Gulf War Air Power Survey
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- 1 Logistics of the Gulf War
- Significant Factors Preparing for War in Southwest Asia
- Deploying to the Theater
- The magnitude of the airlift effort during Desert Shield and Desert Storm was unprecedented.
- Cargo shipped early in the operation was marked simply 3 “Desert Shield” (above). Cargo and passengers were forwarded
Overview and Readiness Chapter 1, Logistics of the Gulf War, summarizes the achievements of airpower‑related logistics during the Persian Gulf crisis and introduces basic concepts, while distilling everything in this volume. Chapter 2, Preparation for a Southwest Asia Contingency, outlines the state of logistic planning for contingency on the eve of the invasion of Kuwait. Subsequent chapters discuss execution in detail. This chapter provides an overview of the facilities available in the theater and shows how prepositioning had been planned. Central to the discussion (and somewhat contrary to the usual perspective) is the idea of the wing/base rather than the aircraft squadron as the deployable unit. Mobility This section concentrates on logistical support delivered by air and on the logistics needed to sustain air operations. Sealift and ground transportation are considered, but only as they contribute to or affect air power. Chapter 3, Deploying to the Theater, describes the effort required to deploy CENTCOM units from all Services and includes the Navy's deployment of carriers to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea in context with the first USAF fixed-wing deployment in the Gulf War. This chapter also covers the deployment of airlift, the deployment of land‑based aviation (including Army and USMC aircraft), and the significance of the politically difficult acquisition of landing and overflight rights within the theater and along the airlift route structure. The network of overseas bases played a significant role in combat readiness during the earliest phases of Desert Shield. The contributions of equipment, crews, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF), and the mobilization of reservists is included in this chapter. Chapter 4, Intra‑Theater Lift, concentrates on airlift within the theater and also discusses land transport in support of air forces, the Army, and the Marines. Chapter 5, Air Refueling, during the deployment as well as during the air campaign, identifies the degree to which air refueling is integral and essential in getting the forces in position and carrying out combat operations. Sustainment Chapter 6, Arming the Force, presents the munitions story, including special operations munitions, precision-guided munitions, and prepositioning. Efforts required to move munitions to the theater, lead times involved, and distribution problems within the theater are also covered. A sense of timing in readiness to fight is developed. Finally, the quantities of munitions transported to the theater and used during the war are summarized and interpreted. Chapter 7, Supplying the Force, focuses on general supplies, including aircraft parts and petroleum products. Organizational and supply process innovations are considered, and the logistics role of TAC as CENTAF Rear is explored and compared with normal doctrine. Chapter 8, Maintaining the Force, sketches the maintenance support posture for Desert Shield/Desert Storm, on the flightline, in and out of the theater, and in Europe and the United States. This chapter also provides a careful study of mission-capable (MC) rates and their meaning, explaining why a number of systems had high MC rates, and why overall, the MC rates initially reported were unintentionally inflated. The challenges of operating in a desert environment when problems were encountered are documented. Conclusion Chapter 9, Logistics Performance, explores in greater depth the themes raised in the introduction and in each chapter. It assesses logistics performance and implicitly raises issues for the future. While this logistic study has attempted to survey those areas involved in the Gulf War that gave rise to significant events in logistical operations, relating those events to air power, it does not include every conceivable event or exhaust all sources of information. It does, nevertheless, include materials from the following sources: • Interviews with key personnel, • Written accounts from all levels, perspectives, and func tional areas, • Unit histories, • DOD, JCS, and Service reports and studies, • Situation reports, message traffic, briefings, and official reports, • Air Force Remedial Action Program lessons learned, • Joint Uniform Lessons Learned System (JULLS), and • Relevant, publicly available books and articles. To the greatest degree possible, this study is based upon research in primary sources. There were, however, some methodological issues that bear on the study of logistics in the Gulf War air campaign. The first point is that it is difficult (sometimes impossible) to