DLA scrap efforts in Afghanistan top billion-pound mark

Courtesy Photo | This 2 million pound scrap pile, seen here in January 2011, was loaded up and carried away by contractor buyers at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, in less than three weeks. Selling scrap to local buyers has been a key to success at forward operating bases under the hub-based disposal operations approach to demilitarization. (Defense Department photo)  

AFGHANISTAN

09.15.2014

Story by Kenneth MacNevin 

Defense Logistics Agency   

Receipt of scrap started at a single initial site. From there it grew at several fixed sites and then expanded to temporary operations at forward operating bases to process scrap and demilitarize material.

Vickie Rodgers and Tim Samson were among the first DLA Disposition Services civilians to go to Afghanistan, arriving in 2005 to get the first field site operational at Bagram Air Field. Rodgers said she remembers the first delivery of scrap to the site.

“Two trucks came in carrying what had been a metal building,” she said. “It was all mashed and tangled metal that had been pulled apart for loading.”

At that time, unloading scrap was done differently than it is now, Rodgers said.

“We didn’t have any material handling equipment, so we just climbed onto the trucks and started pushing and pulling to get it all off onto the ground,” she said.

Since then, almost 100 DLA employees and more than 250 contract employees have worked for DLA Disposition Services in Afghanistan.

Few of the 34 DLA Disposition Services civilians or military members on the ground in Afghanistan now are rookies. Many of them, military and civilian alike, have multiple deployments under their belts.

Some information tidbits for comparison courtesy of the DLA Disposition Services contingency operations office in Battle Creek, Michigan:

-- It would take nine C-17 Globemaster cargo planes an entire year, loaded to the max and working every day, to deliver 1 billion pounds of scrap.

-- One billion pounds also equals 51 Eiffel Towers, 2,274 Statues of Liberty, or five Nimitz Class aircraft carriers.

-- One billion pounds equals the weight of 7,570 Abrams tanks. Lined up bumper-to-bumper, that many tanks would stretch from DLA Headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to the Pentagon, and all the way back to Fort Belvoir.

• Date Taken: 09.15.2014
• Date Posted: 09.18.2014 15:17
• Story ID: 142581
• Location: AF