Some soldiers get along, and others don’t. It’s the latter that make for the most interesting tales when they speak of their time at war. Army Major Ryan Ussery is a logistician – the guy who keeps the beans, bullets and boots coming to the troops on the front lines (motto: Sustinendum Victoriam). He has pulled three tours in Iraq, the most recent ending in 2011.
Beyond the gripes common to most young officers, Ussery found one thing missing-in-action: accountability among the growing corps of civilians that accompanies the U.S. military to war zones these days. He shared his experience in an interview earlier this month with the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in hope of offering insights to future supply officers sent forward. Some highlights:
…the division personnel sergeant major told me I was no longer stupid enough to be a tanker and to go ahead and switch branches…
I was originally going to just do National Guard but I looked at my GPA and I looked at the job market and I was like, “Maybe doing this full-time wouldn’t be so bad,” and I haven’t looked back since…
The first [deployment to Iraq shortly after the invasion in 2003] we stocked up the 3rd Infantry Division (ID)…We were sitting there watching entire battalions burn out clutches because no one was trained on the standard transmission because we’d all gone to push button operations.
There were a lot of learning curves and a lot of high mobility multi-wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs) without doors so it’s going on summer and you see all these HMMWVs with Arctic roof and kits. That’s what was in use. Can you imagine driving down the road with five-inch foam on the tops and sides of your truck?
We had no plan on how to deal with casualties. We had losses. When we crossed the border, there was not a Mortuary Affairs teams in place. I was coordinating flights directly with the Aviation regiment. We were trying to get hospitals to empty out coolers so that we would have a place to put remains.
Trying to get the brigade combat teams (BCTs) to release the corps-level fuelers because we were out-pacing our fuel. We had pushed fuel assets up to them but they didn’t let them go so we couldn’t build further stocks behind them because they were the priority. I was one of the first guys in the division we sent back on the advanced party back down to Kuwait to prepare because we were going to be home for a July 4th victory parade. That didn’t happen…
…I never thought it could be 120 percent humidity and 145 degrees…
We finally…got to Taji [just north of Baghdad]. It was nothing but chaos and back-stabbing and watching the political infighting between colonels and sergeants major over who got the best living quarters and there were the new Command and General Staff College graduates coming out wondering who gets the wet containerized housing unit. I was just like, “Give me a plastic bag and a shower and a tent, I’m good.” Oh no, we had to have all that little bullshit infighting…
I went from one toxic leadership to another…
We got back to the States and saw how really stupid things got. We’re talking about six-mile lines to get on to posts that were previously closed because we were checking every single vehicle. Not only did the terrorists kill 3,000 plus people that day, they also managed to bring the United States military and its support to almost a screeching halt because of the increased force protection measures we put into place.
If you had to get into physical training (PT) you had to leave at 0300 because it took three or four hours at the gate or you rode a bicycle because you couldn’t put a bomb on it. That’s when we started contracting guards because we started running out of people to do that stuff…
I tend to get in trouble because I tend to speak my mind and my officer evaluation reports reflect it so maybe I won’t make lieutenant colonel, but I tried hard and did the best I could with the prima donnas that come. You get some who are proud with how often they’ve been kicked out of theater, what they won’t do because they’re a GS-12 or 13 [civilian]…
I’m getting yelled at by the first battalion commander of the 402nd saying that his organization is all messed up because he said, “There are 81 people on the ground.” I said, “Sir, out of 81 people there are only 56 here and you’re tracking people who left three months ago. You still think they’re here because you don’t have your stuff together.”
Let’s just say I was an effective BLST [Brigade Logistics Support Team] chief [on his final deployment, in 2010-2011], but I wasn’t very popular. I tried to get things done and that’s why I’m still in therapy…
A typical day was wake up, go to breakfast, and then check my five email accounts. You have all these different comms systems so you have two Secure Internet Protocol Router accounts, two secret accounts — your personal one and the one — we had a US Central Command account and I had my Army Knowledge Online SIPR. I had my AKO Non-secure and my Multi-Media Communications Systems. Basically, [Army Materiel Command] said, “We need our own system separate from CENTCOM.”
… I’d try to get in some PT but if not I’d go to my three meals of overcooked food a day; overcooked, over-buttered. I’d go back to bed and start it all over again. If you ever wonder what a deployment is like, go to prison. That’s how I would — if you’re staying on a FOB [forward operating base] that’s what it’s like. You don’t get to go anywhere. You get yard time. You get three meals a day. You get a place to exercise. You do the same thing every day and then you go back to your cell…
You could have a high-priority system down but you couldn’t make the contractor go. They always can say no. If it’s not written in their contract that they can get in a vehicle, then you violate the contract and guess what? You just wound up liable and signing up the government for liability. That is another problem I have with the entire acquisition system of the U.S. government not strong-arming the industrial complex to say, “You know what? If you want to do business in the U.S. and sell us stuff, don’t give us this, “Oh it’s proprietary information or proprietary software. You sell us the system and we let you do business.”
No. We let them go into the only way we can accurately fix a M1A2 V2 tank, which is the top-of-the-line battle tank that we have right now. The most advanced — yes, it has some self-diagnosis stuff out there but what you really need so you’re not swapping out components and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars so one little circuit card is burnt out, you have to pay a civilian to deploy. You have to have this proprietary laptop to tell you what exactly is wrong with it so you can fix it quicker. This is something that President Eisenhower warned us of when he left. He said, “Beware of the military industrial complex.”
Just think of all the stuff we have bought over the years. Stuff that doesn’t make sense like these cab-over family of medium tactical vehicles — these trucks that if you put armor on they flip. I wonder how many retired general officers are sitting on that board now?
We watched this thing about LOGCAP [Logistics Civil Augmentation Program] in CGSC [Command and General Staff College ] and ILE [Intermediate Level Education] and it’s about operational contract support. There was one in particular. There was one of KBR’s vice presidents out in operations — a major general retired.
Don’t tell me there wasn’t any nepotism going on. I look at General Dynamics Land Systems and all the retired colonels, lieutenant colonels and CW5s that are all friends of friends running PM Abrahams and PM Bradley project managers. How much influence do they have on getting their way because the maintenance guy for General Dynamics Land Systems was the battalion maintenance tech, or knew the corps commander when he was a battalion commander, and they go way back?
…My successes were, as was typical for me and my career was that I make shit happen. Sometimes it’s not pretty. Sometimes it is at a very high personal cost but I get it done. A lot of it is through personal appeals or just working with people.
The colonels and generals don’t really care. They just want results, which is why we have a lot of toxic leaders. I would go out and use my personal experience in talking with the civilian managers and mid-level managers — other majors and other field grades. I was appealing for assistance and telling them what I could do for them. I could get more done that way than just running up the flagpole and saying, “This person is being a pain in the ass and not giving me what we need to support the mission.”
It was more trying to figure out how to gather up a coalition and move forward than just strong-arming my way through it. I had no authority where I was at so I had to work up positional power by my knowledge and what I was capable of doing and my somewhat effective, but still limited, personal skills.