Feature Article

Lee's Logistics

The consolidation of U.S. Army logistical operations at Ft. Lee will bolster the supply-chain sector in Greater Richmond. Expect expanded educational offerings and more opportunity for private contractors. 

By Peter Galuszka

Ft. Lee, named after the South’s most famous general, has long played a major, if quiet, role in defending the United States since its founding just before World War I. Some 134,000 doughboys trained there to fight in the trenches of Europe during the Great War. After a 20-year hiatus, the post prepared quartermasters and other supply personnel for combat service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Once again, Ft. Lee is on the move. The post, located along the marshy banks of the Appomattox River near Petersburg, is on the verge of one of the largest expansions of any military facility in Virginia, a state already saturated with defense facilities.

The number of troops training on any given day at Ft. Lee will nearly double to 9,000, while 3,250 new permanent jobs for military, civilian and contract workers will be added within a few years. “I think this will be one of the biggest shots in the arm for the region for a long time to come,” says U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, whose 4th district includes Ft. Lee, Petersburg and Hopewell.

The expansion also will cement the Greater Richmond region’s standing as a rising logistics center. Already, local supply chain companies such as CapTech Ventures and Richmond Cold Storage are interacting with Ft. Lee trainees by giving them hands-on experience with radio-based tracking devices. That type of cooperation will likely expand, as will the role of local educational institutions such as John Tyler Community College and Virginia State University that offer expanded logistics management courses to military personnel and civilian students.

With so many more troops being trained locally and with more logistics courses in the mill in local schools, Ft. Lee will become a heavier center of gravity in the supply chain world. It will make the Greater Richmond area a stronger player, says Dr., Marshall W. Smith, president of John Tyler Community College, which will reopen a Ft. Lee office and offer more supply courses. Considering the magnitude of Ft. Lee’s expansion, local supply chain firms can’t help but benefit. “It becomes a very logical thing to do,” he says.

Ft. Lee and Greater Richmond are benefiting from the double-edged sword that is the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Otherwise, known as BRAC, the commission meets every 10 years to assess the viability of defense facilities. BRAC shocked state leaders last summer when it recommended that the Master Jet Base at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach be shuttered unless the city did more to prevent building close to runways. About the same time, BRAC recommended a huge expansion of Ft. Lee.

The cold water of the Oceana announcement drowned out the good news on Ft. Lee. The Army post expansion remains the biggest of its kind in many years. Numerous Army supply training programs will be consolidated there from bases and offices in Maryland, Texas, Missouri, Washington, D.C. and Alabama. According to Esther Lee, deputy garrison commander at Ft. Lee, the consolidations will offer the Defense Department savings worth millions of dollars. Some estimate they could save more than $900 million over the next 20 years.

Part of the expansion stems from an army effort to rationalize its Combined Arms Support Command at Ft. Lee. The post already houses the Logistics Management College, which trains senior non-commissioned officers and officers in logistics matters in courses that can last a full year. It also offers myriad other courses that can run from three weeks to 12 months in length. Thousands of supply sergeants in the Army and Marine Corps cut their teeth at Ft. Lee’s Quartermaster Center and School. Lower grades have been trained in everything from handling petroleum to purifying drinking water under field combat conditions.

Not only will existing operations be expanded, but new ones will be added. The Ordnance School and Center will be transferred from the Aberdeen Proving Ground north of Baltimore so that military personnel will be trained in stocking and transporting munitions of all types. The Army’s Missile and Munitions Center will move from the Redstone Alabama to Ft. Lee where students will train the repair and supply chain aspects of battlefield rockets and missiles. Transportation training will move up the James River from Ft. Eustis and cooks will get culinary education at Ft. Lee instead of at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio. Combining so many training units “argues for better efficiency,” says Forbes.

What’s more, Ft. Lee’s traditional training of Army and Marine Corps personnel will be expanded to include all of the armed services including the Air Force and Navy. Forbes says this is part of a larger trend within the Defense Department to consolidate services across all of the military branches. The idea is to save money and make the military more unified in how it approaches combat doctrine.

Taken together, the moves will mean that on any given day, 4,200 more troops will be training at Ft. Lee, making the total about 9,000, says Lee, the deputy garrison commander. Although the numbers are not firm, it is expected that 3,250 permanent new military, civilian and contract personnel also will be added. Of the lot, about half will be civilians and 45 percent military, notes Lee. The nearby Defense General Supply Center, one of three major warehouse military installations in the U.S., will not be affected by the Ft. Lee expansion.

BRAC's recommendations, which have been approved by President George W. Bush, must be completed by 2011, but officials expect that it will be about three years before most of the new people arrive. As they stream in, Ft. Lee will need a major increase in office and training buildings, residence quarters and other support facilities. This is obviously a boon to local construction workers, but hard figures aren’t available on what the new construction budget might be.

