1

EFFECTIVENESS

AND EFFICIENCY

DLA’s 60-Year Quest to Perfect Supply Chain Management

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

Dr. Colin Jay Williams

DLA Historian

THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY
THE NATION’S COMBAT LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY
i

Effectiveness and Efficiency

DLA’s 60-Year Quest to Perfect Supply Chain Management

by

Dr. Colin Jay Willams DLA Historian

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

8725 JOHN J. KINGMAN ROAD

FORT BELVOIR, VA 22060
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iii iii iii

Acknowledgements

This history has benefitted 

from many people. Paul Crank 

drew the supply and service 

center graphic and laid out the 

entire project. Three review 

panels – one internal to the 

agency, one external, and one 

of former directors – tightened 

my language and saved me from 

mistakes. Finally, the project 

never would have happened 

without Vice Admiral Skubic 

supporting the history program, 

Joe Yoswa giving me discretion 

in how I run that program, 

and Pat Mackin allowing me 

to research and write on the 

government’s dime.
iv

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

Forged by History, Focused on the Future

DLA has been compared to a fast-moving 

train, and I’m sure many of our team members 

can relate to that. When faced with a rapid 

op-tempo, most of us focus on the task at hand 

or on incoming missions, which leaves us 

little time to consider our past. Occasionally, though, an important 

milestone calls for us to pause, reflect and celebrate our history. 

DLA’s 60th Anniversary is just such an occasion. 

DLA is a dynamic and forward-leaning agency with vast 

capabilities, fueled by a dedicated and mission-focused workforce. 

How we got here is part of the rich and amazing story you’ll find in 

these pages. 

From its beginnings as the Defense Supply Agency on Oct. 1, 1961, 

through the Vietnam era, growth and change during the 70s and 

80s, BRAC decisions, technological advances, support to historic 

military operations, as well as increased support to the federal 

government for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, here 

and abroad – DLA has left an indelible mark on American history 

over the last six decades. 

On Oct. 1, 2021, DLA will celebrate 60 years of support to our 

Warfighters and our Nation. While that date will one day be a 

memory, I hope this publication will stand for years to come as 

a reference for employees, partners, stakeholders, and anybody 

desiring to know more about our Nation’s Combat Logistics 

Support Agency.

I fully expect this fast-moving train known as DLA will continue 

providing full spectrum logistics, acquisition, and technical services 

to the military and our federal and allied partners, and I look 

forward to the new chapters to come in this incredible story.

Warfighter Always!

Vice Admiral Michelle C. Skubic

Director, Defense Logistics Agency
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements................................................................................iii

Forged by History, Focused on the Future ..........................................iv

The Defense Supply Agency: 

From Integrating Commodities to Worldwide Logistics ................3

New Management Strategies: 

Addressing the Challenges of Quality and Quantity .....................23

Reform and Reorganization: 

DLA After the Cold War .................................................................36

The Making of An Agency ...................................................................38

At Home and Abroad: 

Supporting Whole of Government and the War on Terror ................57

Conclusion ............................................................................................68

Appendix 1: 

Directors, Past and Present............................................................70

Appendix 2: 

Joint Meritorious Unit Awards...................................................... 71
2

Building 1, the Defense Supply Agency, Cameron Station, Virginia, c. 1962. 

When Army Lt. Gen. Andrew T. McNamara received his initial brief from Defense 

Secretary Robert S. McNamara, he asked the secretary where his headquarters 

would be. The secretary replied “not here,” meaning not the Pentagon. Implied 

was “general, find your own space.” Fortunately, Lt. Gen. McNamara had surveyed 

Cameron Station, Virginia, when he was Quartermaster General of the Army 

and knew its warehouses could be converted into offices. Staff began occupying 

the renovated facility September 1962, moving from temporary workspace in the 

Munitions Building and other District of Columbia locations. (DLA Photo)
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The Defense Supply Agency: 

From Integrating Commodities 

to Worldwide Logistics 

When President John F. Kennedy nominated Robert S. McNamara 

to be his defense secretary, he gave him two instructions. First, he 

wanted the Ford Motor Company executive to develop a force capable 

of keeping America safe. Second, he wanted him to procure equipment 

and supplies for that force in the most economical manner possible. 

McNamara embraced these goals of effectiveness and efficiency, 

transferring them to the Defense Supply Agency, the organization he 

formed in 1961 to acquire and distribute goods common to more than 

one military service.

 The Defense Supply Agency answered a demand for integrated 

management dating back to World War II. Before the war, the 

United States had a small Navy and an even smaller Army. With few 

personnel and inconsequential budgets, procurement arms had no 

need to integrate. Fascism in Europe and imperialism in the Pacific 

changed this calculus. In just six years, the Army expanded from 

190,000 to 8.3 million soldiers and the Navy from 380 to 6,700 ships.

As the Army and Navy grew, so did their requirements. Often the 

services competed with each other for the same commodity in the 

same market from the same supplier. Conflicting systems might not 

have mattered if America had returned to strategic irrelevance after 

the war. Instead, a weakened France and Great Britain forced it to 

lead the West’s global struggle against Communism. 

Congress addressed America’s need for a sizable military in 1947 

by passing the National Security Act. The act combined the services 

into one department. It also established an Air Force with its own 

logistical system and codified the Joint Chiefs of Staff, officers who 

issued strategic direction, formed unified commands, and determined 

material requirements. 

Recognizing that common departmental leadership did not by itself 

make an efficient system, President Dwight D. Eisenhower commissioned 

former president Herbert C. Hoover to study the federal government. 

Hoover, whose previous investigation into executive efficiency had resulted in the General Services Administration, recommended the Defense 

Department establish a “Defense Supply and Service Administration” to 

acquire and distribute commodities across the continental United States. 
4

The administration would have equal status with the services and report 

directly to the defense secretary. 

While Eisenhower did not commit to an independent service, 

his Defense Department took steps to address Hoover’s concerns. It 

started by assigning commodity responsibilities to individual services. 

In 1955, the Army became the Defense Department’s subsistence 

provider. In following years, it added clothing & textiles, general 

supplies, traffic management, and construction supplies. The Navy 

assumed medical supplies, petroleum, oceanic transportation, and 

industrial supplies. The Air Force provided airlift services. 

The Defense Department took another step in 1958 by 

consolidating the Defense Standardization Program, Defense 

Utilization Program, and Federal Supply Catalog under a new 

headquarters, the Armed Forces Supply Support Center. It manned 

this headquarters with a joint staff, gave it logistics problems to 

solve, and made it answerable to the Assistant Secretary of Defense 

for Installations and Logistics. Other efforts included writing a 

procurement regulation and combining surplus sales offices. 

Congress, for its part, authorized defense secretaries to create 

agencies “for the carrying out of any supply or service activity common 

to more than one military department.” With little objection from the 

services, Eisenhower’s Defense Department established the Defense 

Atomic Support Agency and the Defense Communications Agency. 

Secretary McNamara formed the Defense Intelligence Agency. He 

then turned his attention to the issue for which the legislation had 

been written: logistics.

To integrate logistics, McNamara examined three options: 

strengthen single manager assignments, assign all procurement 

and distribution responsibilities to one branch, or use Congress’s 

authorization to form a defense agency. The services wanted the first. 

Knowing the advantages of consolidated management, the secretary 

chose the third.

A defense agency upset the services for two reasons. First, 

service secretaries wanted to invest the savings single managers 

were realizing in other priorities. Second, unlike existing agencies, 

a supply agency would report to the defense secretary and not the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary McNamara, whose organizational 

philosophy hewed closer to former president Hoover’s than politics 

would suggest, did not want the director of the new organization 

answering to anyone in uniform. 
5

Army Lt. Gen. Andrew T. McNamara 

had a stellar career before establishing 

the Defense Supply Center, achieving 

fame for removing fuel from the path 

of the Germans during the Battle of 

the Bulge, filling key quartermaster 

and Pentagon billets, and serving as 

Quartermaster General of the Army.

For someone who would dedicate 

the later part of his life to DLA, 

McNamara was not anxious to 

serve as its director. After four 

years as Quartermaster General, he 

was appointed deputy commander 

of U.S. Forces in Korea, a plum 

assignment for a logistician and one 

he enjoyed immensely. When Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics 

and Installations Thomas D. Morris called about his selection, the general 

responded “I can’t hear you . . . there must be sunspot trouble on the line 

– send a cable.” When the cable came, it read “You will report by the fastest 

transportation possible and be in my office no later than 30 September, 9:30, 

signed Robert S. McNamara.” (DLA Photo)

The Defense Logistics Agency moved from Cameron Station to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 

in 1995 as part of the 1988 Base Realignment and Closure legislation. It shares an 

806,000 square-foot building, called the McNamara Headquarters Complex, with 

the Defense Contract Audit Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and Defense 

Technical Information Agency. (DLA Photo)
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The Navy was consolidating industrial hardware for the rest of the services when 

the Defense Supply Agency formed on October 1, 1961. While not ready for transfer 

on the first of the new year with other supply centers, what was then known as the 

Military Industrial Supply Agency became part of DSA April 1, 1962. In this picture, 

Army Lt. Gen. Andrew T. McNamara, DSA’s first director; Navy Rear Adm. James 

S. Dietz, the center’s commander; and two others unveil a sign with the inventory 

control point’s new name: the Defense Industrial Supply Center. (DLA Photo)

A U.S. Navy P2V Neptune flies over a Soviet freighter October 27, 1962. Despite being 

fully operational for only nine months, the agency was ready for the Cuban Missile 

Crisis. Of the many items it supplied, the most important was film. Aerial photography 

informed Americans of Soviet missiles on Cuba and confirmed their departure. 

The Defense General Supply Center provided all film. (National Archives and Records 

Administration Photo)
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By September 12, 1961, Secretary McNamara had decided who that 

director would be. He recalled Army Lt. Gen. Andrew T. McNamara 

from South Korea, where he was serving as deputy commander of U.S. 

Forces. Lt. Gen. McNamara, a former Army quartermaster general, 

reported to the defense secretary on Saturday, September 30. The 

next day he drove to the Pentagon and assumed duties by jotting 

out General Order Number 1. McNamara was eager to get started 

because he knew success had to come early. With service opposition, 

the department’s experiment in integrated logistics would last only as 

long as it proved capable of what the new president expected from his 

defense secretary: effectiveness and efficiency. 

Lt. Gen. McNamara set a demanding pace. In the three months 

between October 1, 1961 and January 1, 1962, he assumed control of 

the Armed Forces Supply Support Center, developed organizational 

and staffing plans, selected a permanent headquarters, entered into 

agreements with the services, prepared budgets, and received the 

agency’s first charter. On the first day of the new year, he added seven 

single managers to his command, merging their capital funds but 

otherwise leaving them intact.

With subordinates largely unchanged, efficiency came from 

reducing bureaucracy. As single managers, supply centers had 

to navigate layers of entrenched leadership before getting to 

service secretaries too distracted with operational concerns to give 

logistics much thought. While the services had benefitted from the 

assignments, they had done little to champion the concept, with just 

the Army’s subsistence center fully formed by October 1961. In the 

DSA construct, only McNamara stood between commodity managers 

and the defense secretary.

That conduit worked hard to win the services. He pushed DSA to 

standardize requisitioning, billing, reimbursing, pricing, cataloging, 

and reporting procedures. Previously, maintainers in the field or at 

sea had to use separate forms for each transaction and commodity. 

Starting with military standard requisitioning and issuing procedures, 

or MILSTRIP, the agency normalized transactions on eightycharacter punch cards that could be read by the computers of the day. 

