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CNN Live Today

Moving the Military

Aired February 13, 2003 - 11:02   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Among those deploying are about 150 support personnel from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. They'll join 295 members from the Ohio National Guard who have been mobilized. Thousands of troops will pass through Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Maybe they'll have time for one last e-mail good-bye.
Now, our CNN correspondents within the whip are stationed at key locations today as the military moves out.

CNN's Patti Davis is at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, David Mattingly is at Fort Campbell Kentucky, and John Zarrella is in Jacksonville, Florida at Naval Station Mayport.

John and David, stand by. Patti Davis, let's get started with you. Our focus this hour, how do you get all those troops and their equipment from here to there?

PATTI DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. You ever wonder how all those troops and tanks and supplies get to the Persian Gulf? Well, TransCom here, U.S. Transportation Command, is the brains behind it all.

Well, here we are at U.S. Transportation Command, a joint mobility command center here in Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. What you see coming up here is the -- the maps on the wall here. These show all the movements that are going on currently. We've got planes taking off all over the world. We've got troops. We've got tank movements. They are putting all -- every -- of these things in place.

Now we're joined by William Johnson, Army brigadier general. Explain -- thank you. Explain what's going on in this room right now.

BRIG. GEN. WILLIAM JOHNSON, TRANSCOM: Patty, this is the nerve center for United States Transportation Command. Here we control the mobility and strategic lift worldwide. We receive requirements in on this side of the mobility command center. We go into execution here, and on this side of the room, is where we sustain the force.

DAVIS: OK. Also also -- now, we've got people at Fort Campbell, people in Jacksonville now. You are calling the shots there. You are making those movements happen.

JOHNSON: Well, our Military Sealift Command arranges for the shipping that you see down in Jacksonville, and our Military Traffic Management Command actually loads the ships.

DAVIS: OK. And this is all -- all of the military forces here, right?

JOHNSON: Absolutely. We have all services: Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, everybody is here.

DAVIS: All right. Great. Thanks. This is -- somebody described this to me like a big FedEx operation, only for the military, and they are not only moving people, but they are tracking everybody, and then they have to bring them all back when a conflict is over -- back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right. Our Patty Davis at Scott Air Force Base. Well, troops have to be ready, and so does their equipment. David Mattingly, talk to us about that from Fort Campbell.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi. The -- one of the first lessons that the military learned in the Gulf War was that it couldn't move all of its material goods, all of its equipment from here over there quickly enough. So what they've done, there's been a lot of innovations over the last 10 years, and what you are looking at is one of them here at Fort Campbell, the home of the 101st Air Force (sic) division.

This is a rail spur. Take a look at it going down that way. It doesn't look like all that much, but it's actually very important when it comes to deployment. Officers here say what they had before was a nightmare because they had multiple locations where these rail spurs came in. It took forever for them to load it up, about three weeks. They are able to do it now because it's all consolidated in just one week. And the experts who handle all this, the logistics experts, say it is a good thing they worked all the kinks out. They practice this all the time. They say that's a good thing because they have got a huge job to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Just give me an idea of just the enormity of the task that you are dealing with here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir. It's basically like trying to move an entire city of 18,000 people, and all the cars and trucks that would exist in that city, pick it up, put it on rail cars, and move it to a port so that we can put it on ships and move it to an area of operations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: And one of those other new innovations is a bar coding system. Every single piece of equipment has a bar code attached to it now. That's so that, say, a general out in Kuwait comes out and says Hey, where is my humvee? They'll be able to tell him exactly what ship it's on, where it is in that ship, and when it's going to get to him. So, a very important innovation when it comes to shipping all this massive amount of equipment over to the Persian Gulf -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: David Mattingly, thank you, from Fort Campbell. Well, this afternoon, President Bush is scheduled to rally the troops at Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida. In addition to that, lots of work is taking place. We'll find out what's going on there right now from John Zarrella -- hi, John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Hi, Kyra. Well, I'm standing on the deck of the U.S. Navy ship Dahl, and the Dahl is one of the giant, enormous cargo ships that is going to be carrying the 101st Airborne's equipment overseas.

