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 90 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