift or destroying equipment, 
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November / December 2017 19

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

e Line Republic of Korea tanks with the 1st Marine Division head a firing 

line during a Korea Marine Exercise Program in Pohang, South Korea. 

Exchange agreements between the U.S. and South Korea governments 

allow DLA to provide items and fuel to the South Korean military. 

— Marine Corps Cpl. Anthony Morales
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20 www.dla.mil

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

more planners, teams from MSCs like 

DLA Disposition Services and DLA 

Distribution, as well as warfighter 

support representatives and DLA 

liaisons co-located with key USFK 

units. A representative from DLA’s Joint 

Contingency Acquisition Support Office 

is also there to arrange operational 

contracts that streamline support for all 

the services.

Customers are spread from the 

demilitarized zone to the southern 

port of Busan, but the ongoing Korea 

Transformation Initiative will soon 

consolidate most forces at one of two 

enduring hubs: Camp Humphreys 

in central South Korea and Daegu, a 

southeastern city that’s home to a 

small DLA Logistics Operations Center 

at Camp Henry and a DLA Energy team 

at Camp Walker. Daegu is also 14 miles 

from Camp Carroll, a supply staging 

ground since the late 1950s, where DLA 

Distribution manages materiel. 

Fast Pace

As units on the peninsula move 

south from USFK’s current headquarters 

we don’t want in the enemy’s hands, 

they’re contributing to warfighter 

readiness. Because of them, our 

warfighters are ready.” 

USFK personnel stationed in 

South Korea know the country and its 

northern neighbor are only under what 

is technically a temporary cease-fire, not 

a permanent treaty. The bloody, threeyear Korean War, which Harrington’s 

father fought in, ended in 1953 with an 

armistice that’s been repeatedly tested. 

But every year and decade since, 

U.S. and allied nations have perfected 

the plans that would be required for any 

future military action. And logistics has 

always been an essential part of that. 

“Our support in this time of armistice 

is pretty smooth,” said DLA Pacific 

Commander Navy Capt. Tim Daniels. 

“During a contingency, we would provide 

the same kind of support but with a 

larger footprint. That means bringing 

in additional experts from the [major 

subordinate commands]. And our rapid 

deployment teams and other DLA 

support teams across the agency could 

also help meet increased demands.”

Daniels’ team of planners and 

commodity experts work with 

U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii to 

integrate DLA into military planning 

and operations. More than 100 DLA 

employees on the Korean Peninsula 

provide daily support. They include 

DLA Energy supports military customers across the Korean 

peninsula with 22 fuel facilities. The team also oversees 

maintenance and repair programs for fuel infrastructure 

since many of the units who use the facilities are not 

locally based. 

The relocation of units in South Korea has dramatically 

increased the workload for property disposal specialists at 

DLA Disposition Services’ 24-acre disposal yard in Gimcheon.

Courtesy Photo

Courtesy Photo
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November / December 2017 21

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

in Seoul to Camp Humphreys, DLA 

will follow. A new DLA Pacific Korea 

headquarters is scheduled to open there 

in April 2018. For DLA’s fuel experts, 

unit relocations intensify an already 

busy schedule as the agency adjusts its 

footprint to best serve the warfighter. 

DLA Energy Pacific at Korea Commander Army Lt. Col. Faith Chamberlain 

and her team are working to meet a 

year-end deadline to close one of multiple 

fuel facilities, according to U.S. and Korean 

government agreements, while opening a 

new one at Camp Humphreys. 

“As my team does the hard work of 

clearing out seven different tanks at the 

old facility, testing that fuel and distributing it to other tanks throughout Korea, 

they’re also making sure the new facility 

meets contracting specifications and is 

testing fuel there,” Chamberlain said. 

“At the same time, we’re anticipating 

an increase in drills where warfighters 

test contingency operations,” she said, 

adding that the pace of business has 

doubled in just a few months.

The moves have dramatically 

increased work for disposal experts, too. 

“Some of these closing bases 

have been around for almost 70 

years,” Harrington said. “It’s like 

moving out of your house; units are 

finding a lot of junk they don’t need 

anymore. They can’t just throw it 

away, because it’s on their property 

books and we don’t want it to end 

up in the wrong hands. So they’re 

bringing it to us.”

Getting equipment to DLA’s disposal 

yard is easy for customers, since it’s in a 

city that sits along a major highway and 

a rail line. The facility was built in 2010 

with the relocation of troops nearby at 

Camp Humphreys in mind. 

But the agency will make it even 

easier for units to transfer equipment 

when it opens a new facility at 

Camp Humphreys in 2018. This will 

significantly increase receipt and storage 

capacity and help Army units as they 

continue to return items ranging from 

individual equipment to tracked vehicles. 

Daily Deliveries

Moving new equipment to troops 

is the work of DLA Distribution Korea 

Commander Army Lt. Col. Gary Whittacre 

and his staff at Camp Carroll. 

“We have dedicated trucks that 

go out daily with deliveries to 13 

supply-support activities and other 

customers. Because we’re ... in the 

center of Korea, those trucks spend 

an average of just four to five hours 

getting to our most distant locations,” 

Whittacre said.

Materiel destined for Korea is 

collected at DLA Distribution San 

Joaquin, California, then flown to Osan 

Air Base or shipped to Busan via 

commercial carriers. Air shipments take 

a few days, and surface shipments 

take much longer. But it takes only one 

day, and often less, for equipment to 

be offloaded at Camp Carroll, grouped 

according to destination, loaded onto 

outbound trucks and delivered. 

“Ninety percent of the materiel we 

receive is shipped and receipted to the 

unit in less than 24 hours after it comes 

through our doors,” Whittacre said. 

DLA Distribution also stores 

thousands of items, including stock 

reserved for use in a contingency and 

repair parts commonly required by 

maintenance units. 

“The military has equipment here 

that we know has a high probability for 

repair parts, so item managers forward 

that stock to our warehouse and we 

manage it until a unit drops a request 

for it,” Whittacre explained. “Customers 

don’t have to wait for stuff to be sent 

over from California; we can put it on a 

truck and they’ll have it the next day.”

Aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, Japan 

Air Defense Force and Republic of Korea Air Force conduct 

a show of force south of the Demilitarization Zone in 

South Korea.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Alex Fox Echols III
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

Forward Stock

Item managers from DLA’s major 

subordinate commands correspond 

weekly with military supply personnel 

at units like the 19th Expeditionary 

Sustainment Command and 2nd 

Infantry Division, to determine what 

to provide ahead of the need — items 

known as forward stock.

