It may come as a surprise to learn the Defense Logistics Agency has a long history of supporting the warfighter in U.S. Southern Command. It’s understandable. The agency doesn’t cover USSOUTHCOM with a regional command. Unlike Indo-Pacific or European commands, the area doesn’t host a peer competitor; unlike Central or Africa commands, it wasn’t a hot spot in the War on Terror. Nonetheless, military personnel have deployed to the theater throughout DLA’s 64 years. The agency has usually supported them.
The first conflict DLA faced involved the USSOUTHCOM area of operations, although the regional headquarters was called the Caribbean Defense Command at the time. The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred only a year after DLA was formed. The agency, then the Defense Supply Agency, provided photographic film for planes tracking weapon emplacement, helped mobilize an invasion force and fueled the 90 ships that quarantined the island.
Three years later, American troops were again deployed to the USSOUTHCOM theater. In the unrest following the assassination of longtime Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, it looked as if a communist regime would prevail. President Lydon Johnson deployed Marines and the U.S. Army’s 82d Airborne Division to prevent such an occurrence. DSA supported the invasion, with most requirements being fielded by the Defense Personnel Support Center, a new organization in Philadelphia formed from merging the Defense Subsistence Supply Center, Defense Medical Supply Center, and the Defense Clothing and Textile Supply Center. The deployment, which came at the end of a short planning cycle, reduced the agency’s stock availability for clothing and textile items shortly before massive deployments to Vietnam sank the supply chain’s readiness to all-time lows.
America deployed few troops to the USSOUTHCOM region during the 1970s. In the first half of the decade, Vietnam loomed so large that few other interventions were contemplated. In the second half, a more nuanced Cold War foreign policy under President Jimmy Carter kept influence operations the responsibility of the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency.
Presidential administrations in the 1980s were more willing to use military force in the region. DLA wasn’t involved in Operation Urgent Fury, the seizure of Grenada in 1983. President Ronald Reagan authorized the operation to rescue American medical students being held on the island. In order to keep the invasion secret, preparations didn’t include sustainment planning: Service logistics arms as well as DLA were kept in the dark.
Sustainment had a more important role in Operation Just Cause. Launched after Panamanian forces began seizing American service members, the 1989 intervention was part invasion and part deployment by forces already in Panama. As with the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, most DLA items came from the Defense Personnel Support Center, although other agency elements played roles as well. The Defense Energy Support Center in northern Virginia delivered 1 million extra gallons of JP-4 fuel to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, and 185,000 barrels of JP-5 fuel to Defense Fuel Support Point Rodman on Panama’s Pacific coast. The Defense Construction Supply Center in central Ohio provided parts for Black Hawk helicopters, 5-ton trucks and other wheeled vehicles. Agency distribution centers forwarded these items.
DLA deployed its first personnel to a named operation in the USSOUTHCOM area of operations during the 1990s. Political turmoil in Haiti led President Bill Clinton to launch Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994. Learning from its experience during the First Gulf War, DLA had developed a concept for connecting forward-deployed units to agency activities called DLA contingency support teams. The first DCST operated in Haiti from 1994 to 1996.
The U.S. military intervened little in the USSOUTHCOM theater during the first decade of the 21st century. While the Defense Department fought the War on Terror, politics in the region changed. The hostility between America and Cuba thawed. At the same time, China began investing heavily in the region.
Conventional forces didn’t deploy again to the region until January 2010, when President Barack Obama sent troops to Haiti for Operation Unified Response. DLA deployed a DCST to support both Haitians suffering from a massive earthquake and the 13,500 U.S. service members helping them. Operating from ashore and afloat billets, the team ensured six classes of supply were delivered to U.S. units and four classes to the Hatians. Through whole-of-government partners, DLA offered Hatians humanitarian rations, fuel, and material for dock repair. The agency provided medical material through the U.S. Navy Ship Comfort.
DLA was involved in a similar relief effort in 2017. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. In addition to meals and fuel, the response had two atypical aspects. The first involved buttressing the agency’s clothing and textiles supply chain. Puerto Rico was home to 11 clothing and textile vendors at the time, enough for their reduced production to matter. The second aspect was power generation. Practically the whole island was without electricity, meaning the agency had to provide not only generators but also telephone poles and electrical cable.
Time will tell if recent operations in Latin America are indicative of a growing role USSOUTHCOM will have in the region. Should more service members, ships and flight hours be needed, DLA stands ready to support the combatant command's need for commodities, repair parts and logistics services.