text: Sustainment Operations During Crisis
  • Transportation assets: Inland cargo transfer companies for their materiel handling equipment and
  vessel offload capabilities, transportation truck companies, heavy equipment transportation
  companies for movement of tracked vehicles, and movement control teams for traffic circulation.
  • Quartermaster assets: Quartermaster companies for feeding, materiel storage and distribution, POL
  companies for fuel storage and distribution.
  • Ordnance assets: Modular ammunition company to provide ammunition to units prior to their
  onward movement. Maintenance assets augmented by contracted support to maintain vehicle
  readiness throughout the process.
  • Medical assets: Operational medical units to provide AHS support to units prior to their onward
  movement.
  • HR assets: Typically located at theater gateways and various intratheater ports of debarkation to
  assist with initiating and establishing theater personnel accountability and personnel tracking.
  • Financial management assets: Finance units assist arriving units with disbursing and payment
  support. Arriving unit resource managers coordinate technical arrangements with the theater Army
  G-8 for funding, capturing costs, and reporting requirements.
  4-53. In addition to the sustainment capabilities mentioned above, there are other assets that play a vital role
  in RSOI. These assets provide additional infrastructure capabilities, security, protection, and command and
  control of the RSOI process. EOD personnel provide commanders the ability to quickly respond to explosive
  ordnance threat situations as they occur. Military police provide force protection for units conducting RSOI
  and convoy escorts for units moving from reception to staging areas. The United States Army Corps of
  Engineers can provide infrastructure improvements, establish power grids, and determine power distribution
  for APODs, SPODs and ISBs. CBRN capabilities must also be part of the RSOI effort. CBRN reconnaissance
  elements will assess for any CBRN hazards, and decontamination elements support contamination mitigation.
  These assets must be requested and incorporated early in the flow of forces into theater to support RSOI at
  the APODs, SPODs, and ISBs.
  INTERMEDIATE STAGING BASE
  4-54. An ISB is a temporary location used for staging forces and sustainment and inserting and extracting
  forces into and out of an operational area. The ISB is the critical staging area with the focus of assembling
  all equipment, containers, and personnel as well as classes of supply (including mail) to support onward
  movement for a limited contingency operation.
  4-55. ISBs enable the forward staging forces to accomplish tasks and provide support from a location closer
  to the contingency operation. To best use ISBs for forcible entry operations, planners can pair those two tasks
  with these three purposes: build capacity, conduct intermodal transfer, and disaggregate and aggregate forces.
  Sustainment planners should develop contingency plans for the use of multiple ISBs or points of entry into
  the JOA, as economic and political situations can rapidly deteriorate and result in the unexpected closure of
  bases. For more detailed discussion of ISBs, see JP 3-34, JP 3-35, ATP 3-37.10, and ATP 3-35.
  PRINCIPLES OF THEATER DISTRIBUTION
  4-56. The principles of distribution include centralized management; optimized infrastructure; maximized
  throughput; rapid and precise response; continuous, seamless, two-way flow of resources; and time-definite
  delivery. All these principles rely upon solid asset visibility, which enables distribution operations.
  Commanders, logistics planners, and logisticians performing theater distribution functions must understand
  each of these principles and consider how they are applied when developing strategic, operational, and
  tactical plans. See ATP 4-93 for additional information on the principles of theater distribution.
  Centralized Management
  4-57. Centralized management of the supply and transportation systems is essential for efficient and effective
  distribution operations. At the strategic level, USTRANSCOM’s deployment and distribution operations
  center provides centralized management of distribution. At the operational and tactical level, the TSC or ESC
  DMC provides centralized management of the distribution system.