MILSTRIP replaced sixteen forms, easing the burden on supply clerks 

throughout the military.

Standardized forms were only the beginning. By July 1, 1962, 

when DSA’s Fiscal Year 1963 budget went into effect, the agency 

was overseeing supply centers less expensively and with 3,481 fewer 

people than the services had. Wanting customers to benefit from 
8

DSA efficiency, Lt. Gen. McNamara insisted the Army, Navy, and Air 

Force keep what the agency saved. His next challenge was convincing 

them the agency could be as effective as quartermasters, bureaus, and 

service logisticians in a crisis. 

DSA did not have to wait long for a chance to prove itself. On 

October 16, 1962, President Kennedy learned Soviet Premier Nikita 

Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles on Cuba, ninety miles south 

of Florida. The agency was immediately thrust into four aspects of the 

nation’s response. Most pressing was the supply of film. Overnight, 

the United States went from photographing 2 to 97 percent of the 

island. With stocks quickly depleted, the Defense General Supply Center 

wrote an emergency contract with Eastman Kodak and flew a lieutenant 

colonel to the company’s plant in upstate New York to ensure execution. 

Also critical was transportation. With an invasion planned, DSA’s 

Defense Traffic Management Service used 6,000 specially designed 

railcars to assemble three Army divisions. The naval squadron that 

quarantined the island instead received fuel from the Defense Petroleum 

Supply Center, which used shallow-draft barges to transport it from Port 

Everglades to Key West, Florida.

The fourth way DSA responded to the Cuban Missile Crisis 

continued after its resolution. The agency was already providing 

material for the nation’s fallout shelter program but fear of nuclear 

attack increased demand for goods provided by the Defense 

Subsistence Supply Center and Defense General Supply Center. 

Warehouses managed by the Defense General Supply Center served 

as a national reserve for the six items deemed critical to surviving 

a nuclear holocaust: crackers, shelf-stable bread, metal drums, 

waterproof liners, medical kits, and sanitation kits.

Having proved itself to the services, DSA embarked on a massive 

expansion. Added over the next two years were warehouses, supply 

centers, and contract management offices. Warehouses ensured 

the rapid delivery of DSA goods. They included properties in 

Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania; Memphis, Tennessee; Ogden, Utah; 

and Tracy, California. New supply centers increased DSA’s scope. 

The Defense Electronics Supply Center, added July 1962, supplied 

items characterized by their smallness, frequent turn-over, and 

rapid obsolescence. The Defense Industrial Plant Equipment Center, 

added March 1963, loaned machines to factories manufacturing 

military equipment.

DSA’s entry into contract management started in 1962 when 

Lt. Gen. McNamara established regional procurement offices 
9

The Defense General 

Supply Center stores 

material for fallout 

shelters in underground 

facilities in western 

Virginia during the 1960s. 

(DLA Photo)

Sanitation kit from 1962. 

Kits were assembled 

by material handlers 

at the Defense General 

Supply Center from 

items purchased by its 

acquisition professionals. 

(Civil Defense Museum Photo)
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Front entrance to the Defense 

Electronics Supply Center, c. 

summer 1962. 

Unlike other supply centers, 

DESC did not come to the 

Defense Supply Agency 

integrated. Instead, it 

consolidated as it formed, with 

Army and Navy programs 

merging with the Air Force’s 

office on Gentile Air Force 

Station near Dayton, Ohio. 

The center stayed there until 

it combined with the Defense 

Construction Supply Center in 

the late 1990s to form Defense 

Supply Center Columbus. 

(DLA Photo)

The Defense Electronics Supply 

Center’s Emergency Support 

Operations Center on Gentile Air 

Force Station, near Dayton, Ohio. 

(DLA Photo)
11

and Secretary McNamara commissioned a study called Project 

60. Project 60 examined existing contract management efforts, 

the problems associated with duplication, and the many areas in 

which current practices were insufficient. After eleven months, 

investigators recommended forming an independent agency and 

making it responsible for quality assurance, industrial security, 

property administration, defense mobilization, and contract oversight. 

Secretary McNamara instead chose partial consolidation under DSA. 

The agency formed the Defense Contract Administration Services 

and began supervising offices. While the Army, Navy, and Air Force 

continued to run many of those offices, headquarters reductions saved 

the government 2,000 positions. 

Other structural changes included one consolidation and 

two departures. For efficiency, the agency combined the Defense 

Subsistence Supply Center, Defense Medical Supply Center, and 

Defense Clothing and Textile Center into the Defense Personnel 

Support Center, which it located at the Clothing and Textiles site in 

South Philadelphia. The losses were the Defense Automotive Supply 

Center, which DSA transferred to the Army’s newly established 

Materiel Command, and the Defense Traffic Management Service. 

While transportation was related to supply, the agency had not 

assumed single managers for sea or air movement. Unable to integrate 

modes of travel, DSA transferred the service to U.S. Army Materiel 

Command as well.

By 1965, DSA had accomplished more than Secretary McNamara 

had thought possible. It had proved itself during the Cuban Missile 

Crisis, added new responsibilities, shed those that could not be 

integrated, and won the respect of the services. That summer 

presented a new challenge. The nation had been sending troops 

to South Vietnam for months but President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 

decision to deploy an additional forty-four battalions was unexpected. 

Orders for parts and consumables overloaded supply centers. Overall 

stock availability, which had averaged 91.5 percent in August 1965, 

dropped to 82.7 percent in October 1966. 

Certain commodity groups were hit harder than others. Most 

affected was clothing and textiles, whose stores of warm weather 

uniforms and jungle boots were quickly depleted. The Defense 

Personnel Support Center responded by hiring 1,100 seamstresses. 

Depots, also hit hard, hired more workers and started twenty-four 

hour operations. By 1967, the agency reached 62,000 employees, 

more than an Army corps.
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These employees implemented new technologies and resurrected 

proven methods. They pioneered using walk-in refrigerated containers 

to transport fresh fruits and vegetables across the Pacific. Up to 90 

percent of troops in Vietnam were soon eating produce straight from 

American farms. The Clothing and Textiles supply chain, reacting to 

complaints from the field, worked with Army laboratories in Natick, 

Massachusetts, to design, develop, and deploy rip-resistant uniforms. 

Along with other elements of the Defense Department, the agency 

participated in the Red Ball Express, a method of transporting priority 

items named after a similar effort in World War II. DSA’s role was to 

consolidate material at Travis Air Force Base in California so it could 

be flown across the Pacific at regular intervals. 

Back at home, DSA started a project to automate material 

management. Lt. Gen. McNamara had prepared the agency for this 

process by introducing the military standard system. The next push 

came from Navy Vice Adm. Joseph M. Lyle, who became DSA director 

in 1964. Lyle had developed a bold vision for DSA while serving as 

McNamara’s deputy. Although lacking his predecessor’s combat 

record, he had distinguished himself in World War II by pushing ships 

out of repair docks faster than anyone in the Navy thought possible.

Under Lyle’s leadership, DSA’s Data Systems Automation Office 

designed the Standard Automated Materiel Management System. 

Programmers had never before automated the asset, order, finance, 

acquisition, and requirements functions of multiple commodity 

groups. With no off-the-shelf technology upon which to rely, the 

agency had to do everything from conceptualization to coding itself.

Planned in discrete define, design, develop, and test stages, 

SAMMS was scheduled for deployment in three years. It took seven. 

Problems were mostly organizational. The agency supervised the 

project with the same leaders who were responding to day-to-day 

emergencies in Vietnam. Without a dedicated manager, these leaders 

allowed programmers to write code too complex for the commercial 

computers they planned to use. After a failed solicitation, DSA had to 

redesign the program. 

Spurred by criticism from the Defense Department and Congress, 

the agency installed the first system at Defense Construction Supply 

Center in 1971. Results were phenomenal. In twenty-five months, 

SAMMS reduced back orders from 153,000 to 64,000, increased 

material availability from 78.9 to 89.8 percent, and increased on-time 

fill rate from 61.8 to 71.5 percent. Impressively, it did so with 354 

fewer people.
13

Specialists from Defense Contract Administration Region Los Angeles inspect the 

Army’s Missile Minder, a transportable air defense fire control system, December 14, 

1976. DCAR Los Angeles was one of the nine contract management regions DSA 

oversaw at the time. (DLA Photo)
14

The Defense Supply Agency used walk-in refrigerators to transport fresh fruits and 

vegetables across the Pacific during the Vietnam War. Organization as much as 

technology made this possible. The truck pictured here, from the 572d Transportation 

Company of the 6th Transportation Battalion, carries a refrigerated load, c. 1970-71. 

(Photo courtesy the Army Transportation Museum)
15

Unfortunately, SAMMS required modifications each time it was 

deployed. The factors distinguishing supply chains – the nature, 

quantity, and type of supplier; how payments were requested and 

received; the shelf-life, frequency of use, and storage space required of 

items – made the program hard to standardize. Efficiency came, but 

it took the rest of the decade. Even then petroleum and fresh fruits 

and vegetables differed enough from other commodities to require 

their own automations. Additionally, functions other than material 

management were not covered. The Data Systems Automation Office 

had to write separate programs for warehouse operations, contract 

administration, and property disposal.

DSA’s disposal mission was poorly understood. Army General 

Creighton W. Abrams, commander of Military Assistance Command, 

Vietnam, thought it meant the agency could retrograde all his 

equipment back to the United States. Air Force Lt. Gen. Earl C. 

Hedlund, DSA’s third director, had to correct him. A P-38 pilot who 

was shot down with second-degree burns in World War II, he was not 

intimidated by Abrams’s rank or record. Unfortunately, DSA’s charter 

prevented him from deploying personnel outside the continental 

United States. Without liaisons, confusion continued.

The situation improved with help from the Pentagon. Before 1972, 

DSA’s property disposal responsibilities were mostly informational. 

The Defense Logistics Services Center distributed standards but 

oversaw only those offices it had inherited from the Armed Forces 

Supply Support Center. The need to reduce stores in Vietnam 

prompted the Defense Department to entrust DSA with disposal 

authority for the entire military. 

Navy Vice Adm. Joseph M. Lyle was 

the right man to replace Army Lt. Gen. 

Andrew T. McNamara. First, Lyle knew the 

agency, having helped build it. Second, he 

understood how automation could integrate 

supply activities across dissimilar commodity 

areas. Finally, as judged by the transcript of 

the hearings the House of Representatives 

held on DSA in May 1962, he interacted well 

with congressional oversight, understanding 

questions and giving satisfactory answers. 

(DLA Photo)
16

Backed by the assistant secretary of defense for installations and 

logistics, the agency elevated its surplus sales office to a primary-level 

field activity: the Defense Property Disposal Service. As with past 

consolidations, integration eliminated duplication, this time saving 

the government 1,544 positions.

With the war in its final throes, Pentagon leaders allowed DSA 

to deploy Defense Property Disposal Service teams to Vietnam. 

Establishing themselves in Saigon, these teams decided what equipment 

should be returned to the states, what could be given to South Vietnam, 

and what had to be destroyed. They whittled down a massive buildup 

and departed just days before Communists seized the city.

While property disposal teams were the only DSA elements to 

deploy in harm’s way, Vietnam had shown the need for integrated 

supply management overseas. With Pentagon permission, the agency 

established subsistence offices in Japan and Korea. With Europe still 

the Cold War’s primary theater, DSA established offices in Spain and 

Germany as well. The agency also started providing fresh fruits and 

vegetables to commissaries in Europe and repair parts for commercial 

vehicles used by military personnel on the continent. 

The next exception to the agency’s continental restriction was 

expansive and controversial. In 1972, the deputy defense secretary 

decided DSA should distribute bulk petroleum throughout the 

military. The services and Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed this move. 