A recent analysis by DLA Pacific 

and Army units, for example, evaluated 

which items were vital to maintaining 

the readiness of critical weapons 

systems needed to support USFK’s 

“fight tonight” posture. 

“The result was a recommendation 

to forward-stock [a few dozen] critical 

items in Korea. It was the first request of 

its kind for the Army here,” said Sly Ahn, 

DLA Pacific chief for operations in Asia.

Collaboration with warfighters in 

Korea has also shaped how the agency 

provides materiel for countering weapons 

of mass destruction, he explained. 

“A key part of the concept is DLA’s 

ability to ‘kit’ items, meaning that DLA 

can group multiple items under a single 

item number to streamline ordering and 

delivery of material to customers. The 

plan is to designate a site where CWMD 

kitting operations will occur, test the 

building of kits as a proof of concept, and 

then add CWMD kitting and sustainment 

to operational plans around the globe,” 

Ahn said. 

In 2020, DLA Distribution will open 

a new state-of-the-art facility at Camp 

Carroll to store materiel like those 

CWMD kits and millions of maps. The 

maps include sea charts, aerial charts 

and topographical maps that would be 

used by incoming units in a contingency. 

Dress Rehearsals

Annual training exercises like 

Key Resolve and Ulchi Freedom 

Guardian are an important part of how 

warfighters prepare for possible realworld events. They also give DLA the 

chance to rehearse logistics support 

and keep up with support plans that are 

susceptible to change due to the high 

turnover rate of military members in 

Korea, Daniels added. 

During these exercises, DLA Pacific 

stands up a 24-hour logistics operations 

center manned with liaisons who can 

answer urgent calls for support and help 

solve problems like transportation delays. 

“Our rapid deployment teams 

and DLA support teams also fly in 

to participate in the exercises, so 

customers get to see the broad scope 

of DLA’s expertise,” Daniels said. “And 

these exercises help us make continual 

improvements in our support, based on 

lessons learned.”

U.S. forces also participate in 

numerous routine, multinational 

exercises in other Pacific nations, like 

Japan, Thailand and Australia, that draw 

support from forces and DLA assets 

MILITARY EXERCISES HELP DLA IRON OUT ITS SUPPORT TO 

ALLIED NATIONS NOT ONLY IN THE PACIFIC BUT ALSO IN 

OTHER REGIONS, SUCH AS THE MIDDLE EAST. 

DLA Disposition Services is busy helping Army units 

retrograde material throughout the peninsula and expects 

to open a new 110-square foot operations site at Camp 

Humphreys in March 2018.

Courtesy Photo
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November / December 2017 23

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

in Korea. The exercises help DLA iron 

out how it supports allied nations, and 

they give U.S. and South Korean military 

leaders the opportunity to hone the 

agreements that authorize the two 

nations to provide mutual support — 

not only on the peninsula but even in 

distant operations, such as those in the 

Middle East, Daniels noted.

“During Operation Pacific Reach, we 

saw the great level of interoperability 

between U.S. and Korean forces to the 

point where Korean forces were doing 

maintenance on U.S. equipment and vice 

versa,” he said. This really shows how 

closely integrated and tight we are in the 

realm of logistics.”

The hectic schedule of exercises also 

includes non-combatant evacuation 

rehearsals for families of DLA employees 

in Korea and DLA civilian personnel who 

aren’t considered emergency-essential. 

The exercises are a chance to review 

emergency data for non-combatant 

evacuees and for them to practice what 

they would do in an evacuation. 

“This makes our employees and 

families familiar with what would 

actually happen [in a conflict]. Often it’s 

the unknown or uncertainty that leads 

to anxiety in these situations,” Whittacre 

said, adding that DLA is also prepared 

to provide disaster relief items like cots, 

bottled water and meals in support 

of non-combatant evacuations and 

foreign disaster-relief efforts.

Other contingency preparations 

include DLA’s use of the agency’s Joint 

Reserve Force Individual Mobilization 

Augmentee Program, which lets 

the activity train DLA reservists to 

test fuel at South Korean refineries 

and conduct batch testing on fuel 

products like jet propellant. 

“This helps us build a bench 

of seasoned quality assurance 

representatives who understand the 

uniqueness of business on the peninsula 

and who are ready to augment the 

team if a contingency were to occur,” 

Chamberlain said. 

And since DLA fuel points are often 

used by forces not regularly stationed 

in Korea, DLA Energy also oversees 

maintenance and repair programs 

for fuel infrastructure there. Recent 

work arranged by DLA Energy and 

DLA Installation Support fixed scores 

of deficiencies at fuel points used by a 

Marine Corps unit that could be a key 

player in any future action, even though 

it’s based elsewhere in the Pacific. 

“If something were to happen, 

these facilities would be really 

important to forces who need fuel to 

carry out their mission,” Chamberlain 

explained. “So providing regular 

maintenance and repair contributes to 

a strong defense posture.” 

“We’re not just patching things up or 

applying a Band-Aid fix; we’re making 

sure these facilities are in good working 

order for the next 10 years and beyond,” 

she added. 

Materiel destined for customers in South Korea is flown to 

Osan Air Base or shipped to Busan via commercial carriers. 

It’s typically shipped and receipted to units within 24 hours 

of its arrival at DLA Distribution’s warehouse.

U.S. Marines with the 4th Amphibious Assault Vehicle 

Battalion take on crashing waves from the shores of Dogu 

Beach during a training exercise in March 2016. Exercises 

like this one help warfighters prepare for enemy action and 

give DLA the chance to rehearse logistics support.

Courtesy Photo

Marine Corps Cpl. Anthony Morales
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24 www.dla.mil

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

Time-Honored Rapport

Leaders say that in any potential 

future conflict, U.S. and allied forces 

would greatly benefit from DLA’s 

longstanding presence and partnerships 

with local nationals and vendors who 

provide goods and services. 

“South Korea is a very capable 

first-world country that’s continually 

growing,” Daniels said. “Even though 

we’re not in an active fight, we’re already 

doing daily business with some of the 

same companies and customers we’d 

work with during a contingency.”

Whittacre added that decades of 

continuity between U.S. and South 

Korea mean both nations won’t have to 

spend precious time establishing critical 

support during an operation. 

“The institutional knowledge we 

have here would be invaluable when 

you consider situations like we had in 

Iraq and Afghanistan, where we had 

to create brand new ways of providing 

logistics support while also being 

worried about force protection and 

convoying material to austere locations,” 

he said.

