Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 92
involves numerous command-level approvals, up to the Secretary of Defense. Many
missions, however, are time sensitive due to
the importance of timeliness when executing missions that have to be timely if they
are to be successful. The long administrative
delays of the current system can interfere
with mission accomplishment.
Since regionally aligned brigades are
allocated one year in advance, it is their
internal selection that is inefficient as many
activities are developed from 120 to 150
days before execution—rather than eighteen months. Consequently, USARAF and
USAFRICOM struggle with determining
which short-notice missions are critical
to operational objectives. This places unnecessary stress
on the system and the soldiers performing the missions.
(Most of the 2nd ABCT’s short-notice missions were
not critical but resulted from overly ambitious commitments made by ill-informed country representatives or
action officers.)
Army sustainment channels allocated specifically
for regionally aligned units are needed to ensure units
can obtain support during missions. Another key
lesson learned was that regionally aligned units supporting USAFRICOM in Africa need much greater support
than Army planners at all levels initially forecast. Africa
is an austere setting and does not maintain permanent
U.S. Army bases where supplies might be stockpiled or
other support services obtained. This, together with the
relatively small budget and limited on-hand resources,
created significant problems for 2nd ABCT.
One central issue was a lack of enablers and resources
needed to accomplish missions. When 2nd ABCT soldiers
deployed to work in small teams and in austere environments, they often had to find additional resources outside
of the regionally aligned brigade.20 While USARAF was
able to provide some support, such as communication
equipment, it could not make up for the 2nd’s organic
shortfalls in other areas due to its own equipment requirements and budget constraints. Thus, shortages in communications equipment and medical support, as well as
insufficient funding for equipment and deploying personnel, were just a few of the major challenges.
In the future, units providing reach-back support could
be directly aligned with and allocated to regionally aligned
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units for dedicated support during rotations. Business
rules for theater security cooperation missions should
be changed to encompass the allocation or alignment of
supporting units and capabilities that can be accessed in an
identical manner. Such support commands could provide
resources, equipment, and sustainment support not now
readily available on short notice at the brigade level without significant additional administrative work. There are
Army support commands already providing global support
to Army operating units. However, the current business
rules for regionally aligned forces do not support an effective way to allocate such supporting units.21
In part to fill support gaps, USARAF created an informal relationship with the 1st Infantry Division, which
helped fill intelligence gaps—such as gaps in human intelligence, imagery intelligence, and counterintelligence. Other
identified resource and capability gaps from the first regionally aligned force included medical evacuation and medics,
as well as signal, logistics, and maintenance support.22
Preparing for medical contingencies during deployments was a particularly worrisome challenge for the 2nd
ABCT. In Africa, medical evacuation takes twenty-four
hours or more, which fails to meet the Golden Hour standard mandated by the secretary of defense (referring to
the critical one-hour limit for evacuating a casualty from
the incident to a proper treatment facility to preclude
death). Fortunately, the 2nd ABCT had no occurrences of
any injured soldier being affected by this rule.
The 2nd ABCT also had significant difficulty with
signal and communication support. There is no established signal infrastructure in remote African nations
to support U.S. military operations. Consequently,
July-August 2015 MILITARY REVIEW