It meant fuel in hot spots such as Europe, the Pacific, and the 

Middle East would come from contracts let by civilians over whom 

commanders had no control. While the secretary held firm, he 

did cancel a revision of the agency’s charter. Denied regulatory 

recognition of its expanded mission, DSA proved itself to the services 

the same way it had previously: by performing well and saving money.

Saving money was important because inflation was rampant 

in the 1970s. Rising prices forced DSA to spend more to restock 

its shelves than it had paid for items leaving them. Petroleum was 

partly to blame. Middle Eastern wars and Organization of Petroleum 

Exporting Countries policies limited supply. The situation became 

so bad communities across the United States ran short of heating 

oil. Truckers, upset with what they were paying at the pump, went 

on strike twice. DSA helped mitigate the crisis. Because the Defense 

Fuel Supply Center could order large quantities under the Defense 

Production Act, it was less affected by price fluctuations than the 

general population. The federal government relied on this stability, 

as did communities across the country. Later in the decade, when 
17

The Defense Supply Agency established the Data Systems Office in Columbus, Ohio, 

to design, implement, and manage electronic information. The center began with 

two systems: SAMMS, the Standard Automated Materiel Management System, and 

MOWASP, the Mechanization of Warehouse and Shipping Procedures. It soon added 

many more. On August 8, 1977, DLA elevated the office to a primary-level field 

activity, the DLA Systems Automation Center. Today, automation is handled by J62, 

the Program Executive Office. (DLA Photo)
18

The Defense Supply Agency was once the leading edge of data processing, what we 

today call computing. It even managed computer usage across the federal government. 

Shown here is the data processing center in Dayton, Ohio. (DLA Photo)
19

the United States converted salt mines along the Gulf Coast into a 

strategic reserve, the Defense Fuel Supply Center bought the crude 

that filled them.

Fuel was not the only commodity DSA provided outside the 

Defense Department. As permitted by its 1961 and 1965 charters, the 

agency supported programs throughout the federal government. In 

First Quarter, Fiscal Year 1971, for example, DSA sold goods worth 

$2,390,000 to the Coast Guard, $1,800,000 to the Federal Aviation 

Administration, $898,000 to the Veterans Administration, $897,000 

to the Labor Department, and $701,000 to the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration.

The DSA-NASA partnership was critical. In 1969, supply centers 

had provided seventy-six items for the Apollo 11 mission, to include 

the high-gain antenna that broadcast man’s first walk on the moon. 

Two years latter, the agency’s Defense Industrial Plant Equipment 

Center supplied the machinery that manufactured boosters for the 

Saturn and Delta rocket programs, saving the government $1,000,000 

for the later. In 1977, personnel from Defense Contract Administration 

Services contributed to the space shuttle program by inspecting 

engines, testing tanks, and ensuring breakaway bolts separated 

spacecraft from launch vehicle. 

DSA expanded internationally as well as governmentally in the 

1970s. As orders dropped from their Vietnam highs, foreign sales 

became a larger percentage of agency business. The equipment the 

United States sold partner nations needed repair parts. Supplying 

these parts was sometimes awkward. During the 1973 Yom Kippur 

War, for example, the agency provided parts for Israeli weapons at the 

same time it was outfitting the Saudi Arabian military with uniforms. 

Although Saudi Arabia was not a combatant in the war, it was 

politically, religiously, and ideologically opposed to the Jewish state.

Logistics involved DSA in another delicate situation. Near the 

end of his time in office, Secretary McNamara had commissioned a 

study of Vietnam that conflicted with the optimistic views espoused by 

many in government. Daniel Ellsberg, a onetime analyst with RAND, 

released the classified report to first the New York Times and then 

the Washington Post. RAND was funded by the U.S. Air Force, which 

meant its security protocols were governed by DSA’s Defense Contract 

Administration Services. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Wallace H. Robinson, 

Jr., the agency’s fourth director, had to explain to Pentagon and White 

House officials how Ellsberg had violated DSA regulations. Robinson, 

who had participated in the occupation of the Samoan, Wallis, and 
20

Ellice Islands during World War II, convinced his audiences the 

agency had done nothing wrong.

Other involvement was less contentious. In 1975, DSA finished 

a ten-year project to digitize the federal catalog, which it had been 

managing for the government ever since acquiring the Armed Forces 

Supply Support Center. Digitization permitted the Defense Logistics 

Services Center to destroy 2,830,000 of 7,000,000 data cards, 

freeing up 6,000 linear feet of space at its Battle Creek, Michigan, 

headquarters. More important, it allowed the catalog to interface with 

SAMMS, saving time as well as space. 

The ability to research digitally allowed DLA to participate in 

the development of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Under Army Lt. Gen. 

Woodrow W. Vaughan, the agency’s fifth director, DSA started 

collaborating with the Air Force three years before the jet went into 

production. Due to this early involvement, the agency supplied more 

than half the plane’s parts. With over 4,000 aircraft produced, the 

F-16 was big business.

DSA focused on other combat systems as well. While it had 

tracked material availability and backorders since its start, the 

services cared more about equipment readiness. Recognizing the 

difference, agency leaders asked their counterparts what systems 

needed special attention. They then devoted money and contracting 

officer time to making their parts available. By 1974, DSA had support 

agreements for forty-four systems: sixteen with the Navy, fifteen with 

the Air Force, and thirteen with the Army. 

DSA used management tools to increase parts availability. The 

command objectives program was one. A precursor to today’s strategic 

plan, it helped the agency manage growth, a necessity in the mid-1970s 

with new depots extending DSA’s warehouse mission, new supply 

centers expanding its material provision, new contract administration 

responsibilities deepening its relationship with industry, and new 

automation enabling it to do more with less. Lt. Gen. Vaughan 

thought mission expansion justified a new name. At DSA’s fifteenthanniversary celebration, Deputy Defense Secretary W.P. Clements 

Jr. announced his agreement. On January 1, 1977, DSA became the 

Defense Logistics Agency.
21

Sir Isaac Newton once wrote that, if he could see farther than 

others, it was only because he stood on the shoulders of giants. 

In this photograph, Navy Vice Adm. Eugene A. Grinstead, 

DLA’s seventh director, presents a plaque to Navy Commodore 

Grace B. M. Hopper, one of the giants who made the Defense 

Logistics Agency possible. Hopper, a mathematician and 

officer in the Navy reserves, helped design UNIVAC I, an 

early computer, before developing a compiler that allowed 

computers to process commands in English (previously they 

recognized only numbers). 

While both inventions undergirded the technological 

advancement that made the agency’s automation possible, her 

biggest contribution was establishing the common-oriented 

business language. Every program the agency designed was 

written in COBOL. (DLA Photo)
22

Air Force Lt. Gen. Earl C. Hedlund, DSA’s third director, was an experienced 

logistician when he came to the agency as deputy director in 1964. He did not 

start in supply, however. After commissioning as a second lieutenant in the Army, 

Hedlund became a P-38 Lightning pilot. In World War II, he fought in the Aleutian 

campaign before transferring to the European Theater of Operations, registering 

one shared aerial kill and fifteen ground kills. In April 1945, after suffering seconddegree burns from ground fire, he parachuted into enemy lines and was captured. 

He escaped eleven days later. 

Hedlund became a maintenance officer after the war and rose quickly through the 

ranks. As director, he led DSA through the height of the Vietnam War. He was 

instrumental in getting the Defense Department to allow the agency to operate 

overseas and overcoming challenges with SAMMS, the Standard Automated 

Materiel Management System. After seven years at Cameron Station, Hedlund 

moved to Turkey, where he served as America’s military advisor to the Central 

Treaty Organization. 

DSA’s third director was an accomplished man who, in addition to being one 

of the Defense Department’s leading logisticians, held a PhD in economics and 

wore a Distinguished Service Cross. He is shown here next to one of DSA’s many 

computers. (DLA Photo)
23

New Management Strategies: 

Addressing the Challenges of 

Quality and Quantity

The agency’s renaming marked the start of a new era. Charter 

revisions in 1977 and 1978 recognized DLA’s worldwide responsibilities 

but added layers between the defense secretary and agency director. 

At the same time, Japan’s increasing share of the global electronics 

and automotive trades forced the agency to look inward, focus on 

quality, and adjust its relationship with suppliers. The result was new 

strategies for material and contract management.

Quality was not yet an all-consuming concern when DLA 

introduced two notable products in the late 1970s. Developed by 

Natick Laboratories, the meal, ready-to-eat was an individualized 

package capable of sustaining a service member on mission or in 

training. With manufacturers having to follow precise ingredients, 

calorie counts, and preparation techniques, how contracts were written 

mattered. The Defense Personnel Support Center was the obvious 

choice for purchasing agent. The other item required a different 

strategy. In 1982, when no company responded to the Defense 

Personnel Support Center’s solicitation for 100,000 intermediate coldweather sleeping bags, the agency’s Directorate of Manufacturing, an 

in-house clothing factory built during World War II, fulfilled the order.

Soldiers deliver 

DLA-provided fuel to 

a community in the 

United States during 

winter 1977. The 

national government 

invoked the agency’s 

ability to buy mass 

quantities under the 

Defense Production 

Act several times 

during the 1970s. 

(DLA Photo)
24

While meals, ready-to-eat 

and sleeping bags showcased 

DLA’s acquisition flexibility, 

weapon parts sustained its 

finances. Growth in this area 

– a consequence of President 

Ronald W. Reagan’s attempt to outspend the Soviet Union in military 

hardware – called for new management techniques. In 1981, DLA 

updated its weapons support program with tools for analyzing 

national stock numbers. Before this development, the services had 

retained management of consumable and repairable items unique 

to their missions. Navy Vice Adm. Eugene A. Grinstead, the agency’s 

seventh director, persuaded Pentagon decision-makers that new 

programs allowed DLA to provide these items less expensively. 

Another technique would become the basis of the agency’s first 

strategic plan. Following a concept advanced by business theorist 

Peter Drucker, DLA established a Management by Objectives 

program. Management by Objectives posited that every action taken 

by a corporation should advance its core mission. After Grinstead 

introduced the program in June 1981, Army Lt. Gen. Donald M. 

Babers, his successor, used it as the basis for DLA’s first strategic plan. 

Seeking increases in quality, the new director wanted to ensure shortterm goals supported long-term objectives.

More automation resulted from this focus. In the mid-1980s, DLA 

put SAMMS online. Previously, inventory control points had used the 

Defense Automatic Addressing System to batch transactions and the 

Automatic Digital Network to submit them several times a day. Now 

DLANET connected supply centers and customers whenever they 

wanted. Consisting of switching stations established by the Defense 

Communications Agency, DLANET accelerated transactions and 

reduced acquisition time.

Multiple elements of the Defense 

Supply Agency supported Apollo 11, 

NASA’s 1969 lunar expedition. Almost 

every government endeavor of size and 

significance has had a logistics element to 

it, often provided by DLA and usually not 

known to the public. Few people today, 

for example, are aware DLA Energy 

provides specialized propellants for the 

space agency. (NASA/Michael Collins)
25

To date, DLA has had seven directors 

from the Army, seven from the Navy, 

and five from the Air Force. Lt. Gen. 

Wallace H. Robinson, Jr., shown here, 

was the only director from the Marine 

Corps. Robinson fought in the Pacific 

during World War II and commanded 

a costal survey team during the 

Korean War. He held a succession 

of engineering and logistics jobs in 

the 1950s and 1960s, serving as the 

twentieth Quartermaster General of the 

Marine Corps before being selected as 

fourth director of the Defense Supply 

Agency in 1971. (DLA Photo)

Jack Tayler and Dwight 

Dedman, quality assurance 

specialists with DSA’s in-plant 

office at RCA Corporation 

in Moorestown, New 

Jersey, inspect an inertia 

measurement unit for 

NASA’s Television Infrared 

Observation Satellite. 