Whittacre and Harrington agree that 

the local-national workforce, making up 

more than half of DLA’s employees in 

Korea, are as loyal and dedicated to the 

U.S. mission as their military counterparts.

“Our local nationals come in the door 

each morning ready to work hard, and 

that’s a benefit to both the U.S. and South 

Korean governments,” Harrington said. 

News reports of increasing missile 

tests make it even more important that 

DLA employees avoid complacency, he 

noted, citing a recent news report that 

under the administration of the current 

leader of North Korea, there have been 

twice as many missile tests in the last 

three years as during the previous 

leaders combined. 

“It seems like there’s a new threat 

every day, so we have to know our jobs 

and be ready for the worst, Harrington 

said. “Warfighters on the front line are 

depending on us.” LL

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DLA Energy and contract employees observe refueling 

operations at a new fuel point in South Korea.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Courtesy Photo
This is your second tour with DLA. Does that give you 

any advantages in your leadership role?

I think it does. However, I’d be very quick to say that 

my first tour in DLA, as commander of Land and 

Maritime, was in a much more limited capacity. 

When I got to this level as the director, I began to 

understand the entire capability of the agency, 

along with the fact that I was now responsible for 

25,000-plus employees on a global scale, focused 

on the warfighter, strategic partners and whole-ofgovernment agencies. 

So while my previous experience gave me some 

knowledge of the business of DLA in terms of 

supporting the warfighter, I’ve approached my tenure 

as director as if it were a totally new experience.

A Conversation with ...

Army Lt. Gen.

Darrell K. Williams

While you and DLA senior leaders have been focusing 

on refreshing our strategy, you’ve asked them to read 

Simon Sinek’s book “Start with Why.” Why that book?

Sinek has also released some very interesting videos 

on Ted Talks. What drew me to reading the book the 

first time, and now looking at it a second time, was 

that I believe he’s absolutely right. Many organizations 

know how they’re supposed to do a particular task or 

what the particular task is — but very few ask why 

they’re doing it. 

I really believe the why of what we’re doing allows 

us to connect much better with the mission. And I 

think once we understand the why, there’s a better 

understanding of the mission overall, a better 

performance of it and a better mission outcome.

What are your key areas of interest as you develop your 

strategic guidance for DLA?

Prior to getting here, as I looked through the strategic 

plan, with its various objectives, and the agency’s 

DLA’s New Director discusses his vision 

and strategy and the critical role people 

serve in the DLA mission.

DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams.

Phil Prater

page

25

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

November / December 2017
vision within the plan, I thought it was very good 

— one of the better ones I’ve seen. However, one 

of the first things every new director or leader of a 

major organization does is take a fresh look at the 

organization’s strategic plan and direction. 

Among my foremost responsibilities is to make sure 

we have the right vision, that I’ve stated my intent 

and that we know exactly what the priorities of the 

agency are. I also thought we had a few gaps in our 

plan, given that some elements of our strategic 

environment have changed since the last plan was 

published in 2015. 

One of those is support to the whole of government. 

While we always have been and will always be a 

Warfighter First agency — meaning support to our 

services and support to our combatant commands 

— taking on added significance and effort the last 

three or four years is our support to other agencies, 

such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 

Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Forest 

Service and many others. We’re at the point where 

that support is now, in terms of our sales, about 

20 percent of what we do. So in my estimation, 

that effort demands a more prominent place in our 

strategic plan. 

The other element is the area of global posture 

and response. Looking back on this phenomenal 

agency’s response to the Ebola crisis in Liberia, we 

placed some of the first people on the ground. We 

did it again during the Hurricane Sandy response 

in New Jersey a few years ago and in the response 

to Hurricane Matthew. These situations demand a 

rapid-response capability that is much more than ad 

hoc — something that is planned, something that is a 

systemic part of what we do. 

Even as I conduct this interview, we’re very much 

involved in a huge response. We have deployed over 

100 people from DLA in support of hurricane relief 

efforts, working with FEMA and other federal agencies. 

And all that was facilitated by a rapid response 

capability my predecessors had the foresight to begin 

to develop. 

Now I think it’s come to fruition. We have rapid 

deployment teams, which provide forward 

command-and-control capability, along with a 

robust communications capability networked back to 

headquarters. We have a deployable depot capability 

where we can, on pretty short notice, deploy and 

operate a distribution center. And we have other 

capabilities in our Disposition Services arena. Our fuels 

team is operating what we call Task Force Americas 

to support the response to both hurricanes. 

So it’s become very obvious to us that, in addition 

to our supply chain focus, we also have a growing 

rapid-response requirement that must be more 

prominently reflected in our strategic plan.

You’ve called DLA a phenomenal logistics organization. 

How do you see taking the agency to the next level? Is 

there a next level?

I think there’s always a next level. We should never, 

ever become complacent, and I think looking at our 

strategic plan is part of that.

I just talked about two areas where we have to take 

that next step. What is it we’re doing that we can do 

better? I think you start with the base of what we 

do. The platform or base from which we launch into 

anything else, really, is support to the warfighter. 

So how can we get better in that area? In DLA, one of 

our core metrics — one of the ways we determine 

how well we’re doing — is something we call material 

availability. How often can one of our services or combatant commands ask for a commodity, do we have it 

available and how quickly can we get it to them? 

What we’re striving to do within the agency now is to 

improve our response. The goal should be to have it 

available to them 100 percent of the time. But while 

that’s a difficult metric to achieve, it’s nonetheless 

something we’ll always strive to do — get the 

warfighter the equipment, supplies and services they 

require in an even more expeditious manner. 

Another way we can improve — we have DLA forward 

elements in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. 

One of the areas we’re attempting to strengthen is our 

command-and-control structure. This will make us even 

more responsive to all of the warfighter requirements.

We’re also an agency very reliant on our 

commercial partners and many of our strategic 

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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY
defense and non-defense partners. There’s 

no way we can do what we do without the 

thousands of large, mid-sized and small 

businesses that allow DLA to support its 

customers. So we’re doing everything we can 

to improve our relations with our suppliers. 

Improving the strength of these relationships 

and partnerships will also feature prominently 

in our strategic plan. And those are just some of 

the areas where we’d like to improve. 

You’ve said if you take care of your people and 

culture, the mission will be accomplished. Why do 

you think that is?

It’s a philosophy I’ve embraced for over a decade, 

and it’s never failed me or the organizations with 

whom I’ve served. I really believe that, as a senior 

leader and certainly at the strategic level, it’s all 

about setting conditions within the organization. 