obtain accurate information on the actions of the people and the organizations which comprised and managed logisticsespecially during the August through mid-September 1990 time period. In this volume, after-the-fact testimony from participants has been used extensively, with full understanding that memories may be faulty or that the participants may have rethought or embellished their experiences. Second, a great majority of data that could have been generated and collected during Desert Shield and Desert Storm appears not to have even been written down; this situation is a result of extensive use of voice communication. It is also, in part, the failure of automated systems to work and provide source data capture for the benefit of management in the theater as well as the United States. In addition, many important messages are known to have been transmitted only by facsimile and sometimes lost to history. The Gulf War Air Power Survey logistics effort nevertheless accumulated vast amounts of data available to provide a highly detailed account of the Gulf War. In fact, during the final weeks in preparing the final draft, researchers continued to uncover documentation that could have been pursued had time permitted. Other historians who follow can, we hope, use it to continue the analysis. 1 Logistics of the Gulf War The first question Logistics asks is, “Where and when do you want to fight.” When operational plans are executed, logistics activities must provide support where, when, how, for whom, and in sufficient quantities. In the Gulf War, logistics forces transported almost everything required to fight and sustain. The scenario began with mobilizing and deploying operations and support for Desert Shield and reached a crescendo of combat action in Operation Desert Storm. Key ingredients for eventual success were highly trained and very flexible personnel, capable and reliable weapon systems, a mature airlift system, the legacy of the 1980s spare parts buys, the Cold War force structure to draw upon, the Cold War thaw that permitted wide use of previously unavailable (for non-NATO and/or non-SIOP use) forces and equipment, an extensive air-refueling system, an unprecedented coalition of financial and force structure resources, prepositioned equipment and munitions, a Saudi air base structure to accommodate the buildup, and a cooperative enemy. Significant Factors Preparing for War in Southwest Asia In early 1990, preparation for a Gulf War was not first priority for U.S. General Purpose Forces. The main level of effort focused on a potential war in Europe, and most planning and preparation reflected that focus. Certain expectations making sense for a European War did not for the Gulf War. Although the unmet expectations became opportunities to innovate and excel, in some cases they created problems that had to be resolved in the midst of Gulf War operations. The Air Force recognized the concept of Bases and Lines of Communication as fundamental to its combat support doctrine. The basing structure on the eve of the Gulf Conflict was a product of the Cold War, and most of the bases were in either Europe or the continental United States (CONUS). Although the basing structure was rich, it was in the wrong place for a conflict in Southwest Asia (SWA) and placed a premium on lines of communication. Much of the preparations for war in SWA centered on solving those problems. Traditionally, the aircraft squadron was viewed as a basic combat unit, and the concept of operations called for deploying aircraft squadrons from an operational base in the CONUS to another operational base somewhere overseas. That concept oversimplified logistics requirements for the SWA situationan unprepared theater where almost all material had to be transported in and the pragmatic deploying unit was more nearly the wing and/or base itself. The concept of theater support for the Gulf War was a network of bare bases with host wings predominating. The host wings exercised authority over most functions in their respective locations, supported tenant wings, and prepared base support plans for bases to which they were deployed as hosts. Most support was initially furnished from homestation; but support remained linked to the CONUS, the reason why lines of communication were of paramount importance. Although no U.S. facilities existed in SWA, numerous others developed according to U.S. standards were being used by Saudi defense forces or for civilian purposes. The primary air bases and air logistics centers had been built or augmented largely because of long-standing security assistance relationships or U.S. funding. U.S. Air Force, Central Command (USCENTAF) identified fourteen locations of sufficient merit to beddown 750 aircraft and support approximately 30,000 personnel. Deploying to the Theater The Air Force had prepositioned $1 billion worth of fuel, ammunition, and equipment in Oman, Bahrain, and aboard three ships. At the beginning of Desert Shield, two of these ships