DLA’s Defense Contract 

Administration Services – 

latter the Defense Contract 

Management Command – 

provided the bulk of DLA’s 

assistance to NASA. 

(DLA Photo)
26

Three of the Defense Supply Agency’s first four directors cut a cake at Cameron 

Station October 1, 1971, to honor the agency’s tenth anniversary. From left to right 

are retired Army Lt. Gen. Andrew T. McNamara, the agency’s first director; retired 

Navy Vice Adm. Joseph M. Lyle, the agency’s second director; and Marine Corps 

Lt. Gen. Wallace H. Robinson Jr., the agency’s fourth director. Missing from the 

photograph is Air Force Lt. Gen. Earl C. Hedlund. Hedlund had just left DSA. The 

anniversary was his first day as U.S. representative to the permanent military deputies 

group, Central Treaty Organization. (DLA Photo)
27

Reform accompanied automation. Measures initiated by 

Congress made employees especially nervous. In 1986, Senator 

Barry M. Goldwater and Representative William F. Nichols 

proposed a bill to redesign the Defense Department. Early drafts 

indicated a reduction in DLA’s authority. There was even concern 

the legislation would return functions to the services, an option 

never seriously considered. 

Instead of dismantling DLA, Goldwater-Nichols designated it a 

combat support agency. DLA had always positioned itself between 

supplier and consumer. Now it would support the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff and combatant commands as well. As a consequence, the agency 

received a 50 percent increase in joint billets and began planning 

logistics support, participating in joint exercises, and deploying to 

combat zones. This last responsibility made customers out of individual 

units, giving the agency its first sustained experience in retail logistics.

DLA had a new director when Congress passed the GoldwaterNichols Act. Army Lt. Gen. Vincent M. Russo led the agency during 

a period of increased responsibilities and worsening customer 

relations. The key addition was the National Defense Stockpile. The 

National Defense Stockpile stored scarce elements used for weapons 

manufacture and sustainment. Previously overseen by the General 

Services Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, 

it had served the entire federal government until the National Defense 

Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989 restricted it to 

F-16 Fighting Falcon in flight. The Defense Logistics Agency supplied more than half 

the jet’s parts. (U.S. Air Force)
28

the military. With the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service 

already operating a precious metal recovery program, DLA was the 

logical home for the activity.

Relationship problems arose from changes in the nation’s defensive 

posture. Not only was rapid growth producing inefficiencies but the 

services were introducing new equipment, historically a friction point 

between wholesale and retail provision. No service was putting more 

weapon systems into operation than the Army, which added the Abrams 

main battle tank, Bradley fighting vehicle, Patriot air-defense system, 

Apache attack helicopter, Blackhawk utility helicopter, and MultipleLaunch Rocket System all within a few years of each other.

To keep communication flowing, Lt. Gen. Russo posted six civilian 

liaisons with the Army, as well as five with the Air Force and one with 

the Marine Corps. Unfortunately, these intermediaries could do only so 

much. More missions and more responsibilities combined to produce 

some of the lowest material availability and highest cost recovery 

rates in DLA history. To reverse these trends, leaders shifted the 

paradigm around which they designed strategic plans. Management by 

Objectives had served the agency well, being embraced by Vice Adm. 

Grinstead, Lt. Gen. Babers, and Russo. Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles P. 

McCausland Jr., the agency’s tenth director, emphasized Total Quality 

Management. Adopted from studies of Japanese manufacturing 

success, Total Quality Management sought to reduce errors in 

production and implement continuous improvement. 

A focus on quality was critical to DLA maintaining control of 

contract management. Contract management belonged to the logistics 

arena but, by skill set and customer base, constituted a distinct 

Cover of a brochure describing 

the meal, ready-to-eat program. 

Because preparing individualized 

rations was complex, contracts 

with companies manufacturing 

them were complex. (DLA Photo)
29

DSA planners consult a map at Cameron Station, Virginia, c. 1965. The Vietnam War 

involved the agency in overseas support despite its continentally limiting charter. 

(DLA Photo)

Army Brig. Gen. James E. Bickford, the Defense Fuel Support Center commander, 

congratulates an Arab partner May 1991, after the Gulf War’s conclusion. It would be 

easy to assume DFSC had little to do during the conflict, with Saudi Arabia providing 

petroleum to American forces for free. Such an impression would be mistaken. Flying 

half a million service members overseas with little notice and then transporting their 

equipment required a lot of fuel. More concerning was the loss of Kuwait, which left 

DFSC without a source of jet fuel for the Navy. (DLA Photo)
30

Seamstresses sew clothing at the Defense Personnel Support Center’s Directorate of 

Manufacturing in the mid-1990s. The Directorate of Manufacturing was an in-house 

shop that produced prototypes and responded to emergencies. Although it buttressed 

a supply chain with few domestic suppliers, it was shut down when DPSC moved to 

northeast Philadelphia. (DLA Photo)
31

business. Reform-minded Congressional and Pentagon leaders 

wanted to form an independent agency out of the Army’s nine contract 

management offices, the Navy’s twelve, the Air Force’s thirty-five, and 

DLA’s ninety-seven. Justifying their ambition was growth in contracts 

and the management each contract required. Contracts overseen by 

Defense Contract Administration Services, for example, doubled from 

200,000 in 1975 to 400,000 in 1985. Factoring in personnel cuts due 

to automation, the manager who worked 60 contracts when DCAS 

formed in 1964 was now responsible for over 1,000. 

A late reversal prevented a split. The same Pentagon leaders 

who had pushed for a new agency in 1989 balked in 1990 when they 

learned establishing one would require 103 person-years of work. As 

a compromise, the Defense Contract Administration Services became 

the Defense Contract Management Command, a self-contained unit 

within DLA. Defense Contract Management Command administered 

contracts for all the services but answered to DLA and relied on 

agency staff. 

Events proved keeping contract management under DLA the 

right move to make. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, its oilArmy General Colin. L. Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, visits Cameron 

Station in 1991 to recognize DLA for its Gulf War performance. With him are Rear 

Adm. James P. Davidson, executive director of supply operations, and James P. Grady, 

Jr., Davidson’s deputy. (DLA Photo)
32

rich neighbor to the south. With nothing to prevent Saddam Hussein 

from seizing Saudi Arabia and controlling half the world’s petroleum, 

President George H. W. Bush formed a coalition to oppose him. A 

contract management operation shrinking to match post-Cold War 

reductions in military strength needed the support of a logistics 

agency to revive the defense industrial base. With the Defense 

Contract Management Command’s pre- and post-award help, DLA 

supported Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm with $4

billion in contracts.

Contracting was massive because the United States deployed half 

a million service members to an austere theater. With prepositioned 

stock insufficient, items stored by DLA, recently criticized as 

excessive, were desperately needed. This stockage proved both 

critical and wasteful. Due to prior buys, DLA had enough cots and 

meals, ready-to-eat to support service members until new contracts 

could be written with companies the Defense Contract Management 

Command had revitalized. Medical material, on the other hand, 

proved disappointing, with items on DLA shelves outdated, unwanted, 

Iraqi Kurds offload humanitarian aid provided by Defense Personnel Support Center 

during Operation Provide Comfort. Provide Comfort started soon after the Gulf 

War and lasted through 1996. (DLA Photo)
33

The Defense Supply Agency was once the leading edge of data processing, what 

we call computing today. It even managed computer usage across the federal 

government. Shown here is the data processing center in Richmond, Virginia. 

(DLA Photo)
34

DLA has relied on computers throughout is sixty-year history. Until the 1980s, it 

employed commercial mainframes such as the IMB 360. Personal computers – what 

the agency first called “mini-computers” – began arriving in the mid-1980s, with 

the Defense Logistics Services Center most aggressive at fielding them. The internet 

brought an end to mainframes. Every employee who moved from Cameron Station 

to Fort Belvoir in 1995 received a desktop computer with a 486 processor and 

internet access. (DLA Photo)

Navy Vice Adm. Edward M. Straw, DLA’s 

eleventh director, was a transformational 

leader. When he took command in 1992, 

the military was consolidating, with 

Defense Management Review Decisions 

making it cumbersome to lead. Straw 

responded by reorganizing the agency’s 

headquarters and pushing new technology 

and acquisition techniques. Savings 

exceeded $6 billion during his tenure, 

resulting in the agency’s second Joint 

Meritorious Unit Award. (DLA Photo)
35

or too few in number. Antidote injectors proved the biggest concern. 

Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons and a track record of using 

them. DLA could not equip all service members within range of his 

missiles. A related concern was in-transit visibility. Without knowing 

who owned what containers, medical and other material remained 

unopened in Kuwait at war’s end.

The Gulf War’s quick termination allowed DLA to correct 

deficiencies. The solution to the antidote injectors was the Warstopper 

Program. The Warstopper Program paid companies to provide items 

for which no or limited need existed in peacetime. An acquisition 

solution, it prompted DLA to focus more on suppliers than supplies. 

The agency also worked to improve how it deployed personnel. Unlike 

with Vietnam, DLA faced no opposition to sending employees 

overseas. Still, Desert Shield and Desert Storm were the first maj

operations since the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Questions such as who 

to deploy, how deployed personnel would participate, and where 

they should participate from all had to be answered. The agency 

did so by forming contingency support teams, military and civilian 

personnel trained to deploy to hot spots. Finally, DLA began working 

with the newly formed U.S. Transportation Command to implement 

radio-frequency identification for in-transit visibility. Procurers, 

transporters, and users all needed to know where their stuff was.

As a whole, the Gulf War validated decisions made before the 

conflict. Stockpiling food and cots was not a waste of money but 

a readiness measure that allowed troops to bivouac in a desert. 

The agency’s previous work with Saudi Arabia eased efforts by the 

Defense Fuel Supply Center to obtain jet fuel for the Navy, whose 

regular sources were all Kuwaiti companies now under occupation. 

Investment in a robust headquarters also proved prescient. As soon 

as the United States began deploying troops, the industrial base 

offered everything from toiletries to books. Initially, the General 

Services Administration received, prioritized, and forwarded 

donations. Unable to handle the volume, GSA transferred the task 

to the agency. DLA processed the last 1,330 bulk offers, enhancing 

public confidence in the Defense Department.

Another key to DLA’s mobilization was the Defense Personnel 

Support Center’s Directorate of Clothing. Much like in 1965, when the 

unexpected deployment of troops to Southeast Asia had resulted in 

back orders for jungle boots and warm-weather uniforms, the surge 

of forces to the Middle East created a demand for desert uniforms – 

“chocolate chips” in the lingo of the day. Unlike a quarter of a century 

earlier, however, the nation’s clothing and textile companies lacked 
36

the capacity to meet this request. Fortunately for the military, DLA’s 

in-house clothing factory ensured that hundreds of thousands of 

service members were appropriately clad for the desert heat.

The Gulf War ended half a century of investment in military 

material. The weapons, commodities, and services needed to fight 

the Cold War and its addendum against Saddam Hussein had made 

the need for integrating logistics obvious: duplicate efforts, when 

magnified, became an easy target for consolidation. What the margins 

for effectiveness would be in the future were unknown. What was 

known was President Bush sought a “peace dividend” from four 

decades of struggle against the Soviet Union. 

