GERMERSHEIM, Germany –
A collection of Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services expeditionary civilians and DLA Joint Reserve Force servicemembers have assembled a solid team and are developing skills together during the U.S. Army’s DEFENDER 2024 exercise in Germersheim, Germany, in May.
Participants were tasked with the construction of a modular, scalable Expeditionary Site Set, which DLA can deploy to provide downrange property disposal services to warfighters during overseas contingency operations or domestic disaster response missions. Once the ESS has been constructed, the exercise team receives and processes property and conducts demilitarization or scrap production tasks just like real-world deployers would.
One unique aspect separating this year’s DEFENDER effort from previous exercises is the successful first-time use of DLA’s new Warehouse Management System in an expeditionary environment, said exercise Area Manager Maggie Mieras. Activating it required the creation of a new location account and gaining approval for participant user roles within the WMS virtual environment.
Mieras said that outside of establishing WMS use for an ESS site, the team would prioritize a focus on teamwork and skill training and help participants build on the introductory reverse logistics skills DLA teaches in the classroom.
“We’re all from different sites, but we’ve come together quickly. We have an awesome collective skillset here,” said Property Disposal Specialist Danny Baker, a retired Marine Corps staff sergeant with previous DLA deployment experience who is serving as the exercise site lead during DEFENDER. The Camp Pendleton-based disposition support representative said that if the team can conduct its operations safely, and if the more experienced members get to work on material handling equipment and WMS familiarization with the less knowledgeable, he’ll consider the event a success.
“This is a great opportunity for us all to learn from each other,” Baker said. “Any time we can provide this kind of training and pick each other’s brain on how to do our job, it’s a great experience.”
Every participant arrived with a different level of understanding, and each had personal development goals in mind. Material Examiner and Identifier John Kelley, from the DLA Disposition Services Susquehanna site in Pennsylvania, said that he had multiple deployments as a Marine, but when he first began working with the agency almost three years ago, he knew nothing about his role or the major sub-command’s reverse logistics mission.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” Kelley said.
Then Kelley deployed to Kuwait last year, which he described as an intense development experience, and the prospect of gaining an even more comprehensive grasp on the expeditionary world prompted him to volunteer for DEFENDER.
“The more I learn, the better off I am, and this has been a great learning experience so far,” Kelley said. “You want to get as much experience as you can, so that eventually you’re the seasoned veteran and people can come to you as a resource.”
Every ESS comes with heavy equipment like the wheeled excavator. Kelly said the opportunity to work with that kind of MHE at his home station is rare, and an exercise scenario offers the opportunity to firm up his command of the portable site’s impressive machines.
The possibility of extra time behind the controls of MHE also drew Navy Logistics Specialist 3rd Class Jacob Guiao to Germany. He’s serving in his very first Navy Reserve billet as a DLA Joint Reserve Force member assigned to Disposition Support Unit 1 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.
Since joining DSU-1, he’s participated in the Contingency Operations Readiness Exercise in Battle Creek in 2022 and attended agency courses on demilitarization, property accounting, and basic MHE operation. He recently earned his first MHE license and was eager for the opportunity to continue building that skillset. He said that taking part in DEFENDER has allowed him to understand the culture of DLA Disposition Services better.
“It’s a good way to see how the worlds within DLA come together, and it’s a great opportunity to learn from our civilian counterparts,” Guiao said. “We’ve been able to spend time as a team, both in and out of work, and everyone is working really well together.”
DEFENDER lasts from late March through May and is the largest Army-led exercise in Europe, involving more than 17,000 U.S. and 23,000 multi-national servicemembers from more than 20 allied and partner nations.