Hanging Out

Well not really hanging out. Just nothing I thought was interesting enough to write about. I haven't gone on any trips lately. No one is shooting at me. I have gotten a handle on most of what my boss and his boss want. 12 hours days are now the norm so when things are slow and we go home a little early I am pretty bored.

Now that I know a lot more about my job I can explain it a little better. Man I have never been in a job where the learning curve was so steep! I guess that should be expected since we are at war and most things should be moving fast. So I have a better handle on the responsibilities. If you are really into government you can check out a lot of I do by researching Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreements (ACSA) along with Code of Federal Regulations Chapter 22 State Department. Yeah me, working with laws and crazy international agreements.

FMS is a process, and I mean a process whereby foreign nations purchase military equipment form the US. This is a long and cumbersome process that involves Department of State, and Defense and a host of other agencies; and of course congress. My role in that is to track all that stuff as it flows into the country. One would think that with all that bureaucracy and oversight this would be a simple task. Well, probably one would think that with those chiefs things are pretty jacked up, and one would be correct! My main problem here is that all these chiefs want info, so they all have staffs. These staffs work in different places and at different paces so they report info differently. Then when the chiefs all have pow wow it hits the fan. Yeah so my job is to make sure that my boss's boss always has the "right" info. It's a mess. My good pals in the US Congress are ever so interested in this issue. So of course there is a lot of focus. Oh yeah the best part of FMS tracking, not really supposed to be the job if the staff section I work in! No shit! The folks that are supposed to do it (who are much larger than my section) jacked it up so much so often that we got stuck with it. I love the Army.

ACSA is something similar to FMS but simpler. Basically it provides a way for our Coalition Partners to exchange Logistics Supplies, Support, and Services (LSSS) with us. This process is restricted to certain kinds of items. For example, if the Polish contingent here needs food, or fuel we can transfer that under an ACSA. If they want a F-16 fighter, they need to go through the FMS process. We actually manage the ACSA process so that is a lot of work. There is a lot of LSSS being transfered as one might expect during war. This process is faster and simpler and therefor much easier to manage and to explain.

So thats pretty much what I do. I track FMS shipments and I manage ACSA transactions. I have a couple soldiers that work with me and I am also responsible for managing their time. They are pretty senior, so that's not to tuff. It's not like having a bunch of Privates around that you have to really provided focused leadership and direction to.

My apologies to my adoring fans. There just wasn't a lot going on. I promise I will blog more, even if it is mundane. I realize it probably isn't all that mundane if you not here every day.