Reform and Reorganization: 

DLA After the Cold War

While the coalition that fought against Iraq withdrew from the 

Middle East, America did not. It kept bases in Kuwait and, in order 

to prevent Saddam Hussein from terrorizing his Kurdish citizens, 

launched Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq’s northern provinces.

Provide Comfort involved the delivery of humanitarian aid. The

primary source was DLA’s Defense Personnel Support Center, which 

provided $68 million in food, clothing, and medical supplies.

Fresh egg delivery in Lukavac, Bosnia, February 17, 1996. DLA’s support to Operation 

Joint Endeavor was the agency’s longest-lasting mission in the 1990s. (DLA Photo)
37

Navy Commander Steve Koronka (r) of Defense Personnel Support Center-Europe 

tours a Coca-Cola plant in Budapest with Mihaly Juhaz of Hungary’s Ministry of 

Defense. The plant supported Joint Endeavor, the first operation in which DLA 

employed a prime vendor. (DLA Photo)
DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

THE MAKING OF AN 

DEFENSE ELECTRONICS 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL 

PLANT EQUIPMENT CENTER

DEFENSE DOCUMENTATION 

CENTER

DEFENSE DEPOT TRACY, CA

DEFENSE LOGISTICS 

SERVICES CENTER

DEFENSE TECHNICAL 

INFORMATION CENTER

DEFENSE DEPOT 

OGDEN, UT

DEFENSE DEPOT 

MEMPHIS, TN

DEFENSE FUEL 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE CONTRACT 

ADMINISTRATION 

SERVICE

DEFENSE DEPOT 

MECHANICSBURG, PA

DEFENSE PROPERTY 

DISPOSAL SERVICES DEFENSE REUTILIZATION 

& MARKETING SERVICE

DEFENSE GENERAL 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE LOGISTICS 

SERVICES CENTER

DEFENSE PETROLEUM 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE AUTOMOTIVE 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE CONSTRUCTION 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SERVICE

TRANSFERRED

TO ARMY

MATERIEL 

COMMAND

DEFENSE PERSONNEL 

SUPPORT CENTER

DEFENSE CLOTHING & 

TEXTILE SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE SUBSISTENCE 

SUPPLY CENTER

DEFENSE MEDICAL 

SUPPLY CENTER

Additional Warehouses Received

'65

'62

'79

'72

'72 '85

'62

'63

'64

'64

'64

'64

'64

'64

'63

As of 1 Jan 1962 1960s 1970s 1980s
AGENCY 

DLA TROOP SUPPORT

DLA LAND AND MARITIME

DLA AVIATION

DLA DISPOSITION SERVICES

DLA DISTRIBUTION

DLA ENERGY

Warfighter Always!

DEFENSE SUPPLY 

CENTER PHILADELPHIA

DEFENSE SUPPLY 

CENTER COLUMBUS

DEFENSE SUPPLY 

CENTER RICHMOND

DEFENSE LOGISTICS 

INFORMATION SERVICE

DEFENSE ENERGY 

SUPPORT CENTER 

REGION

EAST REGIONEAST DEFENSE DISTRIBUTION 

CENTER

DEFENSE CONTRACT 

MANAGEMENT COMMAND

DEFENSE 

CONTRACT 

MANAGEMENT 

AGENCY

DEFENSE 

TECHNICAL 

INFORMATION 

CENTER

PART OF J6 DLA INFORMATION 

OPERATIONS

PART OF J3

DLA INFORMATION 

OPERATIONS

REGION 

CENTRAL REGION WEST

REGION

WEST

'98

'96

'96

'98

'92 '95 '97

'92 '95

'92

'05

'19

'98

'90

'93

'00

1990s 2000s Present

THE NATION’S COMBAT

LOGISTICS SUPPORT AGENCY

J1 Human Resources

DG General Counsel

DA Office of the Inspector General

DB Small Business Programs

DM Installation Management

DH Command Chaplain

DI Intelligence

DL Legislative Affairs

DP Public Affairs

DO Equal Employment Opportunity

DT Transformation

DLA Indo-Pacific

DLA CENTCOM & SOCOM

DLA Europe & Africa

J3 Logistics Operations

J6 Information Operations

J7 Acquisition

J8 Finance

J9 Joint Reserve Force
40

Army Lt. Gen. Henry T. Glisson, DLA’s thirteenth director, sits in the cockpit of a 

plane. As director, Glisson expanded the acquisition and management innovation he 

had pioneered as Defense Personnel Support Center commander, to include prime 

vendor, electronic commerce, and total asset visibility. He also initiated Business 

Systems Modernization, a shift away from Standard Automated Materiel Management 

System-driven operations toward enterprise resource planning. (DLA Photo)

Navy Vice Adm. Keith W. Lippert, 

DLA’s fourteenth and longestserving director, presents a coin 

to Navy Captain James L. Lepse, 

April 10, 2006. (DLA Photo)
41

While supporting the Kurds kept the Defense Personnel Support 

Center busy, other agency missions became less important due 

to changes in the defense industrial base. In 1982, the Defense 

Industrial Plant Equipment Center had 28,178 machines available 

for loan to manufacturers. By 1990, the increasing complexity of 

manufacturing had dropped that number to 6,742. Accordingly, DLA 

demoted the organization to secondary-level status under Defense 

Supply Center Richmond in January 1992.

Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney did not rely on componentdriven consolidations to shrink the Defense Department after the 

Cold War. As soon as combat operations in the Gulf ended, he 

began issuing Defense Management Review Decisions, directives 

that merged functions and eliminated headquarters. While DMRDs 

shrank many Defense Department components, they had the 

cumulative effect of enlarging DLA. In particular, they consolidated 

distribution depots under the agency and transferred 1.4 million 

service-unique consumables to its warehouses. 

To accept these new responsibilities, Navy Vice Adm. Edward M. 

Straw, DLA’s eleventh director, pursued organizational efficiencies. 

Straw believed the agency had grown unwieldy, with forty-two staffs, 

supply centers, service centers, and depots reporting directly to him. 

He used outside analyses, internal studies, and the strategic plan to 

restructure his headquarters. Once complete, the moves reduced his 

direct reports to six.

Although this new construct demoted distribution, it did not 

stunt its growth. Defense Management Review Decision 902 had 

consolidated nearly all the military’s warehouses under the agency. 

Whereas once DLA stored only items it managed, its shelves now 

contained Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps material. To 

oversee this expansion, Straw created three distribution regions: 

eastern, which included depots in Europe; central; and western, 

which included depots in the Pacific. 

New distribution depots permitted the director to seek 

efficiencies “Around the Clock, Around the World.” His focus drove 

supply centers to expect more from suppliers. Sometimes inventory 

control points requested companies keep stock ready, as with the 

Warstopper Program. More often, they paid corporations to deliver 

as well as provide. Under Straw’s leadership, DLA began using prime 

vendors, or companies responsible for providing an array of items in 

a commodity group. 
42

Strategies such as the Warstopper Program and prime vendors 

helped control growth. Congress and the Defense Department assisted 

by holding four Base Realignment and Closure rounds in eight 

years. The 1988 round shuttered Cameron Station and moved DLA 

Headquarters and the Defense Fuel Supply Center to Fort Belvoir. The 

agency skipped the 1991 round so it could enact Defense Management 

Review Decisions. The 1993 round mandated one consolidation and 

one relocation. It merged the Defense Electronics Supply Center with 

the Defense Construction Supply Center to form Defense Supply 

Center Columbus and moved the Defense Personnel Support Center 

from South to Northeast Philadelphia. BRAC 1993 also eliminated 

contract management regions and closed four depots. Finally, BRAC 

1995 continued contract management consolidation and closed four 

more depots. It also merged the Defense Personnel Support Center 

with the Defense Industrial Supply Center to form Defense Supply 

Center Philadelphia.

By moving to northeast Philadelphia, the Defense Personnel Support 

Center lost its Directorate of Manufacturing. Other than a specialty flag 

room, the clothing factory was the only part of the agency that made 

anything. All other items, to include the vast majority of uniforms and 

uniform accessories, entered DLA by way of contract. The agency had 

kept a production capacity for three reasons. First, it allowed the Defense 

Defense Logistics Agency-provided supplies make their way through flooded New 

Orleans August 31, 2005. Hurricane Katrina was the biggest domestic catastrophe 

America faced in the aughts and one in whose response the agency was deeply 

involved. The event prompted DLA to write contingency contracts for future Federal 

Emergency Management Agency mission assignments. (DLA Photo)
43

Men filled all senior billets at DLA for thirty-seven years. This exclusionary stretch 

ended in 1998 when Army Brig. Gen. Barbara A. Doornink assumed command of 

DLA Distribution and Air Force Maj. Gen. Mary L. Saunders assumed command of 

Defense Supply Center Columbus. Saunders became the agency’s deputy director in 

2002, the first woman to hold that position. She is pictured here talking to Mae E. 

DeVincentis, the agency’s chief information officer and a future vice director herself. 

(DLA Photo)
44

Susan L. VanMeter, lead for Business Systems Modernization sustainment; Mae E. 

DeVincentis, DLA’s chief information officer; and Larry J. Wilson, executive director 

of enterprise solutions, celebrate the end of the Standard Automated Materiel 

Management System in 2005 by recreating the event that initiated the program at the 

Defense Construction Supply Center in 1971. (DLA Photo)
45

Personnel Support Center to sew prototypes before offering solicitations. 

Second, it gave the command a reserve capacity for large-scale 

mobilizations such as in 1965 and 1990. Third, it buttressed a supply 

chain composed of a small number of small companies.

Mergers and the divestitures prompted Vice Adm. Straw to 

rethink what supply centers did. For many years, the agency had run 

a program to align material management with weapons acquisition. 

Beginning in 1995, it extended this effort by transferring federal 

supply classes so the same supply center provided all parts of an end 

item. While this new orientation had little effect on the Defense Fuel 

Supply Center, it greatly influenced the hardware centers, each of which 

had just absorbed a previously independent field activity. 

Mergers affected distribution as well. In 1995, after three years 

with three regions, DLA eliminated the central one. In 1997, the 

agency consolidated the mission again, this time eliminating its 

western headquarters and running Defense Distribution Command 

entirely out of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania.

Army Lt. Gen. Robert T. Dail, DLA’s fifteenth director, walks past a CH-46 Sea Knight 

with John Grant, head of production at Fleet Readiness Center-East in Cherry Point, 

North Carolina, September 4, 2008. Also in the picture are Marine Corps Col. David 

A. Smith (behind Dail), Army Col. Kristin F. French, and Marine Corps Col. L. Scott 

Loch. (DLA Photo)
46

Consolidations were not DLA’s only organizational changes. 

Charged with reinventing government, Vice President Albert A. Gore 

Jr. pursued A-76 determinations. A-76 was an Office of Management 

and Budget circular released in 1966 and updated in 1983. It directed 

agencies to perform only those activities that could not be performed at 

reasonable cost commercially. DLA activities with civilian analogues, 

to include most depots, all Defense Reutilization and Marketing offices, 

and the Defense Automated Printing Service, had to undergo publicprivate competitions. Many became contractor operated.

Not all additions were clean transfers. Programs from the Office 

of the Secretary of Defense received funding, office space, and human 

resources support from DLA but kept their reporting chains. By 1997, 

the agency had 3,600 employees working Defense Acquisition Career 

Management, Defense Microelectronics Activity, Defense Department 

Human Resource Activity, Defense Logistics Management Support 

Office, Electronic Commerce Research Center, Continuity of 

Operations, and other Pentagon programs.