were at Diego Garcia and the third was off the coast of France. The ships immediately headed toward their designated offload ports. This prepositioning effort eliminated an estimated 3,500 strategic airlift missions. Overall however, the airlift savings were small compared with the unused capabilities afforded by complete use of strategic airlift aircraft, full mobilization of reserve and guard aircrews and support personnel, and all three stages of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Additionally, incomplete planning, onload processing limitations, throughput congestion at enroute bases, lack of a theater staging base, and mission handling equipment limitations contributed to delays and limited through put. Despite prepositioned fuel, ammunition, and equipment, the magnitude of the airlift effort during Desert Shield and Desert Storm was unprecedented. By 10 March 1991, strategic airlift had moved over 500,000 people and 540,000 tons of cargo. At the height of the Desert Shield airlift, Military Airlift Command's (MAC's) cargo movement averaged 17 million ton-miles per day. By comparison, during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, U.S. airlift moved 4.4 million ton-miles per day. Other historical comparisons include the World War II “Hump” at 0.9 million ton-miles per day, the Berlin Airlift at 1.7 million ton-miles per day, and Operation Just Cause at 2.0 million ton-miles per day. 1
and Desert Storm was unprecedented. From the moment Desert Shield began, the Military Airlift Command depended heavily upon the civil airline industry to fulfill its airlift requirements. Without the thousands of missions flown by civil air carriers, the Command's airlift fleet could not have moved required troops and cargo to the Arabian Peninsula by the time the United Nations deadline expired on 15 January 1991. The airline industry's readiness to participate in a major contingency such as Desert Shield was prearranged through a Civil Reserve Air Fleet program. Under the program, participating U.S. civil air carriers voluntarily commit their aircraft and other resources to support U.S. national interests when Department of Defense airlift requirements exceed the capabilities of the Command's organic fleet. In addition, the Command resorted to extraordinary measures to maximize its own aircrew availability in August and September 1990. The deployment and use of airlift, particularly in the early days, was anything but well executed. Little information was available to deploying units about their possible beddown bases. Several locations were newly built, and others were bare bases. Changes to beddown bases further complicated unit deployment preparations and airlift prioritization. Beddown changes resulted from host nation sensitivities, ramp congestion, and mismatches between aircraft, munitions, and support equipment. Several units were never able to project their airlift requirements accurately. Near the end of its deployment, one major unit cancelled over 60 missionsthen shortly thereafter requested that some be reinstated. Because no approved plan to execute existed, no transportation-feasible time-phased force deployment document (TPFDD) was available as the basis for execution planning by MAC or Transportation Command. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Transportation Command had to work together to build the document (and have it entered into the Joint Operational and Planning Execution System) as it was being executed. MAC's initial tasking consisted of an unprioritized list of units to be deployed as soon as possible. Airlift execution planning problems fell into two major categories: priorities and requirements. Of the two, requirements problems were more pervasive, persistent, and harder to understand. Hundreds of Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine units were submitting data or making entries that wound up in the TPFDD. Entries contained so many errors that they were unreliable for determining airlift requirements. Common errors included major differences between stated and actual tonnage and passengers to be moved, failures to identify oversize and outsize cargo properly, wrong onload locations, and wrong available-to-load dates. As a result, some missions were sent to locations having no cargo or passengers to transport. For instance, MAC scheduled a Boeing 747 to fly from Paris to the East Coast to pick up 400 troops. The troops did not exist and the airplane returned to Paris empty. Other missions were scheduled and then cancelled because there were no real requirements, and numerous missions had to be added to cover understated requirements. As a result of requirements uncertainty, estimated airlift requirements for the first seven deploying units increased by sixty percent between 11 and 13 August. The increase forced the Command to schedule more sorties than originally planned for those units and to delay airlift for follow-on units. A major Joint Operations and Planning