MLF 8.10 Who's Who (November/December 2014)

U.S. TranSporTaTion Command

2014

distribution Synchronizer

major General rowayne “Wayne” a. Schatz Jr.directoroperations and plans, U.S. Transportation Command

Distribution SynchronizerMaintaining C2 of Strategic Forces and Logistics Infrastructure

Q&AQ&AU.S. TranSporTaTIon CoMMand

Major General Rowayne “Wayne” A. Schatz Jr. is the director of operations and plans, United States Transportation Command, Scott Air Force Base, Ill. He is responsible for directing the deploy-ment of forces and the distribution of supplies and equipment for humanitarian, peacetime and wartime operations for the Department of Defense, including joint training, exercises and war planning. In addition, he is responsible for force protection for USTRANSCOM and its components, and has operational control of the Defense Courier Service and the Joint Operational Support Airlift Center. He also provides associated policy guidance.

Schatz entered the Air Force in 1983 after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy and has served in a variety of opera-tional commands. He commanded the 50th Airlift Squadron, Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark.; three expeditionary airlift squadrons; the 374th Operations Group, Yokota AB, Japan; the 62nd Airlift Wing, McChord AFB, Wash.; the 314th Airlift Wing and 19th Airlift Wing, Little Rock AFB. Schatz has deployed in support of operations Southern Watch, Joint Guard, Allied Force, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He served as the director of mobility forces for Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines in 2002, and as the deputy director of mobility forces in 2005 for Operation United Assistance supporting tsunami relief efforts throughout South Asia, then for U.S. Central Command Air Forces, where he coordinated theater air mobility support for operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Schatz’s previous staff assignments include Fifth Air Force and U.S. Forces Japan, U.S. Special Opera-tions Command, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, U.S. Transportation Command, and the Joint Staff. Prior to his current assignment, he was director of Strategic Plans, Requirements and Programs, Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB. He is a command pilot with more than 4,200 hours in C-130 and C-17 aircraft.

His awards and decorations include: the Distinguished Service Medal; the Defense Superior Service Medal with oak leaf cluster; the Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters; the Defense Merito-rious Service Medal; the Meritorious Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters; the Air Medal; the Aerial Achievement Medal with oak leaf cluster; the Air Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters; and the Air Force Achievement Medal.

Q: How do you see your directorate’s footprint changing as the drawdown continues in Afghanistan with a likely continued U.S. presence there and responsibilities elsewhere around the world?

A: To put it in context, it’s actually not my directorate. It’s more of how we look at the defense transportation enterprise and our component forces and align to support operations in the entire CENTCOM area of responsibility.

As we’re positioned right now in the Middle East, most of our forces are centered on the Gulf region and in Afghanistan. Even as we’ve gone from about 34,000 troops down to about 9,800, our USTRANSCOM operations tempo has actually increased during the latter part of this year as we’ve pulled the equipment and forces out of Afghanistan to get down to that limit.

We see our workload and our footprint remaining about the same through the first quarter of calendar year 2015. As we settle down to the 9,800 level, we will see a little less work with the logis-tics sustainment flow, and force rotations in and out of Afghanistan will obviously come down, probably to about half of what they were previously with the higher number of U.S. forces.

However, I don’t necessarily see our footprint going down much because at the same time we’re drawing down in Afghani-stan, General [Lloyd] Austin (U.S. commander CENTCOM) still has operations ongoing countering ISIS in Iraq and Syria. We also see there’s still activity in Yemen as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. [For] all those operations that CENTCOM is focused on, we’re providing the transportation and logistics support to enable them to be successful.

Major General Rowayne “Wayne” A. Schatz Jr.

DirectorOperations and Plans, U.S. Transportation Command

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U.S. TranSporTaTIon CoMMand

We use the same force footprint to flow in those different areas using CENTCOM’s priorities in order to accomplish that work and mission. We’ll see some decrease, but not as much as some people may anticipate.

Q: What can you tell me about the support for counterterrorism operations against ISIS and in northern Iraq and Syria?

A: Early on in the operation in the June to July time frame, when the president directed CENTCOM to take action, we started deploy-ing additional U.S. forces in Iraq, primarily in that advise/assist role. We’re up to about 1,800 or so U.S. military personnel inside Iraq today.