Despite new 

missions and the 

employees who 

came with them, 

DLA was successful 

at reducing its 

workforce. The 

agency had pushed 

past 65,500 

employees in 

1992 – more than 

its previous high 

in 1967. Leaders 

Army Lt. Gen. Robert T. Dail, DLA’s fifteenth director, visits Oklahoma City Air 

Logistics Command at Tinker Air Force Base, March 21, 2008. The photograph 

shows him talking to the 76th Maintenance Wing’s Richard Robinson. Listening 

are Army Brig. Gen. Lynn A. Collyar, commander of Defense Distribution Center 

from 2006 to 2008, and Air Force Brig. Gen. Andrew E. Busch, commander of 

Defense Supply Center Richmond from 2007 to 2009. As major general, Collyar 

would serve as the agency’s director of logistics operations from 2010 to 2012. As 

lieutenant general, Busch would serve as the agency’s eighteenth director from 

2014 to 2017. (DLA Photo)
47

Navy Vice Adm. Alan S. Thompson, DLA’s sixteenth director, speaks before a picture 

of a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, c. 2009. The cataloging of parts for the 

MRAP, an off-the-shelf technology, demonstrated the agency’s responsiveness and 

flexibility. (DLA Photo)
48

In this undated photo, an 

employee incinerates batteries 

at Defense Reutilization and 

Marketing Office, Colt’s Neck, 

New Jersey. (DLA Photo)

The Northern Distribution Network was a multi-modal line of communications 

in and out of Afghanistan. For much of the war, the U.S. relied on ground lines of 

communication running from the Pakistani port of Karachi through the Federally 

Administered Tribal Areas before crossing a dangerous border into Afghanistan. 

Pilfering was common, as were closures by a Pakistani government looking to appease 

its anti-American population. DLA helped U.S. Transportation Command build the 

network and sent much of its provision along it. (U.S. Transportation Command Photo)
49

countered this growth with technology. Previously, the agency had 

relied on 500 mid-sized computers, each which required trained 

operators. By 1992, personal computers, introduced in the mid1980s, sat on the desk of three out of every four Defense Logistics 

Services Center employees. The workforce consequently lost 

technician and secretarial positions. While secretaries would remain 

critical to agency operations, they no longer constituted 20 percent of 

headquarters staff.

DLA experienced more than personnel and organizational 

change in the 1990s. While the decade lacked a second Gulf-War like 

mobilization, it included several operations that fell short of war. In 

addition to Provide Comfort, these included Restore Hope in Somal

Uphold Democracy in Haiti, and Joint Endeavor in Bosnia

deployed contingency support teams to all three. Supported by the 

agency’s European command, the team in Bosnia even succeeded in 

using prime vendors to provide medical items and food. 

By the turn of the century, DLA had been supporting named 

operations for a decade and a half. Repeated deployments allowed it 

to refine its procedures. The agency had consolidated its European 

offices in 1984 and Pacific offices in 1990. Then, in 2001, it separated 

reserve affairs from logistics operations, converting it into an 

independent staff. 

If organizational change improved DLA performance, technological 

change transformed it. Few segments of the agency escaped the 1990s 

revolution in business affairs. Financially, electronic interchange 

accelerated payments. Operationally, the Automated Manifest System, 

electronic cards that acted as bar codes for entire shipments, changed 

how the Defense Distribution Command tracked material. Even more 

transformative was EMall, an online catalog developed by the Defense 

Logistics Services Center. Because supply clerks at any echelon 

could order from the portal, it extended DLA’s reach throughout the 

military. A second draw on the center’s cataloging expertise dealt 

with maps. In 1998, when Defense Supply Center Richmond began 

managing maps for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the 

Defense Logistics Services Center became their cataloger. To reflect 

better skills used at the center, DLA renamed it Defense Logistics 

Information Service.

DLA’s greatest response to the 1990s computing revolution 

came in material management. The agency had deployed its first 

Standard Automated Materiel Management System at the Defense 

Construction Supply Center in 1971. It installed SAMMS at other 
50

centers later in the decade and upgraded its communications 

network in the 1980s. Advances in computing technology during 

the 1990s had dropped the automation from a market-leading to 

a market-lagging technology, however. After several attempts to 

upgrade its Common Business-Oriented Language, Army Lt. Gen. 

Henry T. Glisson, the agency’s thirteenth director, decided to pursue 

wholesale replacement. Because SAMMS was central to DLA identity, 

introducing a successor required cultural change. The agency called 

this change Business Systems Modernization.

Not only did Glisson push the agency to commit to a new material 

management system but he also was the driving force behind EMall 

and new prime vendor contracts. In addition, the director joined the 

services in trying to remove sustainment clauses from acquisition 

contracts. Experience had taught these leaders that entrusting single 

contractors with cradle-to-grave responsibilities was dangerous. 

A similar efficiency-focused lens was being directed DLA’s way at 

the time. After a decade as an independent subsidiary, the Defense 

Contract Management Command separated in 2000 to become the 

Defense Contract Management Agency. This loss was on top of cuts 

the DLA comptroller had made to help man the Defense Finance and 

Accounting Service. 

Reductions sometimes rendered the agency less capable. In 

2001, after the Army chief of staff ordered every soldier to wear black 

berets by the service’s 226th birthday, Lt. Gen. Glisson authorized 

using foreign vendors to obtain them. In times past, DLA would rely 

on its Directorate of Manufacturing to fulfill short-order requests. 

With the clothing factory shuttered, Glisson invoked an exception to 

domestic manufacturing laws Congress granted to just four Defense 

Department executives. 

Exercising exceptions was one reason Secretary McNamara 

had created a three-star logistics headquarters. There are two ways 

of running such a headquarters. One is to grant authorities, allot 

resources, and hold subordinates accountable. DLA had followed this 

method since 1961. The other method is centralization. In 2000, Lt. 

Gen. Glisson began operationalizing staffs. New joint – or J – codes 

absorbed many missions conducted by centers. J-6 Information 

Operations, for example, assumed the Defense Logistics Information 

Service and Document Automation and Production Service.

To manage centralization, DLA chose a new paradigm for its 

strategic plan. After years using Management by Objectives and Total 
51

Mission, troop numbers, and enemy disposition turned Operation Enduring 

Freedom into a war of posts, putting a premium on prepackaged rations; clothing 

able to withstand the wear and tear of combat; and barrier material such as sandbags, 

wood, and HESCO barriers. DLA Troop Support staged these items in Europe 

for movement along the Northern Distribution Network before the 2009 surge. 

Engineers build a stair to Task Force Pacemaker’s Mountain Observation Post 3, 

January 15, 2008. (Photo by 305th Military History Detachment)

Soldiers sit on top of sandbags in Afghanistan, January 9, 2011. (DLA Photo)
52

Navy Vice Adm. Mark D. Harnitchek, DLA’s seventeenth director, pauses while riding 

to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, December 2013. 

(Photo by Denise Norman, DLA Protocol)
53

Quality Management, it began structuring operations around the 

Balanced Scorecard. Like Management by Objectives, the Balanced 

Scorecard sought to connect short-term goals with long-term 

missions. Like Total Quality Management, it focused on continuous 

improvement. On top of both, it added office- and directorate-level 

metrics to help the agency achieve its material availability, on-time 

delivery, and backorder goals. 

The Balanced Scorecard complemented Business Systems 

Modernization. Itself a holistic program, Business Systems 

Modernization reorganized inventory control points. In forty-plus 

years, DLA had restructured supply centers just three times. Lt. Gen. 

McNamara combined their capital funds and regionalized their contract 

administration functions. Then, in the mid-1990s, Vice Adm. Straw 

had transferred federal supply class responsibilities so hardware 

centers could focus on weapon systems. Now, under Business Systems 

Modernization, DLA divided their staffs into industry-facing and 

customer-facing segments. New automation supported the bifurcation. 

Called Enterprise Business Systems, it replaced SAMMS in 2005. 

The deployment almost never happened. On September 11, 

2001, a few months after becoming the agency’s fourteenth director, 

Navy Vice Adm. Keith W. Lippert was in his office when the first 

plane crashed into the World Trade Center. As the director gathered 

employees in the basement of the McNamara Headquarters Complex, 

he knew DLA’s mission would change. He was right. Before Lippert 

left the agency in 2006, daily requisitions had risen from 30,000 to 

54,000 and sales had doubled. As with conflicts in the past, the Global 

War on Terrorism tightened the agency’s connection to customers, 

although this time customers included not only the services but 

warfighters in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With combat support now DLA’s primary task, Lippert had 

to decide whether to stop Business Systems Modernization and 

Enterprise Business Systems. He continued both. By 2001, DLA had 

been running SAMMS for thirty years. Leaders had kept deciding 

“now is not the time” to replace the system. Lippert feared further 

delay would injure competitiveness.

Lippert declined another possible expansion, however. Believing 

logistics to encompass the entire gamut of warfighter support, Deputy 

Undersecretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness 

Diane K. Morales asked the director what he thought of assuming 

U.S. Transportation Command. Formed in the late 1980s, U.S. 

Transportation Command coordinated the military’s surface, sealift, 
54

and air mobility services. As the Defense Supply Agency, DLA had 

owned the Defense Traffic Management Service, a predecessor of the 

Army’s Surface Deployment and Distribution Command. Despite 

success during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the service returned to the 

Army. The agency had never received single managers for ocean 

transportation or airlift services. Not only was this imbalance unfair 

to the Army but it also prevented the agency from achieving efficiency 

through integration. 

U.S. Transportation Command was a new solution to the same 

problem. Studies conducted afterward showed the command and 

DLA differed enough in what they did, how they operated, and who 

their Pentagon leadership was to make a merger unadvisable. At the 

time, however, Lippert just knew his agency had undertaken two allencompassing projects: Business Systems Modernization and war on 

terror support. Adding a third paradigm-shift to DLA’s mission would 

have produced inefficiencies. 

Lippert’s decision did not make DLA immune from imposed 

change, however. After a ten-year hiatus, the Defense Department 

initiated a new Base Realignment and Closure round. BRAC 2005 

involved DLA in supply, storage, and distribution functions for the 

entire military; gave it control of more consumables; instructed it to 

write prime vendor contracts for packaged petroleum and tires; and 

made it responsible for procuring depot-level repairables. This last 

responsibility upset the services, which had long acquired parts used 

at this level of maintenance. 

Despite bumps, DLA had maintained good relations with the 

services after the Gulf War. Each named operation had given it 

the chance to improve its support and burnish its reputation. Each 

technological advance had permitted it to keep – or catch – up with 

the global revolution in business affairs. In addition, Pentagon leaders 

had successfully advocated for the agency during the reforms and 

reorganizations of the period, with the result that DLA transformed 

from a wholesale provider with retail equities to an end-to-end supply 

chain manager. Marking that change was the agency’s transition from 

SAMMS to Enterprise Business Systems, the programmatic result of 

Business Systems Modernization.
55

Fuel handlers load a tanker at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey 

November 6, 2012, for movement into New York City. When Hurricane Sandy hit New 

York and New Jersey in 2012, DLA was ready, having used contingency contracts to 

preposition gasoline and heating oil. (Photo by SFC Aniska-Calder of the U.S. Army)
56

DLA’s decision to lease the Vega to transport construction material for Ebola 

treatment facilities in west Africa was inventive, time-saving, and cost-conscious. 

(DLA Photos) 
57

At Home and Abroad: 

Supporting Whole of Government 

and the War on Terror

From a whole-of-government perspective, the most consequential 

action DLA took in 2005 was not adjusting to the latest BRAC, 

introducing Enterprise Business Systems, or even Warfighter 

support. The agency had responded to Hurricane Hugo in 1989, 

Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Mississippi River flooding in 1993 

but the collapse of levees in New Orleans made Hurricane Katrina 

a catastrophe of different proportions. In addition to 1,800 deaths, 

thousands were rendered homeless and foodless. DLA responded 

with a complete range of support, even coordinating with the services 

for permission to pull from their war reserves. Afterward, the agency 

established contingency contracts so it would be ready for future 

Federal Emergency Management Agency requests. 