It begins with establishing clear priorities and goals, 

making sure everyone is clear on the direction of the 

organization. But when we’ve established all the lines 

of effort and communicated the strategic priorities, 

you get down to one simple and incontrovertible 

truth: that people have to execute the plan. 

I think people do best in organizations where they feel 

valued, where they feel empowered and where they 

feel that what they do makes a difference. To get back 

to Simon Sinek’s point: They understand the why. 

With that said, it’s not just a belief of mine. It’s an 

imperative of all great organizations. You must, first 

and foremost, take care of your people. 

You’ve also served as commander of the 1st Sustainment 

Command (Theater) in Kuwait, the 3d Sustainment 

Brigade in Iraq, and others. What were your impressions 

of DLA as a customer, and what was the reputation of the 

agency in the field?

I can tell you it was a whole lot different as a 

customer. As a customer, when you’re in a deployed 

environment, and you’re merely trying to get the 

mission accomplished, all you see is the organization’s 

face to the field. You see the people in front of the 

curtain, but you don’t see the vast organization 

behind it. So as a customer, I was concerned only with 

getting a particular result. From that standpoint, DLA 

always delivered. 

The area where I thought DLA could improve was giving the customer that single face I mentioned earlier. In 

DLA, we’re segmented into subordinate commands. As 

a customer, I never cared about what specific organization within DLA you came from; I merely wanted a specific result. My predecessor’s idea to create regional 

commands and to give the customer a single face to 

this vast organization was a wonderful one. I think 

DLA has done a great job of streamlining its operations over the last four or five years, and this concept 

will continue to pay significant dividends. 

I now understand the phenomenal effort involved in 

getting a single case of MREs, repair part or uniforms 

to sailors onboard a ship 6,000 miles away — or to a 

Marine or soldier on point in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. 

Or to a special operations warrior deployed to some 

area of the world that we can’t even name. 

I understand the phenomenal effort required to ensure 

that they get what they need, so their aircraft can 

deploy from its station when it needs to or a ship leaves 

the shipyard on time and on schedule. This great organization really is focused on the warfighter, getting them 

the right item, in the right quantities, always on time.

Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?

There is something I’d like to double down on: an idea 

in the coming strategic plan. 

Our current strategic plan addresses People and 

Culture as a specific line of effort. However, the 

emerging plan discusses People and Culture as 

the heart of everything we do. We’ve chosen 

that approach because People and Culture touch 

everything — all the other lines of effort. 

We’re not making this change lightly. It’s for a very 

meaningful purpose and is about all those things I 

talked about earlier: It’s the fact that without people, 

we can’t accomplish any of the other lines of effort 

or subordinate tasks — we can’t have great supplier 

relations, we can’t support the Warfighter First, we 

can’t support the whole of government, we can’t do 

global response, we can’t be accountable without first 

thinking about what makes the engine of this great 

organization run. 

The “secret sauce” of this organization is our people 

and our culture. So that’s what I want them to know. LL

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LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

November / December 2017
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

Refinery

to Flight

L

ike blood moving through the 

body, jet fuel flows through the 

Defense Logistics Agency Energy’s 

supply chains around the world to keep 

America’s military aircraft — as well as 

other federal agencies — in flight.

Crude oil is converted to many 

products at a refinery, including the fuel 

DLA Energy purchases. These products, 

such as jet fuel, then begin their journey 

though the DLA Energy distribution 

supply chain. 

Story by Ronald Inman, DLA Energy Public Affairs

THE JOURNEY OF A BARREL OF JET FUEL

The journey of Jet A jet fuel from the refinery in Houston to 

its destination at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, includes 

transport by commercial pipeline and barge, as well 

as additization to transform it into F-24 – jet fuel with 

military additives. 

— Photo Courtesy DLA Energy

DLA Energy Americas is one of 

the four DLA Energy regional offices 

responsible for ensuring a barrel of oil 

that completes its transformation into 

jet fuel is properly tested, received, 

stored, transported, accounted for and 

distributed to the warfighter.

Randy Cottrell is the DLA Energy 

Americas at Houston supply operations 

manager. He and his 34-member 

team, including 15 fuel supply planners, 

ensure fuel moves in a timely manner 

to support five combatant commands, 

seven major pipeline distribution 

systems and 300 military bases across 

three time zones.

Cottrell and his team track 5,000 

fuel movements per month and move 

1.2 billion gallons of bulk petroleum 

products each year.

“The transportation of fuel is not 

as easy as it might appear on the 

surface,” Cottrell said. “DLA Energy 

does an excellent job of supporting the 

military services and federal agencies, 

making a complicated fuels distribution system seem easy when fuel appears at their front door, on time and 

meeting quality specifications.”

In 2016 DLA Energy transported 

more than 130 million barrels of fuel 
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November / December 2017 29

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATIONAir Force Tech. Sgt. Kat Justen

worldwide and over 80 million within 

the continental United States. One barrel 

holds 42 gallons of fuel.

At home and overseas, a transportation network spans thousands of 

miles and uses roads, rail, pipeline and 

waterways to bring the fuel to those 

who need it.

The Air Force is DLA Energy Americas 

at Houston’s biggest fuel customer. In 

2016, 830 million gallons of fuel were 

distributed to Air Force bases in the DLA 

Energy Americas area of responsibility.

Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland just 

outside Washington, D.C., and home to 

the Air Force District of Washington’s 

11th Wing, is an especially important 

DLA Energy customer. The wing 

supports contingency operations and 

provides security on the world’s highestvisibility flight line for Air Force One and 

more than a dozen types of aircraft.

Making sure Joint Base Andrews has 

the fuel it needs to fly its missions is a 

supply planner’s job. 

“The supply planner is basically a 

scheduler of fuel, getting fuel from the 

refinery to the customer,” Cottrell said. 

Joint Base Andrews is supplied by a DLA 

Energy contract for 24 million gallons 

of F-24 jet fuel to support Air Force 

missions. F-24 is a type of commercial 

jet fuel known as Jet A, with additives 

to keep it fit for use in demanding 

conditions.

Larry Lewis is a DLA Energy 

Americas at Houston supply planner 

who works with Joint Base Andrews’ fuel 

services contractor. Lewis monitors and 

analyzes the base’s daily fuel inventory 

through reports from DLA Energy and 

Fuels Manager Defense software. He 

ensures the base is above its control 

limit — the operational amount of fuel 

the base is required to maintain by the 

DLA Energy’s Bulk Petroleum Inventory 

Management Plan.

