BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
The agency’s property disposal team in Kaiserslautern, Germany, recently helped a Special Operations Command element in Kentucky attain high-value excess equipment that could help quickly and efficiently fabricate buildings for uses like location-specific training.
Their missions may be hush-hush, but it’s no secret that the nation’s special operators often rehearse for field conditions with true-to-life mockups of the environments they’ll face when deployed. So, for SOCOM, developing in-house construction capabilities – particularly portable ones – is an ideal way to quickly raise new structures when requirements pop up.
Jason Osterman serves as a property disposal specialist at the Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services site in Kaiserslautern. He said that in late October, the Air Force’s 86th Logistics Readiness Squadron, based out of Ramstein Air Base near Frankfurt, handed over a “like-new” shipping container to DLA for disposition.
“First, it was requisitioned by a local unit that required a container for storage, not knowing it was a container built around a computerized framing system,” Osterman said. “I convinced them to requisition another container that was empty so that the stateside unit could utilize it for its actual purpose.”
Inside the normal-looking shipping container was a nearly $400,000 FRAMECAD F325iT fabricator that can create floors, walls, and roofs for modular, residential, and transportable structures from rolled steel fed through the machine by a conveyor. Osterman said that SOCOM property screeners indicated that they already possessed one, but could really use another, as the funding for an additional unit remained in “the distant future.”
“The container was dirty on the outside, but inside, the items were unused, and everything was still in boxes and wrapped in plastic,” Osterman said. “[SOCOM] said this would meet their needs much sooner and save money in the process.”
It took some extra effort for the unit to ship from Germany in late January. Osterman completed the extensive documentations and inventories and got the container re-certified for international shipment since its status had expired. He used his personal vinyl cutter to apply additional shipment lettering and he made sure the equipment passed agricultural and customs inspections by applying good old fashioned elbow grease.
“I did the agricultural cleaning myself,” he said. “Inside and out. I power washed all sides of the container, mopped, dusted, and cleared the bugs and spiderwebs out. And then loaded it.”
Osterman said the project was “a little more work than anticipated and required a couple delays,” but was a good learning experience overall.
He credited the local U.S. Customs inspection office, the U.S. Army 39th Transportation Battalion, and Theater Logistics Support Center Europe with assisting in the shipment preparation.