PHILADELPHIA –
After 28 months of planning across multiple time zones, production by eight vendors and 4,000 manhours amongst 14 employees at Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support’s Clothing and Textiles supply chain, approximately 15,000 U.S. made dress uniforms, valued at $4 million, were provided to the Papua New Guinea Defense Force last month.
In partnership with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, C&T provided 287 pallets of uniforms, across three deliveries ahead of a national 50th Independence Day parade in September, where the uniforms will be worn for the first time, said Christopher Gaudio, a C&T supervisory customer relation manager.
“In some instances, we worked directly with PNG-DF, mainly to get the requirements and quantities,” Gaudio said.
Creating the uniform ‘from scratch,’ the C&T team first visited Papua New Guinea in August 2023 to develop technical requirements for vendors, and implemented a hands-on approach working with stakeholders including customers, vendors, and C&T’s respective customer, procurement and technical quality teams, Gaudio said.
“We were in lockstep the whole time,” Gaudio said. “We had monthly meetings with Indo-PACOM [and DLA Indo-Pacific] through this whole process for almost two years and that increased when [items] started coming off the production line, to weekly.”
DLA Distribution San Joaquin, California also played a crucial role in supporting this effort as a key distribution center within the DLA network, ensuring the timely and accurate delivery of the uniforms.
“At one point we looped in DLA Distribution and U.S. [Transportation Command], so it was definitely a big feat to get everybody together,” Gaudio said. “It was truly a whole of DLA undertaking and a pretty good show of force.”
On May 23, the last shipment of uniforms was hand-delivered by Indo-PACOM’s Director of Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate, J5, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Jay M. Bargeron and Indo-PACOM representatives, including Angel Colon, chief of multinational logistics in the Logistics and Engineering Directorate, J5, at Camp Smith Hawaii.
Colon helped develop the requirements and worked with DLA to complete the requisition, including attending the initial trip to Papa New Guinea in 2023.
He described being in attendance for the final delivery as ‘very gratifying,’ as the final 16 pallets were unloaded from a C-130 with the US flag on the tail, he said.
“The Papua New Guinea defense force chief was very excited, the uniforms were on display,” Colon said. “I’m very appreciative of what Troop Support did.”
Colon previously worked at DLA as the DLA Troop Support Indo-Pacific deputy commander and served at DLA Europe and Africa.
“I spent a significant amount of time, during my time at DLA, working with Troop Support,” Colon said. “With that prior experience I knew what DLA, especially DLA Troop Support and C&T, could bring to the table, their connections with vendors across the country, [and] their ability to execute acquisition contracts in support of the uniform development. I knew all of that would be helpful in bringing this project to fruition.”
Providing the uniforms helps strengthen the partnership between Papua New Guinea and the United States, as part of the Defense Cooperation Agreement, Colon said.
Overcoming challenges throughout the process included navigating leadership and personnel changes, planning meetings across different time zones and managing vendors’ production schedules, said Ashley Liddle, C&T footwear team integrated support team chief.
“Working with them on what they wanted was difficult, because halfway through there was a change in command [at PNG-DF], and they were looking at it for the first time, so they wanted different things,” Liddle said.
One change was the addition of more female items as initial estimates of uniform sizes were more finetuned to actual customer usage, Liddle explained.
The team ultimately provided 44 different line items, including dress shirts, trousers/slacks, berets, shoes, belts and insignia, available in a range of men’s and women’s sizes. Each service member will receive up to three uniforms.
There were also leadership and personnel changes in C&T while completing the initiative. Liddle herself, moved from C&T’s dress clothing team to the footwear team in this time.
“Chris and I are the only original people who went on the trip [in 2023] and started the project together,” Liddle said. “Since the project was over a couple of years, it’s hard to work with the same people, because so many people move around and retire, so that part was difficult.”
Planning meetings sometimes went on to 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time to accommodate customers’ time zone differences up to 14 hours.
“We definitely had to remain flexible here at our end to accommodate some of the time zone differences,” Gaudio said.
Gaudio also emphasized competing priorities with a limited vendor base posed a challenge throughout the process, as to not jeopardize support to US military customers, he said.
“We really had a truly balancing act to have the vendors fit this into their production, even though it doesn’t seem like it’s a ton of items, it’s a brand-new production line,” Gaudio said.
The PNG-DF uniform design is like US military designs, with variations, including distinctive colors of blue and green, Liddle said.
“We took some of the existing items that we buy and made some changes, so it doesn’t look exactly like our US military designs, but it’s similar with changes,” Liddle said. “[And] it was helpful that we had a base to work from. Contractors were really excited about working on this project because it was something different and they were very helpful developing items.”
These variations in color, however, became a challenge for vendors to meet shade requirements, Gaudio said.
“Getting that straight and approved by our tech folks without much to go on was definitely one of the bigger challenges,” Gaudio said. “We did some pretty rigorous inspections throughout the process.”
At one point, C&T sent pre-production samples to Papua New Guinea and DLA Indo-Pacific representatives met the materiel there to present and go through changes prior to full production, Gaudio said.
Moving forward, Gaudio anticipates PNG-DF may have questions on distribution, and developed a delivery tracker for them to manage inventory.
Indo-PACOM Commander Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo was also invited to attend the 50th Independence Day celebration in September, Colon said.
“He will see firsthand the uniforms and the great work that was done by DLA and their vendors to make this come to fruition,” Colon said.