Execution System shortcoming was an inability to track partially deployed Unit Type Cases (UTCs). Most deploying fighter squadrons did not receive all the airlift they required or expected. As a result, over half of the CENTAF TPFDD consisted of nonstandard UTCs created especially to capture cargo left behind by units otherwise considered closed. Each of these UTCs had to be individually entered into the Execution System database, and detailed information on its contents was unavailable. As a result, automatically tracking what was deployed and what was not became impossible. Manual tracking of the loads was manpower intensive and inherently error prone. MAC's computer models could not provide reports to analyze the schedule and determine where the flow would exceed the throughput capacity. Consequently, bases became backlogged because they could not support the magnitude of the flow. As stations at flow points were “maxed out,” the Command had no recourse except to interrupt the flow; that happened on several occasions. Because CINCCENT decided to deploy combat units ahead of logistics support and sustainment cargo, CENTCOM did not allocate airlift resources to channel operations until 24 August; then, it allocated four C‑141s per day. Consequently, backlogs of sustainment cargo routinely built up at CONUS aerial ports. Compounding the problem was the fact that cargo caught in the backlogs was often assumed lost and subsequently reordered by users. MAC took periodic initiatives to keep sustainment cargo from backing up at CONUS aerial ports. The fact that the initiatives were needed demonstrated that peacetime criteria used by airlift clearance authorities to enter cargo into the airlift system are not responsive to a combat commander's tonnage allocations and sustainment priorities. At one point in early September, fifty-two percent of sustainment cargo awaiting air shipment was coded at the top priority level. Because locations and units involved were classified, much of the cargo shipped early in the operation was marked simply “Desert Shield”; most of it ended up at Dhahran. Due to USCENTCOM deployment priorities, only limited support forces at Dhahran were available to sort and distribute arriving cargo. Cargo backlogs at Dhahran exceeded 1,000 pallets and dwarfed backlogs at CONUS aerial ports. The innovative daily Desert Express mission for high-priority cargo achieved its objectives. At the end of 1990, Desert Express departure reliability from Charleston and Torrejon was one hundred percent, while arrivals at Dhahran and Riyadh averaged fifty minutes early. Desert Express cut response time for high-priority shipments from as much as two weeks to as little as seventy-two hours, and the users were very happy with the system. This splendid innovation was a fix to make up for serious problems with priorities and asset intransit visibility. However, the showstopper Desert Express support incurred a tradeoff cost. To ensure Desert Express reliability, missions had priority to delay other flights, C-141s were placed on alert to ensure departure deadlines, and missions went with less than full loads at times. Intratheater Lift The need for a capability to distribute personnel, supplies, and equipment was immediate and of immense proportions. Strategic airlift delivered over 540,000 tons of cargo into the theaterfifteen percent of the approximately 3.5 million tons of dry cargo delivered during the deployment phase of Desert Shield and more than 500,000 passengers. Most of the cargo and personnel was delivered to four major aerial ports of debarkation. From there, cargo and passengers were forwarded throughout the area of responsibility (AOR) by intratheater airlift and surface transportation. As a result, the intratheater lift systems were an essential element of air power in the Gulf area; they were instrumental in the success of the entire Desert Shield/Storm operation. However, basic planning for intratheater distribution was marginal. The initial combat forces arrived before adequate combat service support and onward movement capability were established. The system did not cope well with the significant and cascading requirements, leading ultimately to a doubling of the force structure in the theater. The situation was lengthened by a 2