While whole of government missions increased in frequency 

after Katrina, warfighters remained the agency’s primary concern. 

Most problems serving these customers stemmed from poor 

communication. The agency had not always been involved in weapons 

design and often found itself reacting to unexpected operations and 

depot-level repairs. The balance between effectiveness and efficiency 

depended on forecasting. Forecasting, in turn, depended on knowing 

what the services planned to do. 

After Lt. Gen. Russo had posted liaisons with the services, other 

directors tried to narrow the difference between estimated and actual 

purchases. Business Systems Modernization expanded these efforts 

by establishing a customer-facing division in each buying command 

and national account managers at DLA Headquarters. Unlike liaisons, 

national account managers inserted senior DLA leaders into the 

decision loops of senior service leaders. Interaction occurred on a 

constant basis to measurable effect. 

Of course, supply needs were not always predictable. By 2004, 

Operation Enduring Freedom had become less violent and Opera

Iraqi Freedom more so. Fueled by lawlessness, tribal disputes, a

poor living conditions, insurgents in Iraq began targeting Americans 

with small arms, indirect fire, and improvised explosive devises. 

IEDs wreaked havoc on flat-bottomed vehicles. After Robert 

M. Gates became defense secretary in December 2006, he pushed 
58

Congress to buy mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles. Army Lt. 

Gen. Robert T. Dail, the agency’s fifteenth director, involved DLA from 

the start. As off-the-shelf technologies, MRAPs and their parts were 

not assigned national stock numbers or cataloged. DLA accomplished 

both within days. Predicting – correctly – that treacherous terrain and 

a tenacious enemy would create a massive demand for repairs, Dail 

drove the agency to buy early and in quantity. The capital fund, now 

called the Defense-Wide Working Capital Fund, allowed it to do so 

without asking for money.

Defense Supply Center Columbus took the lead in MRAP parts. 

Supply centers, knowledgeable about both user requirements and the 

industrial base, had always written contracts. Headquarters, meanwhile, 

issued guidance, helped with negotiations, and provided training. For 

much of the DLA’s history, the executive director for procurement and 

production oversaw these activities. In his headquarters consolidation, 

Vice Adm. Straw assigned these responsibilities to the Defense Contract 

Management Command. When the command separated in 2000, 

oversight transferred to Logistics Policy and Acquisition Management, 

an executive directorate in Logistics Operations. In 2007, Dail converted 

this directorate into its own J code. A year later, J-7 assumed control of 

Strategic Materials, a supply center whose mission was becoming more 

acquisition than stockpile orientated.

J-7 did not take ownership of the next component formed under 

DLA, despite their shared focus on obtaining material. The Joint 

Contingency Acquisition Support Office (JCASO) was a response 

to problems war on terror commanders had writing contracts for 

unpredicted needs with indigenous suppliers. Few units deployed 

with contract management specialists and combatant commands did 

not have the personnel, infrastructure, experience, or time to train 

staffs. In 2008, DLA formed JCASO to write the doctrine, policies, 

and procedures for contingency contracting. Because its remit was to 

instruct, not perform, Navy Vice Adm. Alan S. Thompson, the agency’s 

sixteenth director, located it under J-3, Logistics Operations.

Thompson was still director the following year when DLA 

supported U.S. Transportation Command’s effort to establish 

alternate lines of communication into Afghanistan. Getting material 

into the land-locked country was uncertain, expensive, and dangerous. 

Most items entered via a ground line of communications that ran 

north from the Pakistani port of Karachi before heading west through 

the Federally Administered Tribal Area and into Afghanistan. Pilfering 

was common, as were insurgent attacks and Pakistani obstruction.
59

Established November 2019, the Agency Synchronization and Operations Center 

controls the agency with representation from commands and staffs, advanced technology, 

and a large common operating picture. (Photo by Phillip Prater, DLA Public Affairs) 
60

DLA Distribution Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, receives the first shipment of the 

Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to be distributed to overseas troops and the Navy fleet, 

December 22, 2020. (Photo by Nutan B. Chada, DLA Public Affairs)
61

 Defense Energy Support Center purchasing agents knew a 

safer route. For several years, fuel for Operation Enduring Fr

had come from former Soviet republics, first Uzbekistan and then 

its neighbors. Petroleum traveled along roads leading south into 

Afghanistan, a network that had to be negotiated with multiple 

countries. U.S. Transportation Command expanded this network by 

gaining the participation of fifteen countries, to include Russia and the 

Baltic States.

What became known as the Northern Distribution Network proved 

more reliable than the Pakistani line of communications. It was used 

almost exclusively to transport the base and outpost material Defense 

Supply Center Philadelphia’s Construction and Equipment supply 

chain provided during the 2009-2010 surge. When the drawdown 

began four years later, U.S. Transportation Command used the 

network to remove everything from the country except weapons and 

material processed by agency disposition teams.

DLA no longer called these teams Defense Reutilization and 

Marketing Offices. Most DLA activities predated their parent 

headquarters and thus retained a parochialism that weakened agency 

identity. To rebrand components, Vice Adm. Thompson launched 

a “We are DLA” campaign. As part of the campaign, staffs added 

“DLA” to their titles. Logistics Operations, for example, became 

DLA Logistics Operations. Two commands used the opportunity to 

simplify their names, with the Defense Distribution Center becoming 

DLA Distribution and Defense Energy Support Center becoming 

DLA Energy. The other four commands chose names reflecting the 

domains or functions they supported. Thus, Defense Supply Center 

Philadelphia became DLA Troop Support, Defense Supply Center 

Columbus became DLA Land and Maritime, Defense Supply Center 

Richmond became DLA Aviation, and Defense Reutilization and 

Marketing Service became DLA Disposition Services. DLA Disposition 

Services teams in Afghanistan used their parent command’s name.

 “We are DLA” came with the war on terror in a steady state. 

While military forces never left Afghanistan and had to reenter 

Iraq, large-scale deployments had ended. At DLA, new leadership 

accompanied decreasing requirements, with Navy Vice Adm. Mark 

D. Harnitchek becoming the organization’s seventeenth director in 

late 2011. Harnitchek brought an intense operational focus to the 

agency. Instead of writing a new strategic plan – something every 

director since Lt. Gen. Babers had done – he added “five big ideas” 

to Thompson’s: improve customer service, decrease direct material 
62

costs, rightsize inventory, decrease operating costs, and achieve 

audit readiness. To accomplish these goals, he pushed supply centers 

to write performance-based contracts with “Captains of Industry,” 

pioneered reverse auctions for contracts above $50,000, and initiated 

quarterly meetings with industry leaders.

An operational focus was exactly what DLA needed early in the 

second decade of the twenty-first century. It improved responsiveness 

to depot requests and ensured equipment was retired from the 

Middle East on schedule. It also energized the agency’s response 

to two national emergencies. Few weather events have been as 

devastating to America’s eastern seaboard as Hurricane Sandy in 

2012. DLA deployed forty-five logisticians to support the Federal 

Emergency Management Agency and local authorities in New Jersey 

and New York. DLA Troop Support and DLA Distribution provided 

6 million commercial meals, as well as meals, ready-to-eat; unitized 

group rations; blankets; cots; wire; medical equipment; emergency 

construction equipment; pumps; and power generation units. 

Additionally, DLA Energy supplied ten-million gallons of gasoline to 

first responders, hospitals, and gas stations. The agency distributed 

fuel so effectively, in fact, that President Barack H. Obama transferred 

responsibility for home heating oil from the Department of Energy 

to DLA. For its part, DLA Disposition Services hauled away seventyfive million pounds of debris and its Law Enforcement Support Office 

shipped items worth $3.9 million to public safety organizations. DLA’s 

Logistics Operations Center orchestrated activities while relaying 

information and coordinating engagements.

Vice Adm. Harnitchek led DLA’s response to a new emergency 

two years later. Fearing Ebola would become a worldwide pandemic, 

President Obama announced a United States-led effort to combat 

the virus. The Defense Department’s role, called Operation Unite

Assistance, was to establish air and sea lines of communication

build a distribution network, and contract with local businesses. 

DLA’s part of this effort was to rent warehouses, provide material for 

treatment facilities, and sustain personnel from the U.S. Agency for 

International Development and Centers for Disease Control. 

United Assistance was the agency’s first experience establishing

theater. In order to prepare for medical and aid delivery, DLA Europe 

rented warehouses in Senegal, Liberia, and Ghana; withdrew lumber 

from depots in on the continent; bought fuel from African suppliers; 

and pulled tents from the agency’s Susquehanna and Barstow depots. 

To transport equipment, it acquired and fueled the cargo ship Vega, 
63

Michael Saccomagno, a materiel examiner for DLA Distribution San Joaquin, 

California, inspects components of the first shipment of COVID-19 rapid test kits for 

distribution to nursing homes and Defense Department warehouses October 30, 2020. 

DLA Troop Support assisted the nation’s testing site surge by writing a massive infinite 

delivery, infinite quantity contract with Abbott Laboratories. (Photo by Annette Silva, 

DLA Distribution)
64

Presentation of DLA’s latest joint meritorious unit award. All eight JMUAs have been 

earned since the agency was designated a combat support agency. The first recognized 

performance during the Gulf War. Subsequent awards recognized either support to 

named operations, whole of government responses, or significant savings. Shown 

here are Michael D. Scott, vice director; Ellen M. Lord, undersecretary of defense 

for acquisition and sustainment, and Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams, DLA’s 

nineteenth director. (DLA Photo)
65

dispatching it from the Netherlands with 690 twenty-foot containers 

filled with lumber, fencing, and material handling equipment. The Vega

moved these items faster than surface liner options at half the cost.

DLA would not have been able to accomplish such a rapid 

response a decade earlier. The difference in 2014 was two Joint 

Contingency Acquisition Support Offices in Germany and one in 

Italy. Drawing on the Defense-Wide Working Capital Fund, these 

teams contracted for $38.7 million in services, permitting the rest of 

the agency to deliver $52.8 million worth of material, to include $24 

million in fuel and $16.6 million in food and water. In all, 100 DLA 

employees deployed to west Africa, validating not only the agency’s 

combat support capability but also its regional command structure.

DLA received a new leader late in United Assistance. In Decemb

2014, Air Force Lt. Gen. Andrew E. Busch became the agency’s 

eighteenth director. Despite being a known commodity – Busch 

had served two assignments at DLA as a lieutenant colonel and 

commanded Defense Supply Center Richmond as a brigadier general 

– the new director brought a fresh perspective. His key addition 

was the Nuclear Enterprise Support Office. With recent lapses in 

accounting for nuclear assets leading to the resignations of the Air 

Force secretary and chief of staff, this aspect of national defense was 

receiving more scrutiny than it had in years. In addition to standing up 

NESO, Busch enhanced DLA’s relationship with the commander of U.S. 

Strategic Command and invested $125 million in the nuclear triad. 

Busch’s replacement initiated readiness projects of his own. Army 

Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams became DLA’s nineteenth director on 

June 16, 2017. During his first two years, Williams converted the 

Joint Logistics Operating Center into an Agency Synchronization and 

Operations Center and deployed a dashboard to display real-time 

information on all aspects of the DLA enterprise. In addition to an 

upgraded facility, the Agency Synchronization and Operations Center 

added in-person representation from commands and staffs, allowing 

it to coordinate before issuing orders. The dashboard was also 

collaborative. Part of the director’s effort to organize, manage, and 

leverage data, it took feeds from the services, combined it with agency 

inputs, and displayed readiness in charts. Wanting to connect data 

and readiness even further, Williams established a chief data officer 

and promulgated a data and analysis strategy. 