One of the first actions TRANSCOM specifically took, in coordi-nation with CENTCOM, was to move some of our joint port opening forces into Baghdad International Airport and also up into Erbil International Airport in northern Iraq. We, mostly through airlift, moved the joint task forces into Baghdad and Erbil to help plus-up the effort there with Major General Dana Pittard, the joint task force commander.

One of the specific things we did besides setting the force and helping that movement was providing resupply, primarily for the Kurds combating ISIS in northern Iraq and the Mosul area. The Mosul dam was a major operation. We’ve also been bringing in ship-ments of ammunition and supplies from Europe into Erbil to help that humanitarian and military effort.

We’ve done several humanitarian and military supply air drop missions. Those were all led by Air Forces Central Command as part of CENTCOM operations, but we provided the forces for those missions and some of the support. They control the tactical aspects of the C-17 and C-130 missions.

You’ve heard about the town of Kobani up on the Syrian border? We’ve been doing air drops there to support the Kurds defending the town.

Sinjar Mountain was another area earlier on where we did humanitarian drops and enabled the Iraqis and the Kurds in the area to be able to evacuate that area safely. That was a big focus.

There were some other areas within southern Iraq where we’ve done air drops of ammunition, food and supplies both for humani-tarian purposes and to enable Iraqi security forces’ military opera-tions. In time, we also maintained the aeromedical capability where we’re taking any injured U.S. personnel out of there to make sure they get the best care possible.

We’ve also brought in another major part of our mission—sup-porting foreign military sales and equipment. We’ve airlifted a lot of foreign military sales equipment for the Iraqi government, bringing much of it from American sources directly into Baghdad.

Q: What kinds of systems are you using for the actual air drops?

A: We have focused on precision-type systems.There is a threat from ISIS and we know they have some air

defense capabilities. For mission planning, we have had great ISR support from Predators and other overwatch assets that are provid-ing real-time intelligence for our aircraft and aircrews flying these missions. They also generally have tactical air support to counter any threat that might pop up. It’s a synchronized effort led by U.S. Air Force Central Command.

We’re generally dropping at high altitudes, trying to stay out of the range of any ground-based anti-aircraft weapons.

For the airdrop, we use two basic systems. One is an Improved CDS (container delivery system) system. To start, we’ll drop a device that enables us to get accurate wind information used to program when we drop the supply bundles. The bundles go under a high-velocity chute, meaning they drop fairly quickly but with little drift in the wind. We’re able to get very good accuracy—within 200 yards or so of the planned point of impact—using that system. We use this method primarily for food and some of the water supplies that have very high tolerance—the bundles still hit the ground pretty well.

For some of the other items that we can’t drop using the Improved CDS system, such as ammunition, we’ll also use the joint precision air drop system, which is a square-type of glide chute with a bundle attached to it. They are GPS-guided to the point of impact, and accurate within feet.

Q: What processes are brought to bear when TRANSCOM is tasked to respond, on short notice, to a crisis—either military or humanitarian?

A: Compared to other combatant commands, TRANSCOM is a global functional combatant command responsible for military transportation distribution and enabling capabilities. We have a global responsibility—generally in any type of action by the U.S. military as it’s involved around the world, TRANSCOM will likely have a plan supporting the lead combatant commander for that operation. Ours is a global supporting command focus.

As the J3, director of operations and plans, I’m responsible for our fusion center, located on our ops center floor, where we bring in our future and current ops teams from our J3 and representatives from our transportation components who execute the missions.

We’ve divided the world into east and west. Our east division is focused on CENTCOM, AFRICOM, EUCOM and SOCOM. Our west division is focused on PACOM, SOUTHCOM, NORTHCOM and STRATCOM. We have branches that are dedicated to those combat-ant commands.

During deliberate planning for our supported combatant com-mands, our J3 planners work to build the supporting transportation plans and time-phased force deployment data (TPFDDs) in collabo-ration with the other COCOM staffs. They build a relationship and learn the unique characteristics of the supported command’s AOR and staff processes.

When something happens in those combatant commands and there’s a planning effort or crisis action planning, we stand up a joint planning team (JPT) under the leadership of the branch that works with those combatant commands day-to-day. We bring in representation from around the headquarters and our components and bring all of that expertise to bear on the problem.

