Maintenance conducted by the Bundeswehr during

Missions Abroad and Routine Duty at Home

Andreas Fix

The reorientation of the Bundeswehr to armed forces in operations necessitated in the recent past also a reform of the logistic system. While one could assume that there would be a defensive war on the own territory in the era of the East-West conflict, logistics must now be capable of supporting both the routine duty at home and worldwide missions around the globe. At the same time, this challenge had to and will have to comply with the stipulations of an economical use of budgetary funds and a constant optimisation within the scope of the transformation of the Bundeswehr.
The central role for the armed forces in toto plays here the Joint Support Service (JSS), which acts, among other things, as a logistic service and troop provider for all Services and constitutes thus the “backbone” of the logistics of the Bundeswehr. For the maintenance as a part of logistics this means quick, competent, and “customer-focused” reacting and goal-oriented acting in order to keep the operational readiness of the units and elements at home and abroad on as high a level as possible. In this context, the cooperation on a partnership basis with the civilian trade and industry plays more and more a key role and must therefore be integrated into all considerations and primarily into all the processes and structures.
Here, the basic differentiation between operations and routine service at home does not equate to a categorization “important” and “not important”, but describes only different parametric conditions which must be met with respectively adapted forces, means, and structures. The missions and operations must be attached a high degree of attention, however, since their logistic dependencies are greater and have a more direct impact on the missions.

Maintenance in Routine Service at Home

As already addressed above, the maintenance requirements of all users in the routine service at home are to be properly and competently met by predominantly cross-sectional defence materiel which is also to ensure the operational readiness for training and exercises at home. Service-peculiar equipment of mainly the Navy and Air Force requires special capabilities, knowledge, and facilities and is therefore directed into the respective maintenance by the Services/organizational areas on their own authority. In order to handle the cross-sectional equipment, the “New Bundeswehr” is making use of an area-covering network of so-called logistic control agencies (LCAs), which are centrally managed by the Bundeswehr Logistics Centre in Wilhelmshaven . These LCAs constitute the respective interface between the users/customers and the military and civilian maintenance service providers. They are the ones the unit/activity/office will have to approach in all matters concerning maintenance (“single face to the customer“). Of significance is here that qualified technical personnel which is familiar with the particularities of the respective equipment is already available in the elements/units to appraise the damaged material and to pass on their expert opinions with a precise description of the extent of the damage to the LCA.
These specialists are the system maintenance sergeants/motor sergeants who are both responsible for the preventive maintenance and on missions also for the battle damage repair in their units. To this end they have only a limited number of recovery/GSI/servicing personnel avail­able, since “genuine” maintenance/repair will basically — apart from a few exceptions — no longer be performed in the units.
The LCAs understand themselves as service providers for the troops and Bundeswehr agencies stationed/located in their regions. They do so by passing the existing maintenance requirements in addition to other logistic tasks – depending on the damage and, of course, on the available budgetary funds – on to the military or civilian maintenance providers and by controlling the processing of the order and, if required, by writing the invoices.
Certain contract equipment will be directed by the staff of the “HIL (Army Maintenance Logistics) LLC” working in the LCA to an HIL plant or to one of the regional branches or to a subcontractor of this company.
As for the military service providers, a differentiation is made between mobile and static maintenance forces/facilities. While fixed maintenance facilities (in future called mechatronics and/or electronics centre) can, as a matter of routine, be approached with non-contract damage materiel, the mobile maintenance forces (maintenance companies of the Army/Joint Support Service) must first notify their relevant LCA of their demands for training and/or sustainment training in their core capability “repair”, since a general integration of the mobile maintenance forces of the Bundeswehr into the routine service at home is no longer possible. The maintenance capabilities required for missions and exercises will be constantly practiced, strengthened, and expanded in this way. The added value evolving from that is a welcome side effect.
Advantages for the customer and user in this process structure are above all that there is only one contact partner for them, that competence and responsibilities are clearly defined, and that a quick unburdening of the troops from damage materiel is effected. After initial scepticism this process structure of maintenance in routine service at home, which was introduced in 2002 already, is now firmly established and finds high acceptance and satisfaction with the “customers”.

