Photo By Greg Wilson | Kimberly Kampner, a U.S. Army Sustainment Command Lead Materiel Integrator division...... read more read more
ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — How do you keep track of millions of pieces of the Army’s combat and non-combat equipment ranging from tanks to radios spread all over the globe? That might be a problem for most people, but it’s all in a day’s work for the Lead Materiel Integration directorate at the U.S. Army Sustainment Command.
“LMI is important to the Army,” said Kimberly Kampner, a division chief in the LMI organization, “because we strive to ensure units have the right equipment at the right time to accomplish their missions. At the same time, we provide timely removal, so they are not encumbered with excess equipment that wastes time, space, and money.”
The U.S. Army Materiel Command and ASC work together to ensure the effective supply, maintenance, and distribution of Army equipment and supplies. AMC oversees the life cycle management of Army equipment, from acquisition to disposal.
ASC, a major subordinate command of AMC, focuses on the logistics and sustainment aspects, ensuring that units receive the necessary materiel and support. By collaborating seamlessly, AMC and ASC help ensure that the Army is prepared and capable of meeting any mission requirements.
LMI’s core mission within ASC is split into three broad areas: distribution of new equipment, redistribution of on-hand equipment, and divestiture of excess/unneeded equipment across the Army to maximize the readiness of all Army units.
LMI primarily deals with what are termed as Class VII equipment — major end items like tanks, trucks, radios, generators, field artillery systems, and aircraft that can be used for both combat and non-combat operations. In other words, it includes just about anything a Soldier needs to perform their mission.
As the Army’s primary entity for distribution, redistribution, and divestiture of major end items, LMI has a direct role in keeping units battle ready. Through its disposition instructions, it provides Army leaders from the strategic to tactical levels the visibility to make decisions that impact the operational readiness of their units.
With a current staff of approximately 80 Soldiers and Civilians, LMI’s reach is vast. In fiscal year 2024, which ran from Oct. 1, 2023-Sept. 30, 2024, Kampner said LMI developed directives to support over 5,400 Army-wide equipment distributions, accounting for over 61,000 pieces of new equipment being issued to active Army and Army Prepositioned Stocks units worldwide.
In that same timeframe, Kampner said LMI issued directions for over 76,000 equipment transfers, or “redistributions,” across major Army commands, equating to 430,313 pieces moving to build Army readiness. Furthermore, it directed over 139,000 turn-in actions, which divested the Army of more than 787,000 pieces of excess hardware.
Equipping the Army is a continuous process, so LMI’s work is never done. It provides the Army with the needed flexibility to meet new and emerging requirements. Utilizing an automated logistics program called the Decision Support Tool, the directorate gives relevant on-hand and cost data to Army senior leaders, ensuring all these resources are prioritized to meet mission requirements.
Most recently, LMI has demonstrated the responsiveness and flexibility of its equipping process with support to the Army’s Rapid Removal of Excess, or R2E, initiative.
“In late 2023, the Chief of Staff of the Army ordered the removal of excess equipment from units to reduce the burden of storage, maintenance, and accountability,” said Kampner. “Excess is an ongoing problem for units. It takes up space in the motor pool. Units are tasked with maintaining and inventorying that equipment. Quite frankly, they don't need it to continue to drain their resources.
“We helped develop new procedures for the redirection of excess equipment. As of Oct. 23, 2024, R2E operations have collected over 406,000 pieces of excess equipment, largely in part to ASC LMI’s efforts and disposition guidance,” Kampner added.
Another way the directorate shows its flexibility is in the support of the Army Prepositioned Stocks program.
“APS involves having Army equipment of nearly all types prepositioned in designated locations across the globe, including on ships,” said Maj. Joe Fuoco, a deputy division chief. “This program allows units to rapidly deploy and ‘fall in’ on APS equipment sets and execute their assigned mission while home station equipment is in transit.”
“We serve as the lead Class VII materiel manager for Army Prepositioned Stocks,” he added, “and are responsible for overseeing monthly readiness reports and management of all major end items in storage.”
The directorate has also been instrumental over the past two years in identifying and sourcing major end items in support of Presidential Drawdown authority, which allows for the delivery of defense materiel from U.S. military stocks to foreign countries under certain circumstances.
“Our materiel integrators provide crucial feedback and recommendations to higher headquarters, which assist in risk mitigation to operational and unit readiness by identifying the best possible sourcing location for Class VII requirements,” said Capt. Mary Trejo, the lead for LMI’s internal PD task force.
Since the beginning of this PD mission in 2022, to Oct.1, ASC has supported over 60 equipment orders for numerous country partners, with a collective total of over 33,000 pieces of Class VII equipment.
While all of these key program initiatives are important, LMI’s primary focus is Army equipment-on-hand readiness, which in large part is predicated upon logistics, and logistics is what ASC does.
“As the executing agent for AMC’s lead materiel integrator, the ASC LMI team directly supports AMC’s mission of developing and delivering materiel readiness solutions to ensure globally dominant land force capabilities,” Kampner said. “More specifically, our mission priorities are fully nested within two of AMC’s top three priorities: readiness and modernization,” she added.
Whether it’s issuing new modernized equipment, realigning on-hand equipment to evolving requirements to build readiness, or getting rid of excess items to free up resources to set conditions for modernization, the Lead Materiel Integration directorate at ASC is always focused on ensuring Soldiers have the equipment they need to be ready for anything.
| Date Taken: | 10.31.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.31.2024 14:03 |
| Story ID: | 484343 |
| Location: | ILLINOIS, US |
| Web Views: | 30 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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