Warriors in Peace Operations - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

soldier why there were differences between his list
(different from the flow but still not like mine) and mine. He
explained that his was the list of what was actually ordered
for the day (as opposed to the flow, which is what was
planned for the day, and reality, which is what actually
showed up). So I asked how do I know what actually showed
up for the day. He told me that to find out, I would have to go
see another soldier. So I did. This new person showed me his
status on STACCS, the automated command and control
system. This was remotely accessed by MCTs to update
information, with different coding available to sound
alarms based on certain parameters. For instance, if a train
were late in pulling, the train symbol would flash. This
system looked great. Although its capability for planes,
busses, and convoys was not being utilized, I thought it was
a wonderful way to get information that the DOC was
manually calling around for now. Then I asked the soldier
whom he notified when one of the symbols started flashing,
indicating some task had not been achieved on time (either a
train not spotting, not being loaded, or not pulling out on
time). I was shocked when he said “nobody, no one cares.”
As a result of this visit, I got a STACCS terminal
installed in the DOC in Bad Kreuznach. Unfortunately, I
found the information on the STACCS was not being
updated enough to remain current, and that our manually
acquired information was always more accurate by a large
degree. This was less true for data on aircraft, but probably
close to half the time, manually acquired data was more
current than STACCS. So STACCS was pretty useless,
other than as a good classified e-mail system, in controlling
the deployment.
The plan for oversized cargo was weak. Although the
French rail strike did not help matters in this area, there
was an overall shortage of deep well cars. These are the
kinds of cars needed for oversized cargo, and they often did
not arrive with the train for which they were needed. This
resulted in what we called “frustrated cargo.” We did not
have a plan for frustrated cargo initially, and we never
104