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GEN. DUNCAN MCNABB, COMMANDER OF THE U.S. TRANS-
portation Command (Transcom), tells the story of his meeting with
Secretary of Defense William Gates when he was assigned to the post in
September 2008. Gates, impressing on McNabb the significance of his new
job in the midst of two wars, quoted Alexander the Great, saying, “My
logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are
the first ones I will slay.”
McNabb related the story with a laugh during a presentation on defense
logistics at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ annu-
al conference in San Diego this fall. But the story he told is of the daunting
responsibility Transcom holds every day. The organization is, in its own
words, “the single manager for global air, land, and sea
transportation for the Department of Defense.”
During his presentation, made jointly with Alan
Estevez, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense
for logistics and materiel readiness, McNabb discussed
the complexities in simultaneously managing the draw-
down in Iraq and the buildup in Afghanistan. The scale
of what Transcom had to manage was immense (as
were the resources at its disposal), but the challenges
will be familiar to logistics managers everywhere: delays
in getting started, compressed timetables, and hard
deadlines. Then there was the need to respond to the
unpredictable: In the midst of all this, Transcom also
took on responsibility for shipping relief supplies to
Haiti following the earthquake there and dealt with
major disruptions resulting from the Iceland volcano and the floods in
Pakistan. McNabb is quick to praise Transcom’s private sector partners in
its success. And he and Estevez both emphasized that DOD wants to work
more closely with the private sector in its efforts to develop leaner and more
effective supply chains. “We’re different, but not that different,” Estevez said.
Secretary Gates visited Transcom headquarters in Illinois in April, along
with Gen. David Petraeus, but not to carry out Alexander’s threat. On the
contrary, he came to award McNabb and his team the Joint Meritorious
Unit Award. I’m told that the only higher honor a unit can receive is the
Presidential Unit Citation. Further punctuating the honor: It was the first
and only award Gates had personally issued during his three-plus years as
defense secretary.
Over the last couple of decades, business logistics has become more
exacting and the price of failure to execute higher. For military logisticians,
the price of failure has always been high for those they serve—thus,
Alexander’s high standard. We offer our congratulations to the men and
women of Transcom for their achievement.
A PUBLICATION OF
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