BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
New year but same enduring demand for the expertise of Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services reverse logisticians from U.S. Army units trying to modernize and gain agility through major equipment divestiture.
The Army has already established, or plans to establish, just over a dozen Equipment Redistribution and Divestiture Site locations across the continental U.S. and Hawaii in 2026. The effort essentially replaces a previous property divestiture concept dubbed Rapid Removal of Excess, or R2E, and includes three “focused presence” sites in Colorado, Texas, and North Carolina, and the deployment of mobile teams to augment efforts at additional installations across the country.
DLA Disposition Services Director Mike Cannon said the ERDS push is a little different from Army divestitures of the past decade. Previously, concentrated campaigns to rid the service of material were driven primarily by the logistics community. This time, he said, commanders are leading the charge, directing their units to get lean and lethal, and demanding unit buy-in rather than requesting it.
“This has really got some good momentum,” Cannon said. “So far, we are killing it, getting great feedback that we’re doing a really good job.”
According to Army Sustainment Command, the effort “… supports the (Army Continuous Transformation) objectives by enabling efficiencies and increasing the velocity of excess equipment divestiture, contributing to greater lethality and optimized force structure. ERDS will provide rapid, scalable, and flexible support to units undergoing a HQDA-directed conversion by receiving their divested equipment and providing units with immediate property relief …”
The plan execution kicked off at Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, and Fort Carson near the beginning of the fiscal year, and specialists from each of DLA’s regions have busily trained soldiers on proper turn-in procedures and documentation needs, helped coordinate equipment shipment schedules, and participated in planning meetings at all levels to help ensure a smooth effort. The agency has already taken in tens of thousands of items through ERDS, with plenty of work left to do.
Cannon said DLA’s property disposal team is doing everything it can to support, and he expects the assistance to possibly spur some longer-term adjustments to how DLA handles the regular flow of Army equipment turn-ins.
“This is really kind of a one off, but we’re going to leverage things like Receipt-in-Place and expand it,” he said. “We’re leveraging things like asking for expedited screening a little more than we have in the past. We’re working with the Army, helping get them through this, because getting rid of all this dead weight equipment that either needs to be turned in to us, or is in the wrong place in the Army, is slowing them down.”