Now, how big is it? Look, there's our satellite truck right there. We drove the truck on the deck of the ship this morning, and if you look down a little further, you can see these enormous cranes on this top outside deck we have, and all the way down to the other end of the ship.

Now, they are not loading up here right now. They began loading, of course, yesterday, and down below in the lower decks, they are already loading a lot of the equipment -- the trucks, the ammunition, the supplies, that will be needed by the 101st when they get to their destination.

Now, Brigadier General E.J. Sinclair is joining us -- and, General, these ships. You got this one in 1999, came online. Really has allowed you to project your power more quickly than you ever could in the past, right?

BRIG. GEN. E.J. SINCLAIR, U.S. ARMY: That's correct. These ships allow us to project the unique combat capability of the 101st Airborne Division very rapidly anywhere in the world.

They allow us to float our aircraft, the large number of aircraft we have, and the vehicles so when we get to the other end, we can basically dock the ship and be ready to fight as soon as we roll off the ships at the other end.

ZARRELLA: Now, you are a one star general, but you were telling me you are a helicopter pilot, but they're not going to let you near the action, probably.

SINCLAIR: I probably won't get to fly much, even though that's where my heart will be.

ZARRELLA: General, thanks so much for taking time to be with us this morning. Now, what a lot of the equipment still has to be loaded, there are about 250 helicopters. Apaches and Black Hawks, like the general flies, along with Chinook helicopters to carry supplies to forward lines, and they are sitting, already shrink wrapped -- they wrap those birds up so that they -- so they can get them up on the ship and then protectively transport them overseas to where they will be needed. So, lots of work still going on here.

The Dahl one of several ships being used. This is 950 feet long. There are six decks, capable of carrying up to 394,000 square feet of cargo, Kyra. So tremendous capabilities to move men, machines and the instruments of war, wherever they are needed -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: And tremendous access. Our John Zarrella, thanks so much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired February 13, 2003 - 11:02   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Among those deploying are about 150 support personnel from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. They'll join 295 members from the Ohio National Guard who have been mobilized. Thousands of troops will pass through Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Maybe they'll have time for one last e-mail good-bye.
Now, our CNN correspondents within the whip are stationed at key locations today as the military moves out.

CNN's Patti Davis is at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, David Mattingly is at Fort Campbell Kentucky, and John Zarrella is in Jacksonville, Florida at Naval Station Mayport.

John and David, stand by. Patti Davis, let's get started with you. Our focus this hour, how do you get all those troops and their equipment from here to there?

PATTI DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. You ever wonder how all those troops and tanks and supplies get to the Persian Gulf? Well, TransCom here, U.S. Transportation Command, is the brains behind it all.

Well, here we are at U.S. Transportation Command, a joint mobility command center here in Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. What you see coming up here is the -- the maps on the wall here. These show all the movements that are going on currently. We've got planes taking off all over the world. We've got troops. We've got tank movements. They are putting all -- every -- of these things in place.

Now we're joined by William Johnson, Army brigadier general. Explain -- thank you. Explain what's going on in this room right now.

BRIG. GEN. WILLIAM JOHNSON, TRANSCOM: Patty, this is the nerve center for United States Transportation Command. Here we control the mobility and strategic lift worldwide. We receive requirements in on this side of the mobility command center. We go into execution here, and on this side of the room, is where we sustain the force.

DAVIS: OK. Also also -- now, we've got people at Fort Campbell, people in Jacksonville now. You are calling the shots there. You are making those movements happen.

JOHNSON: Well, our Military Sealift Command arranges for the shipping that you see down in Jacksonville, and our Military Traffic Management Command actually loads the ships.

DAVIS: OK. And this is all -- all of the military forces here, right?

JOHNSON: Absolutely. We have all services: Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, everybody is here.

