Peace Like A River: More on directing the Pakistan relief efforts

I've had a few posts on the Pakistan relief efforts, and what it takes to make it happen. My previous post had a little bit of information on what is involved in getting the supplies out to the areas where they are needed.

Yesterday I got an email from my brother-in-law, Air Force Lt. Col. Bill Pearson. He works under Headquarters Air Mobility Command. He has been involved to some extent in parts of the relief operations, and his email explained what he's been doing.

I am working today (Saturday, 22 Oct) on a 12 hour shift in support of relief operations. In one of your previous e-mails you were wondering where I work and what exactly do I do. I will try to explain that below.

I am currently the Tanker Allocation Division Chief for the Mobility Management Directorate for the Tanker Airlift Control Center (TACC) for 18th Air Force, for Headquarters Air Mobility Command. Hope you can follow this narrative that is in lieu of a wiring diagram.

HQ Air Mobility Command is the Air Force component for United States Transportation Command (TRANSCOM). There is a surface and sealift component as well. TRANSCOM is one of the 9 combatant commands whose commander reports directly to the SecDef. This link can give you all the information you need to know about all the combatant commands if you are interested.

http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/unifiedcommand/

There is a relationship between each called Supported Command and Supporting Command. In most cases TRANSCOM is always the supporting command to CENTCOM or NORTHCOM or PACOM as supported command. Basically when a supported command asks for resources the supporting command does all that it can to support that request.

What happens is a user, (other military services such as US Army or Navy, other government agencies, etc) has a request to move passengers or cargo form Point A to Point B and they submit that request to TRANSCOM. TRANSCOM will validate the request, give it a priority code, and send it to either be moved by Air, Land, or Sea. If it is air then AMC will be the one who plans, and executes the move.

There are 3 different planning directorates within TACC (Channel- sustainment, Contingency, Current Ops- includes Special Airlift and Air Refueling) and depending on type of mission, one of these will receive the requirement. The planners will figure out the aircraft requirements and at that point they will come to my directorate requesting aircraft. We are given a pool of aircraft and crews from all active duty bases from which to work and we assign an airlift or air refueling wing to fulfill the planners' requirement based on priority. If none are available in the required time, the planners are told when they would be able to have an aircraft to complete the mission.

The people in my division get refueling requirements from the other planners and based on availability and priority will assign the tasking to one of the wings. We (both airlift and air refueling) may non-support and delay some of these actions based on priority.

DLA (Defense Logistics Agency) is involved in the process but I'm not sure exactly how. Since I'm primarily responsible for tanker aircraft I do not get totally involved in assigning aircraft to move pallets. However, the KC-10s that I have control over are also used as airlifters, but primarily for sustainment cargo.

What I'm doing today is keeping oversight of the airlift aircraft that are taking equipment and supplies for supporting earthquake relief and providing that info to my superiors.

This is a very simplified description of what goes on, but hopefully that will give you an idea.