In addition to changing how DLA measured support, Williams 

both reacted to and sponsored organizational change. With the 

establishment of U.S. Space Command and U.S. Space Force, he 
66

tasked NESO with ensuring the space enterprise received the same 

support the nuclear one did. Williams’s sponsored change was 

more deliberate. After the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure, the 

Industrial Hardware supply chain lost both primary-level status 

and weapons-related supply classes. The director sought to save 

costs, promote investment, and reduce the components with which 

customers had to interact by realigning the supply chain with DLA 

Aviation and DLA Land and Maritime. This consolidation would 

eliminate the last parts-oriented segment in the agency and posture 

it for Defense-Wide Review, a reform effort with the potential to alter 

DLA’s mission. 

Supply-chain realignment occurred at a fortuitous time. An event 

no one predicted dominated operations from April 2020 through 

the writing of this history. Soon after COVID-19 struck, DLA became 

a critical player in the government’s response. Support began with 

providing personal protective equipment to service and family 

members in the Republic of Korea and ended with distributing 

vaccines to military locations overseas. What occurred in between 

was the agency’s most sustained support to civilian agencies in 

sixty years. By supplying hospital ships, medical units, and the U.S. 

Army Corps of Engineers, DLA protected the nation’s hardest hit 

cities. By providing material to the Federal Emergency Management 

Agency and Department of Health and Human Services, it allowed 

citizens to return to the United States, helped intubated patients 

breath, protected senior citizens, and refilled national stockpiles. 

Most provision came from the Construction and Equipment and 

Medical supply chains. Instead of interrupting realignment, the 

agency accelerated it so DLA Troop Support could devote fifty extra 

employees to the crisis.

DLA’s participation in the nation’s COVID-19 response would have 

been significant even if it had consisted of only obtaining scarce material 

at moderate prices. Instead, the crisis showcased just how transformative 

supply chain management could be. In addition to its acquisition 

success, the agency purveyed data throughout the government. A 

logistical focus allowed it to employ buying techniques other purchasing 

agents had yet to master and benefit from research and development 

no one else had prioritized. Finally, the Defense-Wide Working Capital 

Fund simplified transactions and accelerated payments.
67

DLA Troop Support designed and sewed the United States Space 

Force’s service flag, seen here in outer space. As the Space Force 

develops systems unique to its mission, DLA will supply parts 

and offer acquisition, material management, distribution, and 

disposition expertise. (DLA Photo)
68

Conclusion

 The benefits of supply chain management are easy to list but 

hard to describe. Perhaps the best tool for understanding how DLA 

added effectiveness and efficiency to Defense Department logistics is 

SAMMS, for three decades the agency’s signature computer system. 

The first S in SAMMS stood for standard. DLA reduced workload 

by imposing common language, procedures, and formats. This 

standardization spanned not only the services, as single managers 

were supposed to do, but supply classes as well. It continues to save 

money and time today.

Standardization made automation – the A in SAMMS – possible. 

Automation has proven the real money saver for DLA. It has allowed 

work to be done faster with fewer errors and fewer people. SAMMS 

The Standard Automated Materiel Management System never covered subsistence 

items. Instead, DLA had to design separate programs to meet the wholesale and retail 

needs of the supply chain. In this picture, taken Jan. 29, 2011, Culinary Specialist 3rd 

Class John Smith uses the Food Management System aboard the USS Harry S. Truman 

(CVN 75) in the Atlantic Ocean. Automating supply transactions helped DLA become 

efficient, but the big win was simplifying procedures for service members such as Smith. 

DLA Troop Support has since replaced FMS with the Subsistence Total Order and 

Receipt Electronic System, a web-based program. (Navy Photo by John F. Williams)
69

itself is a good example. Of course, the automation did not cover 

everything. Different programs had to be designed for petroleum 

and fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as depot operations, contract 

administration, and property disposal. Still, SAMMS proved so central 

to DLA’s identity that replacing it required change management.

What made SAMMS central was the first M in its name, materiel. 

Everything the agency did, from acquisition to retirement, it did to 

material. “Materiel” also differed DLA from the military services. 

While the line could be blurred with depot-level repairables, the 

services took the lead on end-items, or systems essential to their 

assigned missions. Everything else fell within the realm of the Defense 

Department’s only combat logistics support agency.

Management – the second M in SAMMS – has justified the 

agency’s existence for sixty years. It is why Secretary McNamara 

formed DSA in 1961. It underpinned decisions to expand the agency 

beyond its continental boundaries in the 1970s. In the 1980s, a 

management focus prompted DLA to write one of the first strategic 

plans in the federal government and convinced Congress to grant 

it combat support status. In the 1990s and 2000s, management 

success helped the agency profit from reform. Finally, success at 

crisis management in the 2010s solidified DLA’s role in whole of 

government responses.

Key to DLA’s ability to manage has been the last S in SAMMS: 

system. Throughout its history, the agency has elevated or demoted 

elements based on a systematic examination of needs. The Defense 

Industrial Plant Equipment Center, Defense Electronics Supply 

Center, Defense Industrial Supply Center, Strategic Materials, 

Defense Automation and Publishing Service, and Defense Logistics 

Information Services all lost primary-level status. Other business 

areas, such as disposition and distribution, were elevated to it. 

Taken together, the five words in SAMMS come as close to 

summarizing the myriad ways DLA has infused Defense Department 

logistics with effectiveness and efficiency as any mnemonic can. 

Despite great change, the agency finds itself on October 1, 2021 

where it was sixty years ago: providing commodities and parts to the 

military and other customers. For six decades, DLA has maximized 

readiness and reduced costs. With inspired leadership and a dedicated 

workforce, it looks to do so for decades to come.
70

1961-1964

Army Lieutenant General 

Andrew T. McNamara

1981-1984

Navy Vice Admiral 

Eugene A. Grinstead

1997-2001

Army Lieutenant General 

Henry T. Glisson

1964-1967

Navy Vice Admiral 

Joseph M. Lyle

1984-1986

Army Lieutenant General 

Donald M. Babers

2001-2006

Navy Vice Admiral 

Keith W. Lippert

1967-1971

Air Force Lieutenant General 

Earl C. Hedlund

1986-1988

Army Lieutenant General 

Vincent M. Russo

2006-2008

Army Lieutenant General 

Robert T. Dail

1971-1975

Marine Corps Lieutenant General 

Wallace H. Robinson, Jr.

1988-1992

Air Force Lieutenant General 

Charles P. McCausland Jr.

2008-2011

Navy Vice Admiral 

Alan S. Thompson

1975-1978

Army Lieutenant General 

Woodrow W. Vaughan

1992-1996

Navy Vice Admiral 

Edward M. Straw

2014-2017

Air Force Lieutenant General 

Andrew E. Busch

2011-2014

Navy Vice Admiral 

Mark D. Harnitchek

2020-Present

Navy Vice Admiral

Michelle C. Skubic 

1978-1981

Air Force Lieutenant General 

Gerald J. Post

1996-1997

Air Force Lieutenant General 

George T. Babbitt

2017-2020

Army Lieutenant General 

Darrell K. Williams

Appendix 1: 

Directors, Past and Present
71

Appendix 2: 

Joint Meritorious Unit Awards

Period Covered: 2 August 1990 to 28 February 1991

Director(s): Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles P. McCausland Jr.

Key Justifications:

• Supported 500,000 service members in Operations 

Desert Shield and St

• Assisted allies with logistical support

• Handled 1.7 million requisitions

• Shipped $32 billion in spare parts

Period Covered: 17 February 1994 to 1 October 1995

Director(s): Navy Vice Adm. Edward M. Straw

Key Justifications:

• Achieved $6.3 billion in savings

Period Covered: 1 November 1996 to 1 February 1999

Director(s): Air Force Lt. Gen. George T. Babbitt and 

 Army Lt. Gen. Henry T. Glisson

Key Justifications:

• Supported Operation Joint Endeav

• Responded to Hurricanes Mitch and George

• Provided assistance for flood relief

Period Covered: 11 September 2001 to 28 February 2002

Director(s): Navy Vice Adm. Keith W. Lippert

Key Justifications:

• Supported Operation Noble Eagle / Enduring 

• Organizational transformation 

• Reduced hardware backorders 25 percent

• Decreased costs by more than $1 billion

DATE RECEIVED: 1 October 1991

DATE RECEIVED: 8 May 1996

DATE RECEIVED: 23 July 1999

DATE RECEIVED: 15 January 2003
72

Period Covered: 1 August 2002 to 31 January 2005

Director(s): Navy Vice Adm. Keith W. Lippert

Key Justifications:

• Support for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operati

Enduring Fr

• Established four overseas distribution depots in support 

of current operations

Period Covered: 1 November 2009 to 30 April 2011

Director(s): Navy Vice Adm. Alan S. Thompson

Key Justifications:

• Supported Operation Enduring Freedom and Opera

Iraqi Free

Period Covered: 1 November 2011 to 31 December 2012

Director(s): Navy Vice Admiral Mark D. Harnitchek

Key Justifications:

• Supported populations affected by Hurricane Sandy

• Responded to the closure of Pakistani ground lines of 

communications with alternate solutions and no loss of service

Period Covered: 16 September 2014 to 31 December 2018

Director(s): Air Force Lt. Gen. Andrew E. Busch and 

 Army Lt. Gen. Darrell K. Williams 

Key Justifications:

• Response to Ebola outbreak in West Africa

• Established the Nuclear Enterprise Support Office

• Provided Humanitarian Assistance to internally displaced persons

• Saved the Defense Health Agency $150 million

• Support to the U.S. Forest Service

• Disaster Relief for Hurricanes Florence and Michael / Super 

Typhoon Yutu

DATE RECEIVED: 15 August 2005

DATE RECEIVED: 4 October 2011

DATE RECEIVED: 29 April 2014

DATE RECEIVED: 19 December 2019
73

Dr. Colin Jay Williams 

Historian, Defense Logistics Agency

Dr. Colin Williams came to DLA from the U.S. 

Army Center of Military History, where he served 

on the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Operation 

Enduring Freedom Study Group and helped author 

two histories of the conflict. Dr. Williams retired 

from the U.S. Army after deploying to Iraq twice 

and Afghanistan once. He commanded an artillery 

battery in combat, served in advising and civil affairs 

billets, and taught military history at the United 

States Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Williams 

received a doctorate in military history from the 

University of Alabama in 2013 and has authored 

several articles in addition to his work for CMH. His 

logistics experience includes serving as a battalion 

logistics officer, headquarters and service battery 

commander, and battalion executive officer.

Since coming to DLA, Dr. Williams has overseen 

the production of back-to-back annual histories 

and written “Combating the Coronavirus,” an 

account of the first months of the agency’s response 

to COVID-19. These documents and others can be 

found on https://www.dla.mil/AboutDLA/History/.

Back Cover: Having received his initial brief from Defense 

Secretary Robert S. McNamara on September 30, 1961, a 

Saturday, Army Lt. Gen. Andrew T. McNamara returned to 

the Pentagon the following day, found an office, and assumed 

duties by jotting out General Order #1. Lt. Gen. McNamara 

always considered October 1 the agency’s establishment date. 

When the Pentagon began using November 6, 1961, the date 

of the agency’s first charter, he persuaded the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense to change it back. (DLA Photo)