Each month he creates stock 

transfer orders to let vendors and 

suppliers know what quantity of fuel is 

needed at a particular location.

“The most important aspect of 

my job is making sure my customers’ 

needs are met so they can complete 

their mission,” Lewis said. “We track 

consumption projections to suppliers 

as far out as 90 days prior to the 

movement of the fuel.”

The Transformation

The journey of a barrel of jet fuel to 

Joint Base Andrews begins in the heart 

of the U.S. petroleum industry: Houston, 

Texas. F-24 begins as Jet A commercial 

jet fuel, refined from crude oil. One of 

multiple suppliers is notified of the 

amount required by the supply planner. 

Phillip Chang, a chemist for DLA 

Energy’s Quality and Technical Support 

Directorate, explained crude oil’s 

transformation to fuel.

“Crude oil is a mixture of thousands 

of compounds in liquid state found 

naturally in the earth. The refinery 

buys or draws from inventory the 

crude oil that’s best suited to their 

refinery to produce the most products 

and profit,” Chang said.

“Next, the crude oil goes through 

many physical separations [distillation] 

and chemical changes to become 

refined final products like gasoline, 

jet fuel, diesel, fuel oil and others,” 

he said. “The final product is tested 

at the lab to make sure it meets 

the specifications for the intended 

product such as [jet fuels] Jet A and 

JP-8 or diesel and is then stored in 

tanks until delivery.” 

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Thomas Conroy, 459th Aircraft 

Maintenance Squadron crew chief, attaches a fuel line 

to a KC-135R Stratotanker prior to refueling on the Joint 

Base Andrews, Maryland, flight line. The KC-135 is an 

aerial refueling aircraft capable of holding up to 200,000 

pounds of fuel. 
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

It can take up to 48 days for a gallon of crude oil to be transformed 

through a three-step process before it reaches its final stages as F-24 

military jet fuel and can be used to refuel an F-16 on the flight line.

STEP 2

STEP 3

FROM CRUDE OIL ...

... TO 

JET FUEL

Sources: DLA Energy Americas at Houston Supplier Operations, DLA Energy Quality and Technical Support Division

STEP 1

The refinery buys or draws crude 

oil from inventory that’s best suited to 

produce the most products and profit, 

according to DLA Energy’s Quality and 

Technical Support Division. Raw crude 

oil starts out as a complex mixture 

of thousands of compounds that are 

mostly hydrocarbons (compounds with 

mainly carbon and hydrogen with traces 

of other compounds such as sulfur, 

nitrogen, oxygen and metals).

The crude oil goes through many 

physical separations (distillation) and 

chemical changes to become refined 

final products like gasoline, jet fuel, 

diesel, fuel oil and others. The final 

product is tested at the lab to make 

sure it meets the specifications for the 

intended product such as Jet A and JP-8 

(jet fuels) or diesel, and then is stored in 

tanks until delivery.

Three liquid additives are added 

to the fuel to complete the Jet A 

fuel’s transformation into jet fuel 

with military additives – F-24. The 

additives are required to meet the 

unique needs and specifications of 

military aircraft.

The Journey Begins

The journey of a barrel of jet fuel to 

Joint Base Andrews starts months before delivery, Cottrell said. Ordering and 

transporting fuel requires coordination, 

and there can be consequences if it’s not 

properly planned.

“Pipelines are especially busy and 

often reach full volume allocations during 

peak periods,” Cottrell said. “Peak periods 

occur when several pipeline customers 

want to ship fuel at the same time. This 

mostly happens in the winter, when 

the pipelines are shipping heating fuel, 

but can also occur during peak summer 

months, when airports have heavy 

fuel consumption due to increased air 

travelers going on vacation.”

Most DLA Energy Americas–supplied 

fuel travels by pipeline. Regulation 

requires the regional supply planner 

to send the supplier the fuel order at 

least 15 days before the fuel is to be 

transported, Cottrell said.

After the supplier provides the jet 

fuel, it’s shipped from the refinery either 

directly into the Colonial Pipeline (whose 

total branches cover 5,000 miles between 

Houston and New Jersey) or into Defense 

Fuel Support Point Houston, a commercially owned and contractor-operated 

terminal, and then to the Colonial Pipeline.

“It takes a minimum of 20 days for 

fuel in the Colonial Pipeline to travel 

north to DFSP Baltimore,” Cottrell said.

At DFSP Baltimore, an Energy 

quality assurance representative 

ensures three liquid additives are added 

to the fuel as it’s loaded onto the barge, 

transforming it into jet fuel with military 

additives — F-24.

Additizing It All Up

“The use of additives is required 

to meet the unique requirements and 

specifications of military aircraft,” said 

Richard Knapp, DLA Energy Quality and 

Technical Support Quality Operations 

division chief.

“Fuel-system icing inhibitor is 

required to prevent the water from 

Alejandro Pena

Air Force Staff Sgt. Benjamin Mota 

DLA Energy Quality and Technical Support Division

DLA Energy
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November / December 2017 31

LOGLINES

DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

459th Air Refueling Wing KC-135R Stratotankers taxi 

in formation during an alert exercise at Joint Base 

Andrews, Maryland.

bulk fuel purchase program, one of 

four such programs. Other programs 

cover the Rocky Mountain West, 

the Western Pacific and Middle 

East, and the Atlantic/European/

Mediterranean regions. 

The journey from refinery to flight 

is just one segment of DLA Energy’s 

process of providing fuel. Before 

contracts are even awarded, DLA 

Energy’s Supply Planning and Acquisition 

Bulk Fuel Contracting branch puts in 

significant time and effort.

“Most DLA Energy customers 

have no idea what work is involved in 

ensuring a location has fuel to meet 

the warfighter mission. All they know 

is that the product is ready when they 

open the valve,” Cottrell said. LL

forming ice crystals that could block fuel 

lines,” Knapp said.

Another additive prevents the 

buildup of static electricity while the fuel 

is moved.

“Static can lead to high-energy 

sparks in an explosive environment,” 

Knapp explained. “Static dissipater 

additives reduce this hazard by 

increasing the electrical conductivity 

of the fuel, which promotes a rapid 

relaxation of any static charge.”

Joining the static preventer is 

an additive that prevents corrosion 

and enables the fuel to keep parts 

lubricated.

“The fuels have been through 

severe processing at the refinery,” 

Knapp said. “By introducing the 

corrosion inhibitor, parts can keep a 

thin layer of fuel between them. The 

additive prevents corrosion of the 

metal parts caused by oxidation and 

lubricates surfaces to limit wear.” 

