HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — When the 4th Infantry Division's 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team landed in Europe for a nine-month deployment early this year, leaders got their units positioned, equipment tuned up and soldiers ready to fight in an unprecedented 14 days.

But when the next rotational brigade shows up in September, they're going to try to cut that down to 10 days, according to the commander of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

"These are self-imposed goals. There are no Army standards for this," Maj. Gen. Duane Gamble, whose command is responsible for logistical support to the European theater, told Army Times on March 14 at the Association of the U.S. Army Global Force Symposium. "The norm is upwards of 30 days for the movement, not to include the integration piece."

But as the Army settles into its new role of providing rotational brigades to support Operation Atlantic Resolve, an eastern Europe mission to secure NATO's border, it is also testing how quickly troops could respond to a Russian incursion if necessary.

Soldiers in 3rd ABCT did a dry run beforehand at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, Gamble said, compressing the normal 10-day integration period following movement into four days.

Then 3rd Brigade set a goal to get in position and ready for battle in 14 days, moving equipment to Poland mostly through the German rail system.

They did it, but it wasn't without hiccups.

"I can tell you it didn’t go smoothly," Gamble joked. "We accomplished the mission, but like everything in the Army, if it was easy, they’d have the Marine Corps do it."

In September, when 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division rolls in, Gamble said, the plan is to get into position by day 10, using mostly convoys and rail for the rest.

Getting ready

Meanwhile, the Army will continue building up pre-positioned equipment throughout Europe, with the idea that the rotational brigade would be the first line of defense against Russia, and, if a conflict popped off, the Army could send stateside soldiers to western Europe to pick up M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles and bring them to the front lines.

The first phase of that plan was completed in December, Gamble said, when the Army sent an armored brigade's worth of equipment to the Netherlands and a fires brigade set to Germany. That effort will continue and expand to Belgium through 2017 and 2018, he said.

"At the end of it, it’ll be about a division’s worth of equipment in Army pre-positioned stocks in Europe," Gamble said. "What I mean by the end of it is probably around 2020, 2021, depending on the resources and how fast the Army can do it."

A soldier walks past a line of M1 Abrams tanks Nov. 29 as the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division loads track and wheeled vehicles onto rail cars at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo. The 2,800 vehicles are bound for nine countries in central and eastern Europe where soldiers are being deployed in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.

Photo Credit: Christian Murdock/The Gazette via AP

There are also more rotational forces on the way to augment the armored brigade and the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade, which touched down in February.

"On the 28th of March, the ramp will come down on ships at Constanta, Romania, and Gdansk, Poland, and deliver a combat service support battalion and a movement control battalion," Gamble said, combining forces to officially transition the United State's role in Europe from assurance of NATO allies to Russian deterrence.

"We’ll have the combat power we need and the logistics and sustainment needed," he said.

Those back-to-back rotational forces are a big help, Gamble said, because his units have been running logistics using short, intermittent deployments over the past two years.

That means eating into their own readiness to drive out to Poland and Romania and spend time working with deployed units.

"They were moving all the equipment," said Command Sgt. Maj. Alberto Delgado, the 21st TSC's senior enlisted adviser. "The [movement control team], the transporters, were gone. And these are not named operations, so you don’t get the credit, the dwell time, like [Iraq or] Afghanistan. We were stressing the forces really badly."

With a rotational brigade handling operations, he added, units permanently stationed in Europe won't get behind on professional military education, for example.

To keep up, the 21st TSC was moving sergeants out of embassies to go in and out of national movement control centers every two or three months, Gamble said.

"Their technical skills were getting honed, but their unit collective skills? Atrophying," he said.

In that sense, Gamble added, he'd much rather have rotational units over permanent ones in the five-year plan.

"The Army is busy, but when that unit goes home, they’ll get block leave. They got block leave before they came, they’ll have trained up for the mission, they’ll go home more ready than they came," he said. "Instead, what we’re doing for the past two years with the assigned force is we’ve been trying to do that by moving people back and forth."

Now, he added, soldiers in the 16th Sustainment Brigade, for example, will do quick trips into eastern Europe rather than driving all over the Baltic region.

"By June, if you’re an incoming soldier to the 21 TSC, you’re going to hear about how tough it’s been, and you’re going to wonder, ‘Why are these people crying? It’s a pretty good life,'" Gamble said.

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

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