3 “Desert Shield” (above). Cargo and passengers were forwarded throughout the area of responsibility (AOR) by intratheater airlift (below). USCENTCOM decision to increase stockage levels in the theater from thirty to sixty days. Finally, the intratheater distribution problem was compounded by the poor in-transit cargo visibility capability of the various service systems. To support the ground campaign, tactical airlift was called on to airlift the entire XVIII Airborne Corps from King Fahd and nearby bases to Rafha, a distance of over 400 miles. The flow into Rafha averaged one landing every seven minutes for the first thirteen days of the move. The C‑130 fleet utilization rate for this period was 8.0, twice the planned wartime rate, and 14,000 personnel and over 9,000 tons of equipment were transported. Air Refueling Air refueling played a significant role in every phase of air operations in the Gulf War. It extended the range of deploying aircraft, involved innovative tactics to compress closure time in getting combat units in place, and formed an integral part of virtually all strike, reconnaissance, and airborne command and control operations. A majority of all combat sorties required air refueling, either inbound, outbound, or both from their targets. (The B-52s based at [DELETED] were among the few aircraft not requiring refueling on the way to their targets.) Planning for air refueling was incomplete. The final commitment of tankers in support of Desert Shield far exceeded the requirements specified in the “on-the-shelf” operational plans, but continuous experience in Tanker Task Force activity enabled quick response to deployment taskings. Twenty-one bases in twelve foreign countries were used as tanker beddown locations for over 300 tankers. The planning, employment, basing, and daily numbers of committed tanker aircraft were constantly adjusted throughout Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The aircrew manning level of Strategic Air Command's (SAC's) KC-135 and KC-10 tanker force had a direct impact on tanker operations. The KC-135 manning level was 1.27 and was based primarily on supporting SAC's Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) commitment. The manning level of the KC-10 was more than sufficient to support the 2.0 AOR requirement. Although the Command was not explicitly tasked with an airlift role other than that associated with the dual-role KC-10, organic air movement proved necessary to move resources in support of B-52, KC-135, KC-10, RC‑135, and U-2 aircraft because MAC's capability was saturated. The critical limiting factor affecting air refueling during Desert Storm was airspace. This problem was not confined to theater operations but was also a major factor on the Turkey/Iraqi border and in the Mediterranean. Because of the Airborne Warning and Control System's (AWACS') ability to view a large part of the air war through the use of its radar, and because procedures were established for the tactical checking of aircraft, many tanker aircrews believed AWACS was functioning like an air route traffic control center in the CONUS. Limitations to the AWACS' radar, computational capabilities, and workload of the personnel assigned do not allow the AWACS to function as an air traffic controller facility. In some instances, tanker crews, mistakenly believing they were under full radar coverage and flight-following protection, had near mid‑air collisions with other Allied aircraft. Arming the Force The Air Force alone used over thirty kinds of munitions in Operation Desert Storm. Naval Air used nine varieties, and Army aviation units added thirteen to U.S. totals. Coalition air forces additionally employed some twenty-six unique types of their own munitions. As is true with other resources, the story of ammunition, conventional unguided bombs, cluster bomb units, precision guided munitions (“smart bombs”), and special operations munitions describes significant successes mixed with troubling disconnects. The more than 48,000 short tons of munitions stocks prepositioned within Southwest Asia and aboard the three prepositioned ships were the only sources of munitions initially available to USCENTAF forces. The stocks represented a basic mix of conventional ordnance, with the inventory primarily consisting of MK-80-series general purpose bombs, Vietnam-vintage cluster bomb units ammunition, and laser-guided GBU-10 and -12 component resources. The munitions and components had been maintained, inspected, and renovated over several years by a combination of contractor and Air Force personnel. When Operation Desert Shield was initiated, the munitions were found to be fully serviceable and “combat ready.” To replenish prepositioned stocks, original planning factors for an Air Force, Central Command air campaign included approximately a forty-five-day “trip” to the Gulf. That estimate proved to be far too optimistic as Desert Shield unfolded. The movement of munitions from U.S. storage locations to the Gulf actually required from fifty-five to seventy-two days. In many cases, the munitions items did not reach their intended destination in the Gulf within that timespan. Often, it took that long to deliver the munitions to the Gulf explosives port. Munitions movement within the Gulf was also difficult and required exceptional management actions. Dealing with host-nation drivers and vehicles was complicated, involving centuries-old distrust and national security concerns between the countries of Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. To solve this problem, CENTAF Logistics was afforded C-130 intratheater airlift to deliver critically short munitions and component stocks to Gulf locations. Movement