“The QAR only accepts discharge of 

the fuel as F-24 when the additization 

is complete,” Cottrell said.

Keeping An Eye On Quality

“Once the Jet A is in DFSP 

Baltimore’s storage tanks, the regional 

supply planner schedules a barge 

carrier contracted by DLA Energy to 

move the fuel,” Cottrell said. “Regional 

QARs monitor barge loading and ensure 

product purity.”

Next, the barge travels down the 

Chesapeake Bay and back up the 

Potomac River to DFSP Anacostia, in 

Washington, D.C., where it discharges 

the fuel into a pipeline that runs to 

tanks on Joint Base Andrews. Specialists 

monitor the fuel to make sure none 

has been lost or diverted. If they find 

excessive gains or losses, the specialists 

start an investigation. They also ensure 

fuel transactions are processed promptly 

using Fuels Manager Defense software 

to ensure auditable accountability along 

the journey.

On Mission 

Finally, jet fuel is scheduled for 

delivery from DFSP Anacostia storage 

tanks to Joint Base Andrews, where 

contracted personnel load Air Force 

R-11 fuel trucks and deliver the fuel to 

base aircraft. 

Cotrell noted that delivery of F-24 

to Joint Base Andrews is through 

DLA Energy’s Inland East Gulf Coast 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dlamil/

Air Force Senior Airman Philip Bryant
DLA NewsWire

DLA DELIVERS PRODUCE FOR SAILORS ABOARD 

USS OAK HILL ON HURRICANE RELIEF MISSION

NEW SMALL BUSINESS CONTRACT YIELDS MULTIPLE REWARDS

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Taylor A. Elberg

When acquisition professionals at the Defense Logistics Agency Troop 

Support received an emergency order to restock the galley of a Navy ship 

performing hurricane-relief operations, they raced against the clock to 

ensure the sailors had fresh produce to fuel their efforts. 

The USS Oak Hill was operating in the Caribbean, ready to help those 

affected by Hurricane Irma. The ship was running low on fresh fruits and 

vegetables and would need to be replenished by the USNS Supply, a Military 

Sealift Command ship docked at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. 

The USNS Supply was set to depart Sept. 9 on a mission to replenish 

several ships operating in the Caribbean, including the Oak Hill.

Larry Munoz, a field representative for the DLA Troop Support’s Subsistence 

supply chain, with the help of fellow Subsistence acquisition professionals, 

received and executed several emergency orders to stock the Supply. 

But the order for the Oak Hill wasn’t submitted due to a communications 

error. By the time the error was corrected, only four hours remained 

before the Supply would close its cargo holds in preparation for departure. 

However, the team found a way to make it in time. 

— Shawn J. Jones

DLA Troop Support Public Affairs

More Online: go.usa.gov/xnc7s

Whenever a person meets one 

objective, it can be satisfying, but to 

achieve four at one time is even better. 

Robert Steed, a contracting officer 

for DLA Disposition Services, realized 

such a feeling when he realized the 

new contract award with Applied 

Development LLC made the company 

the first DLA Disposition Services multiyear awardee to qualify in all smallbusiness socioeconomic subcategories. 

“It was a welcome surprise,” 

Steed said. “We work so hard to hit 

our small-business goals, that when 

you see something that gives so 

much bang for your effort, it fills you 

with a sense of 

accomplishment.” 

Besides providing 

sign language 

interpreter services, 

the Baltimore 

company helps 

DLA Disposition 

Services by 

qualifying in four 

small-business 

subcategories.

These subcategories include being 

part of the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development 

Program, its location in one of SBA’s 

Historically Underutilized Business 

Zones, being a service-disabledveteran-owned small business and an 

economically disadvantaged, womanowned small business.

Sheryl Woods, DLA Disposition 

Services’ special assistant for small 

business, explained that the federal 

government as a whole has a goal 

for small business of 23 percent 

as well as established subgoals for 

these subcategories. 

— Tim Hoyle,

DLA Disposition Services

More Online: go.usa.gov/xnc76

Jace Armstrong

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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY
DLA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 

CONTINGENCY TEAM PROVIDES 

CRUCIAL COMMUNICATIONS TO 

HURRICANE RELIEF EFFORTS 

Preparation was key to the successful deployment of two DLA 

Information Operations Contingency Information Technology Support 

team members from DLA Distribution San Joaquin, California, during 

DLA’s current humanitarian efforts for hurricane relief.

Robert Garcia and Charles James deployed for approximately one 

month. Their journey started at Randolph Air Force Base Auxiliary 

Field in Seguin, Texas, and later moved to Randolph Air Force Base, 

Texas. While deployed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency 

Incident Support Base at Randolph, they sustained 24/7 operations. 

The last week of September, they returned to their home station at 

the San Joaquin distribution center.

“There was a lot of hard work involved, but I enjoyed that we were 

a part of the humanitarian effort to support those affected by the 

recent hurricanes,” Garcia said.

According to Garcia, the DLA Distribution Expeditionary team and 

the DLA Information Operations Contingency IT teams supported U.S. 

Northern Command as it leaned forward with state governors and 

the National Guard to advance understanding, trust, and teamwork in 

direct support of FEMA through dual-status command arrangements.

He stated that the DDXX and Contingency IT teams have trained 

and worked with FEMA many times in recent years to set up ISBs, so 

the team knew what to expect as soon as they arrived.

Reliable communications are crucial in humanitarian efforts. Their 

mission on-ground was to create a command and control element for 

the ISB located at Randolph Air Force Base. The Mobile Emergency 

Response Center, along with Garcia and James, were required to 

establish communications for the DDXX teams from Red River, 

Texas; Susquehanna, Pennsylvania; and Tracy, California. The services 

provided allowed all DLA personnel on site to access data, make 

phone calls, print and copy required documents and coordinate ISB 

operations with hand-held radios.

— Annette Silva

DLA Distribution San Joaquin Public Affairs

More Online: go.usa.gov/xnagn

EYE ON THE GROUND: 

DLA Distribution Expeditionary

A LOOK INSIDE 

DISTRIBUTION’S 

EXPEDITIONARY TEAM’S 

HURRICANE SUPPORT

Before the 2017 hurricane season, 

DLA Distribution had never had all 

three expeditionary teams deployed 

simultaneously in support of a natural 

disaster. They had worked together on 

deployments in Afghanistan but never 

for a Federal Emergency Management 

Agency response. The three teams 

that make up the DLA Distribution 

Expeditionary Team are located at 

Susquehanna, Pennsylvania; Red River, 

Texas; and San Joaquin, California.

