The Official Newsletter of The National Defense Transportation Association

October 6, 2020

The eighth annual and first-ever virtual NDTA-USTRANSCOM Fall Meeting is taking place this week. This edition of The Source looks at many of the issues and organizations represented during the event. We are incredibly excited to bring you a superb agenda of speakers, panels, and classes, plus committee meetings, the annual expo, and a wealth of opportunities to collaborate on the issues. We hope everyone takes advantage of all the meeting has to offer. Now, let’s get started!

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Military, Government, and Industry Leaders to Speak at NDTA-USTRANSCOM Fall Meeting

By Michael P. Kleiman, U.S. Transportation Command Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. – During the eighth annual, first-ever virtual, National Defense Transportation Association-U.S. Transportation Command Fall Meeting, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment, the Honorable W. Jordan Gillis, is the conference’s initial keynoter Oct. 6.

During the conference, from Oct. 5-8, 2020, five keynote presentations, featuring senior military, government, and industry executives, will address a variety of leadership topics, including innovation, vision, resiliency, and embracing – and overcoming – disruption in the COVID-19 era.

“There’s a lot to the presentation.” said Gillis, whose session is titled, “A Sustainment Vision for the Future: Embracing Innovation and Disruption to Advance.”

“A couple of things I’m going to highlight includes how COVID-19 impacted the Department of Defense’s transportation, supply chain, and logistics enterprise, as well as industry.”. […READ MORE…]

Held in conjunction with the Fall Meeting, Transportation Academy features 80 interactive courses, covering a wide range of logistics and other relevant topics. Classes are divided into ten instructional focus areas or “tracks.” Here is a special collection of articles from the Defense Transportation Journal based on those ten tracks:

Acquisition & Finance
Five Ways Payment Programs and Regulations Preserve Carrier Capacity
Many may not realize is there are programs and regulations involving carrier industry payments that are vital to maintaining carrier capacity. Take a closer look at five of the key ways carrier capacity is supported in the payment process.

Blockchain
What are the Business Prospects for Blockchain and Big Data?
Fast, secure, transparent. These qualities define the technologies that are transforming both personal and business transactions.

Combatant Commands & Security Cooperation
Bringing the US Army’s Combat Power to Europe: It takes a Global ‘Team of Teams’ to Accomplish a Transportation Mission on This Scale
Since 2014, the US Army has deployed brigade-sized, combat-capable units from the United States to Europe in support of an ongoing operation called Atlantic Resolve. An operation of this magnitude and complexity represents a tremendous opportunity to enhance the global deployment and distribution capabilities of the US, its allies, its partners in the commercial industry, and regional port authority professionals.

DoD & Commercial Logistics
Sustaining the Civil Reserve Air Fleet
References to defense requirements occur repeatedly in federal transportation legislation. In fact, every major piece of national legislation pertaining to aviation, from the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 to the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 and the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, include policy statements specifically linking the needs of national defense to the maintenance of a strong civilian air transport system. Integrating these resources with military requirements is accomplished through national defense planning.

Interactive Workshops/Training
Efficiency for Lethality: Reforming DoD’s Business Operations
“Whether you are working in a process or the recipient of a process, if the process is broken, it’s challenging,” said The Honorable Lisa Hershman, Chief Management Officer (CMO) of the Department of Defense. For this reason, her goal of making the Department easy to do business with has as much to do with making things easier for industry personnel as for the military and government customers they serve.

IT, Cyber, & Analytics
Global Supply Chain Trends and Emerging Technologies in the Internet of Things
With emerging technologies and hyper-connected supply chains, we are seeing new trends in the way we approach logistics at many different levels.

Leadership & Human Resources
Constraints-Based Thinking: A way to lead your organization to Breakthrough Results
Shifting priorities? Limited time? Work piling up? Late deliveries? As a leader, you have a choice: survive and get by with incremental improvements or really focus your organization on delivering Breakthrough Results.

Legislation & Policy
A Call to Arms – Evolving Law and Culture to Protect Our Merchant Maritime Fleet
The United States has an opportunity now to modernize the protection of our merchant fleet by advancing the law of self-defense and to press that legal framework outward so that it becomes recognized as international law. Simultaneously, we must evolve the military culture to embrace this evolution in law so that the United States can achieve both the strategic and moral imperative to defend the merchant fleet to ensure mission success.

Resilience, Innovation, & Disruptors
How a Public-Private Partnership is Expanding America’s Capabilities
When NASA launched two of its astronauts into space from American soil for the first time since 2011 earlier this year, what made the event truly historical was that for the first time, they did so on spacecraft owned, built, tested, and operated by commercial industry. 

SDDC Workshop
SDDC’s Total Force: People Are Our Strategic Advantage
Around the globe, SDDC performs operations supporting the warfighter with a Total Force made up of trusted professionals from the active-duty and Reserve components, government civilians, contractors and local national employees, and our fourth component, commercial industry partners.

News from NDTA Fall Meeting Platinum Sponsors, visit them in the expo hall to learn more!

ARC Ships & Ro-Ro Cargo 2020 Video
(American Roll-on Roll-off Carrier Group Inc. [ARC]) Watch ARC ships load military cargo and set sail.

Air Force One Pilot Training Extended with Atlas Air, Inc.
(Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc.) Atlas Air announced that the United States Air Force has exercised its option to continue its pilot and flight engineer training contract for Air Force One with Atlas Air, Inc. Atlas Air has held the contract since October 2007.

Seven Lessons COVID-19 Has Taught Us About Data Strategy
(Deloitte) Data has played a major role in governments’ efforts to combat the effects of COVID-19. Several key lessons have emerged that can shape governments’ data strategy even beyond the pandemic.

“A Delicate Piece of Manoeuvring”: The 15,000 TEU Vessel “Sajir” is Outfitted with an LNG Tank
(Hapag-Lloyd) For over half a year, engineers, technicians, and welders have been constructing the membrane tank at the HuaRun DaDong Dockyard in Shanghai. A floating crane has now hoisted the tank into the belly of the vessel – which marks one of the most important milestones in the process of converting the “Sajir” to operate using LNG propulsion.

Business at the U.S.-Mexico Border
(Landstar) Mexico remains the United States’ top trading partner. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Mexico’s trade with the United States rose to $567.81 billion through the first 11 months of 2019. As trade at the United States-Mexico border continues to expand, so do the opportunities available in the Landstar network.

The Source is a free educational publication for NDTA members, conference attendees, and associates.