in the European theater was also a problem. Three major munitions depots were involved in supporting Desert Shield and Desert Storm: RAF Welford in the United Kingdom, Camp Darby in Italy, and Morbach in the Federal Republic of Germany. Each depot reported major problems with moving explosives over local roads and rail lines to ports, as well as problems with local national drivers accepting the responsibilities for handling munitions shipments. A shortage of explosives-capable semitrailer trucks and experienced drivers in the United States also stymied movement of munitions to the two explosives-capable U.S. port facilities: Sunny Point in North Carolina and Concord in California. An accurate accounting of munitions components was essential to understanding what munitions were on hand at the operational locations. Unfortunately, the inventories had to be created manually by arriving personnel because accurate, automated munitions-counting systems were not available to the in-place forces early in Desert Shield. During the conflict, the problem was compounded because the identification of munitions on arriving ships was the “mother of all mysteries” another indication of the intractability of intransit visibility. The problems were not resolved during the conflictinventory tracking of munitions components throughout Desert Shield and Desert Storm was done manually, resulting in significant inaccuracies in reported inventories, poor tracking of munitions in transportation channels, and lack of credible munitions information for senior Air Force managers. The nearly $100 million spent on the Combat Ammunition System since its inception in 1982 had not fully reached nor completely benefited the user. An important positive lesson stems from the beneficial impact of the Air Force Combat Ammunition Center located at Sierra Army Depot, California. Lt. Gen. Leo Marquez established the center to replace vanishing Vietnam-era conventional combat ammunition skills. The first class graduated in the spring of 1985, and as of the start of Operation Desert Shield, nearly 3,000 students had completed the course. Center-trained personnel formed the backbone of munitions production teams throughout Southwest Asia. Finally, the disparity between the quantity of munitions shipped and the quantity used is but one indication of how large the available set of resources was. Nearly 350,000 short tons of munitions were shipped by air and sea by the time the cease fire was called; of this amount, 69,000 short tons of munitions were expended. The cost of moving over 350,000 short tons of munitions to combat, then using only 69,000, also reveals an important problemis it possible to improve estimates of requirements for neutralizing the enemy? Supplying the Force Using the bottom-line measure of mission-capable aircraft, all of the supply support concepts used were effective. Various sources, including the CENTAF Rear Director of Supply, have stated that no missions were lost during Desert Storm for lack of supply support. We have found no evidence to contradict that statement. During Desert Storm, the overall not-mission-capable supply rate for aircraft was less than four percent. By contrast, the de-facto standard for peacetime supply performance was five percent, and the standards for wartime performance was up to twenty-five percent at the end of thirty days of wartime activity. The high mission capability rates during Desert Storm were achieved, at least in part, in spite of poor preparation and planning. Some ways in which planning either worked or did not and the kinds of innovations instituted are recounted below. The basic supply concept of operations in support of air power called for preplanned requirements driven by specific threat assumptions. While primary spares support for aircraft in the AOR initially came from war readiness spares kits and mission support kits deployed with the units, other support concepts evolved. One of the earliest and biggest was SAC's establishment of contingency supply support centers at Moron Air Base in Spain, Andersen AFB, Guam, and later at RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom. Another major spares support concept was the development and deployment of follow-on spares kits built on the fly by Headquarters Tactical Air Command. Strategic Air Command also developed and deployed additional packages of spares to augment the war readiness spares kits and other spares at the operating bases and the contingency supply support centers. These spares packages were similar in concept to follow-on spares kits. During Desert Shield and Desert Storm, all direct mission support requirements were ordered using Urgency of Need Designator A. As a result, all such requisitions translated to UJC/Priority Designator 01 (the highest value allowed) or 02, both of which translate to the highest transportation priority, Priority Group One. Hence, the relative needs of forces committed to Desert Shield and Desert Storm could