DLA Distribution Expeditionary 

commander U.S. Army Maj. Jesse B. 

Holmes worked out of the intermediate 

staging base located at Joint Base 

San Antonio Randolph Air Force Base, 

Texas. He described the daily tasks 

at the ISB to include multiple daily 

teleconferences with both FEMA and 

the DLA Distribution headquarters 

team to ensure synchronization of 

effort and information.

“We operated 24 hours a day, 

so the teams were split into two 

12-hour shifts. Approximately 20 

employees per shift,” said Holmes. 

“The yard was broken down into three 

essential functions: receiving, shipping 

and yard management.”

Additionally, Holmes explained that 

efficient parking plans to maximize 

space in the yard were crucial to 

successfully handling the given amount 

of commodities processed during 

these missions. Tractor trailers were 

showing up all hours of the day and 

night and would back up for miles 

in every direction affecting the local 

community. Quickly receiving those 

trucks were key to preventing backlogs.

— Brianne M. Bender

DLA Distribution Public Affairs 

More Online: go.usa.gov/xnagF

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DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

November / December 2017
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

PROCESSING EXCESS EQUIPMENT OVERSEAS

Deploy 

and

Dispose

Story by Jake Joy, DLA Dispostion Services

Photos by Jeff Landenberger

T he violent crunch of industrial 

shredders pulverizing 

ammunition boxes. The screech 

of 1,000-pound shears disfiguring 

obsolete aircraft hulls. The roar of 

armor-piercing plasma cutters slicing 

effortlessly through Howitzer barrels. 

These are the native sounds of 

fictional “Michiganistan,” where Defense 

Logistics Agency reverse logistics 

professionals congregate each summer 

to practice for a potentially austere life 

together downrange.

DLA Disposition Services handles 

the disposal or potential reuse, transfer 

and donation of used and obsolete 

equipment, hazardous waste and 

demilitarization-required military gear 

at its permanent yards and warehouses 

around the world.

Other than basic refuse and some 

special waste categories like explosive 

residue or biological or radioactive 

materials, if the U.S. military generally 

needs disposal of something, DLA 

is there to take charge. The agency 

continually tweaks the positioning of its 

global workforce and their destructive 

machines to meet the disposal needs of 

the armed services.

Sometimes, however, providing ontime warfighter support requires even 

greater speed and flexibility. During 

natural or man-made disaster response, 

during a sudden escalation in hostilities 

or during precision strikes of a limited 

scope and duration, DLA has to ensure 

it can marshal resources 

quickly to provide 

uninterrupted logistical 

support to expeditionary 

U.S. forces. The agency’s 

long-term strategy 

includes an increased focus 

on the development of 

expeditionary or quickreaction capabilities, and 

DLA Disposition Services 

initiatives are helping pave 

the way. 

One critical part of 

ensuring deploymentready disposition 

support comes in the 

form of annual Overseas 

Contingency Operations 

Readiness Training, held in 

Battle Creek, Michigan, for 

members of its six military 

disposal units and expeditionary civilians. 

The two-week OCORT event serves as 

a capstone experience for military-civilian 

groups that learn and work side by side to 

build up the individual’s disposal skillsets 

while working toward a deploymentready team status. 

“The way DLA prepares people to 

deploy has vastly improved. When I 

deployed, you just showed up and said 

‘here I am, what am I doing?’ The stuff 

we’re doing [now] ... this is awesome,” 

said Navy Lt. j.g. Chris Deason, the officer 

in charge of Disposal Support Unit 2, 

out of Columbus, Ohio, and a first-time 

OCORT participant in 2017. 

He previously deploy-ed for DLA but 

never had a chance for OCORT-depth 

training prior to heading overseas. 

“What we’re doing here is way more 

than what [training] I was doing as an 

enlisted guy. This has grown in leaps and 

bounds,” he said. “To me, this exercise is 

phenomenal. I love it.”

Expeditionary Operations Chief Tim 

Walters, the OCORT director, said the 

continuous evolution and improvement 

of pre-deployment training is due to a 

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jesus Martinez demilitarizes 

a 122mm Howitzer turned in by Detroit Arsenal as part of 

the 2017 iteration of Overseas Contingency Operations 

Readiness Training, or OCORT, held in “Michiganistan.” 
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DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

Navy Logistics Specialist 2nd Class Scott Pearson 

operates industrial shears to turn unusable property 

into scrap during Overseas Contingency Operations 

Readiness Training 2017.
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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

few key realities. For one, DLA Disposition 

Services, despite representing a relatively 

small slice of the agency’s population, has 

accounted for more than half of DLA’s 

civilian and military deployments to Iraq 

and Afghanistan since contingencies 

began in both those nations roughly 15 

years ago. Working the tail end of the 

logistics cycle often means physically 

going to where equipment finally gave 

out or outlived its purpose. The thing 

about sending lots of people to work 

in forward locations: The plentiful 

opportunities for trial and error generate 

a wealth of lessons.

“We’re the subject-matter experts 

when it comes to the ultimate disposal 

of property,” OCORT 2017 Exercise Area 

Manager Greg Dangremond said. “We’re 

the ones that dot the final i’s and cross 

the final t’s. We have to do our due 

diligence on the back end.”

When OCORT began in 2013, 

participants focused specifically 

on personal deployment readiness 

and preparation for the Afghanistan 

retrograde mission, Walters said.

However, lessons learned in 

the first decade of war revealed a 

greater need for service members 

and civilian logisticians to build mutual 

understanding and rapport prior to being 

thrown together for the first time in a 

fast-paced and hostile environment. 

Civilians were incorporated into the 

following year’s training.

“Sometimes, when deployed, 

[civilians] weren’t sure of what the 

[military disposal teams] were capable 

of doing,“ said Victor Ambegia, one of 

nine civilians who first took part in the 

exercise. And they didn’t know what 

expertise we had. It was like two teams 

working on one site. Here, civilians are 

learning the [military unit] structure, and 

they are seeing our expertise. We’re both 

learning things,” 

Feedback was uniformly positive, 

and combined training of military and 

civilians quickly became a regular 

occurrence. Expeditionary operations 

plans provided for more mixed training 

evolutions to allow the groups to teach 

each other and develop familiarity.

“It really is a team effort,” said Air 

Force Lt. Col. Timothy Bunnell, the officer 

in charge of the first 2014 OCORT, which 

incorporated civilians for the first time. 