Maintenance in Missions and Operations

In the support of missions and operations it is basically differentiated between base and mission logistics. For that purpose, Home Base Logistics — the military and civilian logistic facilities in the entire area of the Federal Republic — will establish, generally by mobile logistic forces of the Joint Support Service (JSS), a so-called “Operations Area Logistics Base”. Out of this base it is possible, depending on the scope of the mission/operation and the geographic conditions, to additionally establish a “Forward Logistics Base Operations Area” in order to keep the distances to the operations logistics, the mobile logistic forces of the different Services, as short as possible. The structure follows the process here, too, and offers the “customer” a competent contact through the Logistic Control Centre (LCC) of the logistic battalion of the brigade/contingent employed. This LCC is the “LCA in Operations” and directs all logistic requirements to the mobile logistic forces avail­able in the area of operations, to the civilian service providers in the country of operations (Host Nation Support) or even back to the Home Base Logistics. As to the maintenance, there are certain time standards/allowances defined for the repair measures, which depend on whether response or stabilization forces are concerned. In intervention/response operations, for instance, it is specified that damaged materiel be repaired in the area of operations logistics within a predicted maintenance time frame of up to six hours which will allow it to be returned to the troops as quick as possible. Damages exceeding this will be directed to Base Logistics and transported to the “Operations Area Logistics Base” by use of evacuation means.
As stabilization operations have higher statics, time standards for the maintenance are not applied here. But there is basically also a separation between base and operations logistics, which are adapted in respect to deployment, and scope to the respective requirements of the area of operations. Decisive for that are the infrastructure and geographical conditions, which also determine the stationing/deployment and the degree of self-sufficiency and independence of the logistic troops. The number of logistic forces, which will then be locally necessary, depends on the size and the task of the contingent employed.
Thus, different logistic structures were applied with SFOR/EUFOR, KFOR or the Congo Mission in the past which, when the missions lasted a longer period of time, were adjusted to the changed military and/or political parameters.
An “Operations Area Logistics Base” was now for the first time established with ISAF — also after it has been on the mission for several years and following the Bundeswehr “relocation” to Mazar-i-Sharif in the north of Afghanistan — which, as part of the logistic hub, coordinates and meets in combine with Home Base Logistics the total logistic requirements of the follow-on supply for the country of operations, Afghanistan. For operational and security-relevant reasons operations logistics is additionally organized in a correspondingly robust way with the PRTs deployed in Kunduz and Feyzabad to guarantee maximum logistic self-sufficiency and independence. It becomes obvious here that there is thus no maintenance for the missions and operations, but that their diversity requires each time a situation-related adjustment to the actual conditions.

High Degree of Action Confidence

The new maintenance process structure, which can be found in both the routine duty at home and on operations, is in both cases based on the central service providers LCA and LCC, respectively, and consequently guarantees the customers equal procedures and thus a high degree of action confidence. Maintenance in routine duty at home and on operations requires high professional competence of all logistic leaders and executors as well as competent partners in trade and industry. Only in this way can the operational readiness of the elements be maintained in total and restored, if necessary.
Missions and operations are clearly the points of main effort of all logistic facilities and forces at home and abroad to lastingly and reliably ensure in this way any type of logistic support for the soldiers employed. Only well­functioning logistics/maintenance will create the material preconditions for solid and com­prehensive training, successful and effective national/multinational exercises as well as for a purposeful and situation-related preparation for the missions/operations.
Essential prerequisites for the total logistics functioning in this manner are a smooth and trouble-free cooperation of all logisticians, no matter whether base or operations logistics. Standard training, the same procedures and a joint overall understanding of logistics are imperative for that and a guarantor for the success of maintenance in routine duty at home and especially on operations.

By Lt Col (GE A) Andreas Fix, Chi ef of Section, Joint Support Command.