DAVIS: All right. Great. Thanks. This is -- somebody described this to me like a big FedEx operation, only for the military, and they are not only moving people, but they are tracking everybody, and then they have to bring them all back when a conflict is over -- back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right. Our Patty Davis at Scott Air Force Base. Well, troops have to be ready, and so does their equipment. David Mattingly, talk to us about that from Fort Campbell.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi. The -- one of the first lessons that the military learned in the Gulf War was that it couldn't move all of its material goods, all of its equipment from here over there quickly enough. So what they've done, there's been a lot of innovations over the last 10 years, and what you are looking at is one of them here at Fort Campbell, the home of the 101st Air Force (sic) division.

This is a rail spur. Take a look at it going down that way. It doesn't look like all that much, but it's actually very important when it comes to deployment. Officers here say what they had before was a nightmare because they had multiple locations where these rail spurs came in. It took forever for them to load it up, about three weeks. They are able to do it now because it's all consolidated in just one week. And the experts who handle all this, the logistics experts, say it is a good thing they worked all the kinks out. They practice this all the time. They say that's a good thing because they have got a huge job to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Just give me an idea of just the enormity of the task that you are dealing with here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir. It's basically like trying to move an entire city of 18,000 people, and all the cars and trucks that would exist in that city, pick it up, put it on rail cars, and move it to a port so that we can put it on ships and move it to an area of operations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: And one of those other new innovations is a bar coding system. Every single piece of equipment has a bar code attached to it now. That's so that, say, a general out in Kuwait comes out and says Hey, where is my humvee? They'll be able to tell him exactly what ship it's on, where it is in that ship, and when it's going to get to him. So, a very important innovation when it comes to shipping all this massive amount of equipment over to the Persian Gulf -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: David Mattingly, thank you, from Fort Campbell. Well, this afternoon, President Bush is scheduled to rally the troops at Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida. In addition to that, lots of work is taking place. We'll find out what's going on there right now from John Zarrella -- hi, John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Hi, Kyra. Well, I'm standing on the deck of the U.S. Navy ship Dahl, and the Dahl is one of the giant, enormous cargo ships that is going to be carrying the 101st Airborne's equipment overseas.

Now, how big is it? Look, there's our satellite truck right there. We drove the truck on the deck of the ship this morning, and if you look down a little further, you can see these enormous cranes on this top outside deck we have, and all the way down to the other end of the ship.

Now, they are not loading up here right now. They began loading, of course, yesterday, and down below in the lower decks, they are already loading a lot of the equipment -- the trucks, the ammunition, the supplies, that will be needed by the 101st when they get to their destination.

Now, Brigadier General E.J. Sinclair is joining us -- and, General, these ships. You got this one in 1999, came online. Really has allowed you to project your power more quickly than you ever could in the past, right?

BRIG. GEN. E.J. SINCLAIR, U.S. ARMY: That's correct. These ships allow us to project the unique combat capability of the 101st Airborne Division very rapidly anywhere in the world.

They allow us to float our aircraft, the large number of aircraft we have, and the vehicles so when we get to the other end, we can basically dock the ship and be ready to fight as soon as we roll off the ships at the other end.

ZARRELLA: Now, you are a one star general, but you were telling me you are a helicopter pilot, but they're not going to let you near the action, probably.

SINCLAIR: I probably won't get to fly much, even though that's where my heart will be.

ZARRELLA: General, thanks so much for taking time to be with us this morning. Now, what a lot of the equipment still has to be loaded, there are about 250 helicopters. Apaches and Black Hawks, like the general flies, along with Chinook helicopters to carry supplies to forward lines, and they are sitting, already shrink wrapped -- they wrap those birds up so that they -- so they can get them up on the ship and then protectively transport them overseas to where they will be needed. So, lots of work still going on here.

The Dahl one of several ships being used. This is 950 feet long. There are six decks, capable of carrying up to 394,000 square feet of cargo, Kyra. So tremendous capabilities to move men, machines and the instruments of war, wherever they are needed -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: And tremendous access. Our John Zarrella, thanks so much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com