“We thought we knew how 

[combining trainees] would work. We 

thought that as the circumstances 

dictated, the [Civilian Expeditionary 

Workforce volunteers] would step up, 

because they have a higher level of 

technical expertise than the military, 

typically, and they would augment 

our training cadre. That has worked, 

in my opinion, beyond my wildest 

expectations. It has been a huge 

success from a teamwork perspective, 

from a knowledge perspective, across 

the board.”

The Expeditionary Site Set, known 

as “DRMO in a Box,” — referring to the 

Defense Reutilization and Marketing 

Office — represents another lesson 

learned from time spent downrange and 

another big OCORT training goal fully 

realized in time for the 2015 exercise. 

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Annalisa Brown erects a portable 

shelter, a standard element of one of DLA Disposition 

Services’ four Expeditionary Site Sets pre-staged on three 

continents for quick use during a contingency operation or 

disaster response.
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November / December 2017 37

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DLA’S OFFICIAL FLAGSHIP PUBLICATION

Planners analyzed years of deployer 

feedback to develop and perfect the 

ESS: a modular, scalable and fully 

functional disposition site that can 

generate its own power, arrives with 

the tools and the personnel trained to 

handle the job, and provides for living 

and working spaces for the 15-20 

logisticians who would be responsible 

for setting it up in less than a week and 

then operating it indefinitely. 

“You’re going into a site with no 

amenities,” said Bill Kelley, a former 

Afghanistan site chief who played a 

Michiganistan area manager during the 

2017 exercise. He said the ESS concept 

has accounted for all the core disposition 

tasks and allows people to arrive at 

a contingency with expectations of 

what they will have to work with rather 

than making piecemeal adaptations to 

conditions on the ground.

“We’ve got a lot of different 

capabilities here,” Kelley said. “We can do 

basically anything from A to Z.” 

Kelley said that by the end of the 

first exercise day, the team ideally 

has built up its housing, and its field 

communications assets provided by 

DLA Information Operations have come 

online. By the end of four days, the 

team should have its yard set and ready 

to handle just about any property that 

arrives. He said that in a situation like 

disaster response, having site sets ready 

to go saves DLA “hours and days, versus 

having to put all the stuff together and 

figure out how we’re going to get it there.”

Trainers add to the exercise 

complexity with scenarios or “injects” 

that mirror the kind of challenges that 

frequently pop up when operating in an 

austere environment. Some scenarios 

involve site visits by VIPs and media. 

Some involve accidents or equipment 

that did not show up. One of the 2017 

scenarios involved a generator failure. 

Participants got an opportunity to 

practice switching out cables to keep the 

power flowing to their portable buildings. 

“Equipment goes down downrange,” 

Dangremond said. “Depending on 

how long your equipment has been in 

country, it may be super reliable or it 

may be unreliable.” 

An additional layer of realism added 

during the 2016 iteration was the 

incorporation of real-life customers who 

surrender their used items to participants 

during the exercise. By 2017, real-life 

OCORT customer turn-ins had grown 

to include 13 customers representing 

all service branches that generated 126 

items weighing 240,000 pounds.

“It’s been a truly joint, or purple, 

environment,” Dangremond said. “It’s been 

one mission, one team, one fight, and so 

far, everyone has integrated beautifully.” 

This year, DLA Disposition Services 

exercise participants were joined by a 

pair of separate agency entities whose 

training events not only overlapped but 

also took place within mere miles of 

one another.

Just across the street from 

Michiganistan, personnel supporting 

the DLA Distribution Deployable Depot 

held a weeklong field training exercise 

and a little farther away, at the Battle 

Creek Air National Guard Base, one of 

the agency’s two Rapid Deployment 

Teams represented the full power of 

the organization’s capabilities during 

U.S. Transportation Command’s Turbo 

Distribution exercise.

Held in New Jersey in 2015 and 

California in 2016, this was the first time 

the TRANSCOM event took place in 

Michigan. It tests the ability of a joint task 

force to arrive at an airfield with minimal 

infrastructure, receive airlifts and then 

move supplies forward by truck convoy 

and stage them for distribution. DLA’s role 

is important, and its rapid deployment 

personnel included headquarters 

planners and a representative from 

each major subordinate command to 

coordinate warfighter demands on each 

functional area. 

Looking ahead to OCORT 2018, 

Walters said planning has already 

begun. One exercise goal is to align more 

closely with a major regional turn-in 

customer, the Michigan National Guard, 

so disposition training can support 

annual Guard exercises that happen to 

be among the biggest in the country. 

Trainers will look to continue upping 

the realism and complexity level to 

match what logisticians might face in 

an expeditionary environment and give 

participants a chance to improve in a 

supportive environment.

“It’s the time and place for mistakes 

to be made and for participants to 

learn as a team and as individuals,” 

Walters said. LL

www. dla.mil/aviation

DELIVERING

AIRPOWER

SOLUTIONS

DLA Aviation Strives to Deliver Excellence

in Performance and Responsiveness

in Support of our Worldwide Customer Network

DLA AVIATION

BY 2017, REAL-LIFE OCORT CUSTOMER TURN-INS HAD 

GROWN TO INCLUDE 13 CUSTOMERS REPRESENTING 

ALL SERVICE BRANCHES. THEY GENERATED 126 ITEMS 

WEIGHING 240,000 POUNDS.
page

cover4 WWW.DLA.MIL

LOGLINES

THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS — ON TIME, EVERY TIME

My name is:

Jesse J. Romandia 

I am: 

A local stock number verifier for DLA Distribution working with DLA Disposition 

Services at San Joaquin, California, and a member of the Ohlone and Chumash Tribes of 

California. Native Americans have supported all branches of the military, and all Native 

communities have high respect for those who serve in the military, for those who follow the 

“way of the warrior.”

Describe your job in a sentence.

I verify property being turned in without a standard National Stock Number, so it’s 

correctly identified.

How long have you worked for DLA?

Eight years: one as a contractor and with DLA since then.

What is your favorite thing about working for DLA?

Being able to serve the warfighter and help the customers 

make use of items DLA supplies — especially the customers 

we’ve helped during the hurricanes. 

What are your best memories of working here?

Our customers coming in to personally thank us, showing us 

pictures of how they have used equipment they got from us.

How do you make a difference?

By keeping all the property where it should be so 

warfighters can get it when they need it and so none of the bad 

guys get it.

Jesse J. Romandia

I AM DLA