not be distinguished until the Uniform Military Management and Movement Indicator System was for all intents and purposes overridden by dedicated airlift (Desert Express, European Express) and other on-the-spot innovations. Combined with aggressive spares sourcing and a nominal 72-hour delivery time to the AOR, Air Force, Central Command Logistics reported that . . . grounding mission-critical parts (MICAPs) decreased from over 500 for 750 aircraft on 1 Oct 90, to 219 for 1229 aircraft on 17 Jan 91, the day Operation Desert Storm began, and a not-mission-capable supply rate of four percent. This was an unprecedented achievement. In the early portions of Desert Shield, destination codes were not provided to the fieldeverything was shipped to Dhahran. As a result, hundreds of pallets sat in the Aerial Port facility at Dhahran; no one knew their intended destination or relative priority. The embedded deficiencies of the supply and transportation systems related to intransit visibility exacerbated the situation. While both systems had reasonably good tracking capabilities, visibility was often lost as an item moved from the supply system into the transportation system. Within the supply system, items were tracked by their requisition numbers. However, item movement within the transportation system was tracked by transportation control numbers. For shipping efficiency, many supply requisitions were consolidated into a single transportation movement unit. As a consequence, detailed traceability was often lost. When items needed for support of immediate mission requirements became delayed or lost within the system, it was difficult, and often impossible, to track them down and expedite their movement to the point of need. To help resolve this problem, the Air Force Logistics Information File was developed. The Air Force file was patterned after an Army Logistics Information File that had been in use for several years. However, the Air Force file became operational only in the latter part of Desert Storm and could not have helped intratheater transport. At the time the first aircraft units were deployed to the theater, a traditional approach to deployed asset accounting was envisioned. That approach specified that each deployed unit would use the deployable combat supply system initially. Then the unit would return to its homestation for support; final transition would be to a full Standard Base Supply System “mainframe” environment within the theater. The deployable combat supply system was a stand-alone computer processing system that performed essential supply inventory management processes. The system was actually very limited in capabilitydoing little more than accounting for what was on hand. Perhaps its most serious limitation, however, was that its designed telecommunication capability never worked properly. As deployment proceeded, the Standard Base Supply System was abandoned. Major concerns were raised with respect to the transportable shelter systems (i.e., the mainframes). Concerns centered on the configuration of the computer systems, the numbers of systems that were available, and the ability of the transportable shelter systems to withstand a move to the desert. Before the end of August 1990, the idea of establishing mainframe support within the theater was scrubbed and replaced with a new plan envisioning a single CONUS mainframe supporting all theater supply accounts. By the end of the war, the resulting CENTAF Supply Support Agency (CSSA) comprised the largest Air Force retail supply account on record; the account listed 288,290 items with an asset value in excess of $1.5 billion. That total included most of the aircraft kits, but only fifty to sixty percent of nonaircraft kits such as combat communications. Many nonaircraft spares packages and most equipment, however, remained to be picked up, and the major task of establishing and maintaining operating stock levels for the full range of base support items was never executed. The MICAP Asset Sourcing System, which had recently been installed at Tactical Air Command, proved to be effective in supporting MICAP requirements and was a noteworthy exception to preexisting systems that did not work. The new system provided worldwide visibility of assets, allowing the CSSA MICAP controllers to locate and request shipment of available assets quickly. Approximately forty-five percent of MICAP incidents were satisfied through lateral support actions requested through the CSSA. Approximately 8.5 million barrels of fuels were available before Desert Shield. However, about 4.1 million barrels of the storage were malpositioned outside the AOR, and most of the fuel in the AOR was not in the right place. Also, prepositioned fuel and equipment in or near the AOR were not adequate to support all forces eventually deployed during Desert Shield/Desert Storm; however, they did provide initial fuels capability and supplemented the primary source. 4
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