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Soldiers prep for desert advance, stage ammo

CAMP DOHA, Kuwait (Army News Service, March 19, 2003) -- Soldiers with the 19th Armored Cavalry Regiment installed winches this week onto their High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicles during final preparations for a possible advance into Iraq.

Across the desert at Camp New Jersey, a section of the 377th Field Artillery Regiment, attached to the 101st Airborne Division, practiced loading artillery shells into 155-mm howitzers while wearing protective masks. The drills familiarized soldiers with operating while under a nuclear, biological or chemical attack, leaders said. They said "deliberate occupation drills" also prepared the soldiers to quickly place their howitzers, fire, and move out within minutes.

The two units are part of a huge military force assembled in Kuwait, prepared to respond if President Bush gives the order. As troops wait, high winds and sandstorms are predicted for the area over the next few days, according to weather reports.

Storms have affected training and offloading of ammunition in Kuwait during the past few weeks, officials said.

Lightning storms and high seas caused some delays in bringing ammunition ashore from the Motor Vessel SSG Edward A. Carter Jr., according to the Army Materiel Command. It took about 10 days to offload more than 850 20-foot containers from the ship.

The MV Carter was anchored about 1.5 miles from shore due to its 35-foot draft and the amount of explosives aboard. Soldiers from the 24th Transportation Battalion out of Fort Eustis, Va., moved the ammunition to the beach using the Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or JLOTS concept. Army Landing Craft Utility, or LCUs, and Navy causeway ferries were used to transport the ammunition.

"Once containers were on dry land, they were moved to a staging area pending onward transportation to the Class V Theater Storage Area," said Neil Wachutka, a quality assurance specialist for the U.S. Army Field Support Command from Rock Island, Ill.

The MV Carter is a part of the Field Support Command's Army War Reserve Program. The vessel is one of 12 ships carrying propositioned stocks for the Army.

This new rapid response is a result of improving upon the 1991 Gulf War time to put ammunition and other supplies in the hands of soldiers, AMC officials said. The Combat Prepositioning Force concept of operations calls for at-sea prepositioning of combat equipment for an armored brigade, including about 120 tanks that are ready to respond to a threat until reinforcements arrive from the continental United States.

(Editor's note: Compiled from reports out of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command in Kuwait and an article by Bob Whistine, the public affairs officer for the AMC-Logistic Support Element, Southwest Asia.)