AFMC Command News

Lean effort: Robins colonel shares Iraqi mission success

  • Published
  • By Lanorris Askew
  • 78th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. (AFMCNS) --  The Lean journey recently debuted on the battlefield. Lt. Col. Calvin Butts, Center deputy director for Plans and Programs at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., led a group made up of members from every branch of the military working together to set up a first of its kind operation called the Joint Air Cargo Operations Team, or JACOT, at Al Taqaddum Air Base, Iraq.

The mission of the JACOT according to Colonel Butts was to mitigate convoy losses by moving more cargo in theater using airlift.

"The problem in this area had to do with mounting attacks on convoys," he said. "The convoys are very vulnerable targets. Those re-supplying the camps and forward operations were being hit by improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, RPGs, snipers ... you name it."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to mitigate the risk from convoy operations. One way to do that is through tactical airlift. Airlift is less vulnerable than ground convoys to the type of threats faced in Iraq. As a logistics readiness officer with experience running cargo and passenger operations as well as performing aircraft command and control, Colonel Butts was sent in to set up an airhead that would flow cargo to vital areas and reduce the number of convoys.

"Al Taqaddum Air Base, a forward Marine base, is located in an area known as the 'triangle of death' in a region encompassing Baghdad, Fallujah and Najaf," said Colonel Butts, "It's called the triangle of death because most of the murders, kidnappings, bombings and overall banditry happen there. The only way to describe it is it's like the Wild West, but with much better weapons."

During the standard rotation, he and his team literally built a good portion of their work area.

"The traditional Air Force deployment is usually to a place where there is solid infrastructure already in place, but at Al Taqaddum you're living and working out of mortar-holed tents," said Colonel Butts.

During his first week there a Russian 122 mm rocket attack hit 80 feet behind him and exploded.

"The blast radius on this rocket is about 1,000 feet, but it just knocked the hell out of me," he said. "It was kind of my welcome to Iraq."

With events like that as their back drop, the colonel commanded a team of 29 Airmen along with a company of Marines and several Soldiers and Sailors.

"One of the key things we do here at the Center is Lean. You don't have a better incentive to Lean out and streamline your processes than when people are shooting mortars at you while you're working," he said. "If they would've hit an aircraft on the ground, it would've been a big victory for the terrorists.

"It would've been all over the news. So we had to expeditiously work those aircraft and protect the crews. Get them in and out as quickly and safely as we could."

To help do that the troops used Lean.

"The Center will be able to relate to the work we did in streamlining our processes," he said. "We actually redesigned the cargo and passenger flow on ground time to one-sixth of the normal previous times.

"While the average C-130 takes in excess of 30 minutes to upload/download, the JACOT team was able to get it done in less than 20 minutes. C-17s, which once took more than an hour, were fully uploaded and downloaded in less than 20 minutes.

"The aircrews loved us for that because they didn't want to hang around Al Taqaddum," he said. "We used a lot of the same steps we do in Lean events at the ALC. The more time the aircraft were on the ground, the more vulnerable they were to a stray rocket or mortar. So we worked hard to cut those times.

"At the end of my tour, we'd worked 1,200 missions and moved more than 26,000 tons of cargo and 32,000 military passengers," he added. "Sixty-plus convoys were not necessary because of airlift. That's a good feeling to know GIs don't have to risk it on those roads.

"I had my Marines and Airmen kind of blending together all of their varied expertise and working flight line operations, while at the same time worrying about potential rocket and mortar attacks as well as snipers," he said. "We complemented each other. The Marines gave us additional weapons and hand-to-hand combat training to deal with the hostile environment. We gave them our expertise in flight line management and safety to deal with busy airlift operations."

They also trained the Marines on how to load C-17 aircraft; perform command and control for tactical and strategic airlift as well as to run an effective cargo yard.

"Working together, we gained the survival skills needed to operate successfully and stay alive in that type of environment," Colonel Butts said. "There are certainly cultural differences between the Air Force and Marines, but we found there were far more commonalities. We lived in the same conditions, worked towards a common purpose, believed in the same cause."