It isn’t certain either what the regional economic impact will be in precise dollar terms. A proposed study by the Virginia Employment Commission was recently postponed, says Dennis K. Morris, executive director of the Crater Planning District Commission. Local and state officials needed a better idea of the sequence that military units will be arriving, says Morris, whose planning commission includes 10 counties and cities close to Ft. Lee.

Another factor that needs to be addressed is federal law requiring an Environmental Impact Statement on the ecological, social and economic effects of the expansion before Ft. Lee can start the large-scale construction projects to handle the added troops and civilians. Morris says that should take all of this year and perhaps part of 2007. Thus, the bulk of the new military students probably won’t be at Ft. Lee until 2009.

One problem, Morris says, is that Ft. Lee is largely built out. The post is already under stress because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have prompted the Army to beef up the operations of the 49th Quartermaster Corps. The Ft. Lee unit handles petroleum and water supplies and helps prepare fallen soldiers for burial. Some 500 extra troops arrived at Ft. Lee this year and some 400 more are expected over the next two years, says Morris. Their addition is independent of the BRAC recommendations.

While there are no hard numbers yet on the expansion’s economic impact, some believe that the 7,450 new permanent or transient personnel could mean another 11,000 jobs might be created when all economic fields, from cutting hair to building new homes and apartments, are considered. Forbes cautions against drumming up exact numbers just yet.

“We’re all really pumped about Ft. Lee,” says Greg Lyons, director of business development/federal sector, at Cap Tech Ventures, a Richmond-based technology company that is involved in training military personnel at Ft. Lee’s Logistics Management College. Cap Tech, for instance, develops management systems for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices that use radio to track parcels as they move through supply chains. Cap Tech and Richmond Cold Storage work together to give Ft. Lee students hands-on training in RFID technologies.

With the expansion, there’s more to come, says Lyons. “We can take lessons learned in the civilian sector and teach them at Ft. Lee and vice versa,” he says. A number of area firms are expected to participate. ”We’ll be helping not just in the logistics chain, but they’ll need help ramping up just to handle the big expansion,” he says. Greater Richmond companies will have a home-court advantage. Their headquarters are close by, so decision-making should be speedy, and there’s plenty of expertise available.

Greater Richmond’s status as a center of supply chain expertise also will get a boost because John Tyler Community College and Virginia State University in Petersburg plan to expand their logistics management training, too. John Tyler, based in Chesterfield County, had offered courses relating to supply-chain management but was forced to close its office at Ft. Lee several years ago because of state budget cuts.

Now that the state budget is back in the black and Ft. Lee will be growing, big plans are afoot at John Tyler, says President Smith. A first step will be for the community college to reopen its Ft. Lee office. It will develop new programs, both for on-the-job courses related to logistics and for courses that can lead to a two-year associate’s degree. “We’re going to be in much better shape,” he says.

Plans call for students training at Ft. Lee to be able to get college credit for their instruction at the post. They also could attend John Tyler or Virginia State courses off post to work on an associate, bachelors or masters degree in logistics management.

Smith says that he and Eddie N. Moore Jr., president of Virginia State, had an advantage because they were on governor’s commission on BRAC and had an early warning of the educational needs and opportunities the expansion at Ft. Lee afforded. Luckily, he says, they have plenty of time to prepare courses since “it takes a long time for the arm of the federal government to stretch out.”

The educational approach can only help Greater Richmond’s efforts to grow its logistical base. There are other practical, hands-on facilities that can build on the new courses available indirectly through the Ft. Lee expansion. For example, Richmond has a small deep sea terminal, major lines for two railroads, Norfolk Southern Corp and CSX along with one of the East Coast’s largest and strategically located rail yards, the Acca facility in Richmond.

Congressman Forbes sees another opportunity stemming from the Ft. Lee expansion. He believes that the military can share its expertise in supply chain management under adverse, combat conditions with its civilian counterparts in disaster management. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example, drew strong criticism for how it handled disaster relief in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer. “I would love to be able to use the expertise at Ft. Lee to do not only military logistics but to help urban localities do better preparation for natural catastrophes,” he says.

Should that happen, beefed up disaster recovery will be just one of several major boosts from the Ft. Lee expansion. The Greater Richmond region will become a more important place for supply chain management with a better-trained logistics workforce. BRAC usually sends shivers up the spines of public officials and company executives. This time, however, it has given Greater Richmond and parts of Southside an expensive gift so big that it will take years to unwrap it.

February 2006

 

Soldiers from Fort Lee prepare to attach a cable to the underside of a UH-60 Blackhawk during slingload operations.

Fort Lee soldiers remove a section of pipeline at the petroleum operations field training site.

For more information...

Ft. Lee website

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