Because of the way we handle our deliberate planning cycle, when the JPT comes together to respond to a crisis, it is not the first time they have worked together. Those same branches that support the COCOMs’ everyday needs come together to form the JPT—the same people who do the deliberate planning now turn to crisis action planning. They have that expertise in theater. They already have those connections with the supporting combatant commands and are able to turn very quickly.

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2014


Gen. Paul J. SelvaUSAF

Commander

Col. Ronald DoughertyUSAF

J1 Personnel

Gen. Darren W. McDewUSAF

Commander

Rear Adm. Bret BatchelorUSN

Commander

Vice Adm. William A. “Andy” Brown

USNVice Commander

Bruce A. BuslerSES

AC Joint Distribution Process Analysis Center

Capt. David H. McAllisterUSN

J2 Intelligence

Maj. Gen. Michael D. KimUSAFR

RA Reserve Component and Commander, Joint

Transportation Reserve Unit

Chief Master Sgt. Victoria Gamble

USAFSenior Enlisted Leader

Command Sgt. Maj. Lemuel Brock

USASenior Enlisted Leader

USTRANSCOM LeAdeRS

USTRANSCOM diReCTOR

JOiNT eNAbLiNg CApAbiLiTieS COMMANd AiR MObiLiTy COMMANd

Maj. Gen. David G. ClarksonUSA

Chief of Staff

Rear Adm. David F. BaucomUSN

J5/4 Strategy, Policy, Programs & Logistics

Maj. Gen. Susan A. Davidson USA

Commander

James L. McGinleySES

J8 Program Analysis & Financial Management

Gail JorgensonSES

AQ Acquisition

Rear Adm. Thomas J. Shannon USN

Commander

Chief Master Sgt. William W. Turner

USAFSenior Enlisted Leader

Brig. Gen. Mitchel H. Butikofer USAF

J6 Command, Control, Communications & Cyber

Systems

Command Sgt. Maj.Cedric J. Thomas

USACommand Sergeant Major

Maj. Gen. Rowayne “Wayne” Schatz Jr.

USAFJ3 Operations and Plans

Col. David O’BrienUSAF

SG Command Surgeon

Master Chief Petty Officer Kevin Blade

USNCommand Master Chief

MiLiTARy SeALiFT COMMANd

Col. Michael J. BenjaminUSA

JA Staff Judge Advocate

SURFACe depLOyMeNT ANd diSTRibUTiON COMMANd


I’ll give an example on how we manage that. Right now, we have a joint planning team stood up for the Ebola support Operation United Assistance supporting AFRICOM. We also have a JPT stood up supporting NORTHCOM for Ebola response because there are several live actions going on within CONUS to combat the Ebola problem. We have a JPT stood up for Iraq support for countering ISIS work. We just had a JPT stood up to support STRATCOM and NORTHCOM for their Global Thunder and Vigilant Shield exercises. We stood up that JPT to support that exercise during the same time we were doing the other work around the world. That’s how we flex and turn to the combatant commanders that we support every day and how we manage that flow from crisis to crisis.

Q: Can we go more into the Ebola crisis response?

A: There’s a difference between the Ebola response and the Iraq and Syria responses. The Iraq and Syria responses are not much extra effort for us because we have this large infrastructure and command system already in place. We were already inside Iraq providing some assistance and support there. We had all this won-derful capacity in the Middle East, so that when the president said, “Go to Iraq,” we were able to go there a few hours later because that infrastructure and system was already set up and placed.

The Ebola response in Africa was quite different. We had to go in there and build the distribution enterprise from scratch, put in our joint task force port opening elements and build up that theater that was very austere before we were able to start flowing forces in a big way.

We can be very agile when we’ve been operating and have a system in place to support operations. When we have to start from scratch and go someplace that we haven’t been to in a while, or ever, it takes a little more time and effort to stand up the enterprise and get it going before we can really make a large impact.

Q: With combat operations in Afghanistan and the level of involvement you have there, how has any of this changed your relationship and the amount of business with your commercial partners? How do you see that organic and nonorganic airlift sup-port going down the road?

A: We’ve had wonderful relationships with our commercial pro-viders, both for CRAF carriers on the air side as well as our VISA U.S. flag carriers on the sealift and surface side. We could not have done everything we’ve done in Afghanistan or Iraq the last 13 years without that relationship and the capacity that our commercial providers bring to bear.

These relationships are key, and we leverage them greatly to our benefit in the Department of Defense. It’s key keeping our commercial providers healthy for national security. As we go forward with lower numbers of forces in Afghanistan, we see the required monthly quantity of supplies to sustain the number of forces going down. As [our workload] goes down, we’re looking very carefully at how we manage that readiness equation, the

balance of keeping our organic fleets operating at the right level to keep everybody trained and current. At the same time, the com-mercial folks need to have some workflow and be able to move cargo and passengers in order to maintain their readiness and participation in those programs.

We’re looking at the routes in and out of Afghanistan, and right now we’ve got several options we can use. We can fly things directly out of Afghanistan; we have the northern distribution network, as well as going in and out of Pakistan on the PAKGLOC from Afghanistan.

We’re thinking we’re probably going to need to slowly back off on use of the northern distribution routes as the forces draw down within Afghanistan because there’s not going to be enough cargo going on those routes to keep them open and make it profitable for our commercial partners to stay engaged there. We’re watch-ing this very carefully. It’s the balance of having different options, but in order to have options, you have to be able to have cargo and equipment, as well as people flying through those lanes to keep options viable.

One of the big things we’re working on in our ops center when we’re planning is that we want to make sure we fly our organic fleets about the minimum amount we need to in order for them to stay ready. Then we want to leverage our commercial partners for transportation work above that to allow them to have that business to stay ready and engaged.

At the same time, as we come out of Afghanistan, we’ll have some capacity in our transportation system now to service other parts of the globe. Frankly, I grew up in the Pacific flying C-130s in the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s, and we used to have scheduled air channel missions that would go to the Pacific on a regular basis. We’ve gotten away from that because we’ve had so much of our focus on supporting CENTCOM in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we come out of that, we’re looking to work with our partners at DLA and the service depots, the COCOMs and other deployed U.S. forces

Aerial porters from the Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Contingency Response Group position a Halverson cargo-handling vehicle to offload pallets of humanitarian aid from a U.S. Air Force KC-10 aircraft at Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Dakar, Senegal. [Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air National Guard/by Maj. Dale Greer]



to determine how we can reorient our global system away from the Middle East to get more balance around the world.

I think we’re going to be able to turn a little more of our sys-tems’ capability to service the movement and transportation needs of our global structure. We’re doing that right now. The goal is to monitor readiness and also look at bringing additional transporta-tion work into our defense transportation system to sustain the readiness of both our service components and our commercial providers.

That’s General (Paul) Selva’s (TRANSCOM commander) num-ber-one concern: a more austere budget environment with fewer dollars in the services to pay for transportation. How do we sustain the readiness of TRANSCOM’s wonderful transportation capability in the thin times so that when it comes time to surge again and answer the nation’s call, we’re ready and able to do that?

Q: Can you give me your view on the degree of sophistication and detail that you get from the current asset visibility capabilities that you have compared to what the goals are?

A: We’ve made a lot of progress, especially since September 11, 2001. We do have pretty good systems for monitoring in-transit visibility. We’ve made a lot of progress on the use of radio frequency ID tags, for example, for tracking equipment. But we still see breakdowns in discipline in using those ITV systems within DoD.

I frankly would give us about a C grade for now. A lot of our systems are still stovepiped along service lines; data doesn’t necessarily flow between them. One of our priorities for the command is to work on IT excellence.

We’re squarely focused on trying to go into a more service-oriented architecture for our IT and data services to track in-transit visibility (ITV), for example, to be able to share data between different applications as well as different service com-ponents. There’s a discipline aspect of being able to ensure that the information is loaded into the systems at the point of origin and use.

For example, in our support of Operation United Assistance in West Africa, we’ve got good in-transit visibility on most of the missions within our organic or commercial charter systems for TRANSCOM. The people down range at Dakar and Monrovia can see what’s coming their way. But we still sometimes flow in less-than-planeload loads of gear and equipment that show up, and they’re surprised. There’s a need for discipline there making sure that we put in our contracts for some of our commercial partner carriers that even for less-than-planeloads, the information gets loaded up into our systems so we have accurate details and can monitor in-transit visibility.

Some work needs to be done. Some progress has been made. We’re not up to the same level of quality as the big guys like UPS or FedEx. One of our visions here is we want to eventually, someday,

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have a webpage—I say someday but I mean relatively quickly—so a soldier on the ground in Liberia can just login to www.transcom.mil and click on a page that says, ‘Where’s my stuff?’ and enter the information on what they’ve ordered, and it’ll show exactly where it is. We’re not there yet, but that’s the vision.

Q: Can you describe the command’s emphasis and effort toward those goals? How are you keeping security in step with those IT goals?

A: TRANSCOM, through the vision of previous leadership, has been on the leading edge of the department on the unclassified domain cybersecurity. Because we have to use and leverage the dot-com and the commercial networks, we’re very cognizant of that and we’ve done a lot of good work there.

We have a very robust cyberdefense and security capability here in the command that primarily focuses in on our own IT systems provided by TRANSCOM and also within our components that support internal operations. It’s very solid and has been in place for several years.

We’ve also built robust relationships with U.S. Cyber Com-mand as well as their main component that provides us cyberpro-tection, the 24th Air Force Cyber Command down in San Antonio. They actually have two protection teams that are dedicated to monitoring and supporting TRANSCOM cyberdefense operations.

In addition, we have regular standing agreements and regular coordination with the FBI, local law enforcement, the National Security Agency and other authorities that are outside the DoD network. If we see things that are going on in more of the dot-com type world, we can work with the FBI and local law enforcement, and they can work with the companies that may be affected. We’ve also, in the last few years, put into our contracts specific language covering cybersecurity requirements for our contractors that provide our IT support and our C2 systems. We write into the con-tract what the main requirements are for cybersecurity for their systems and networks, as well as the equipment they deliver to us.

We know we’re a target. We’re continuing to do more and more.

This year, we updated our cybersecurity strategy for the com-mand and have worked to sync our IT and data strategies as well as our business operations strategy.

Brigadier General Mitch Butikofer (TRANSCOM J6), Captain David McAllister (TRANSCOM J2) and I sit on a cyber board here for TRANSCOM and work on these issues every day. Going into the future, we’re focused on making sure that those cybersecurity requirements are baked into any systems we buy.

We’ve recently stood up a joint cyber center here for the command; they actually work the command and control of cyber operations. They’re linked in directly with CYBERCOM and DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency). We make sure that we’re aware of any weak links in our IT and C2 systems that key cyber terrain as we do our physical operations. Then we focus our defen-sive efforts to make sure that they support the operations that are going on. We prioritize that by operations.

Q: What is TRANSCOM’s role in trying to have better IT integration where the Army system talks to the Navy system, which talks to the Air Force, which talks to TRANSCOM, and so on?

A: There are several lanes where we work those issues. The easy one is more within our own portfolio for TRANSCOM-specific C2 systems with a specific system that is managed by our components.

We have a governance structure that’s led by me as the chief operating officer; we call it mission area management. For example, we have our air mission area, surface mission area, and joint planning mission area; those are the three big areas. We rely on a foundation of standards that are set by our J6, our chief information officer (CIO) for the command, so that we have a foundation of IT, cybersecurity and data standards that everyone has to follow. Then we closely manage the capabilities, the fund-ing and the requirements for that portfolio of IT systems within the command.

As we look at the other systems that each of the services use to connect with us, we work through our DPO (Distribution Process Owner) governance structure. We actively work with those service program managers to make sure that everyone follows common joint requirements and manages to plug in properly to that family of systems. Some of it can be directive and some of it can be col-laborative, more like coaching—showing folks the business case to make investments up-front that allow these systems to connect and flow together for the greater good.

Q: Anything else you’d like to add?

A: This is an amazing job. Every day you come in and it’s some-thing new.

It’s really true that nothing happens in DoD without TRANS-COM. We’re kind of the special essence that gives our department the operational and strategic agility that the chairman and the secretary require.

We have an amazing team of over 150,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, DoD civilians, contractors, active duty and reserves who make things happen every day on a global scale. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of this great team. I can’t think of a better place I’d rather be working. O


Essential military supplies, food and water, and mail—shown here—are all part of the supply chain. [Photo courtesy of DoD]


MLF 8.10 Who's Who (November/December 2014)

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