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Air Force Staff Sgt. Austin Eckert, a member of the Coalition Forces Sorting Facility team in Regional Support Command-South, checks date on a shipping box of spare parts against his inventory listing in Kandahar, Afghanistan, July 10. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Trey Scudder, RSC-South Logistics Training and Advisory Team

Air Force Master Sgt. Greg Pierce, a member of the Coalition Forces Sorting Facility team in Regional Support Command-South, guides a forklift in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as it downloads cargo at a yard used to temporarily sort and prioritize incoming and outgoing shipments of critical repair parts for the Afghan National Army. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Trey Scudder, RSC-South Logistics Training and Advisory Team

CAMP EGGERS, Afghanistan - A handful of service members assigned to the Deputy Commander of Support Operations under NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan have planned, and are executing, an operation known as Keystone 9.

This operation, which started in July and is expected to run until late October, rapidly processes repair parts and distributes these parts to Afghan National Army units.

“Operation Keystone 9 is a mission designed to expedite the delivery of critical repair parts to the theater in support of the ANA combat operations,” said Lt. Cmdr. Trey Scudder, the senior mentor for the Second Forward Support Depot (under Regional Logistics Support Command-Kandahar) supporting the ANA and also the deputy for Logistics Training Advisory Team South.

The concept is multi-fold, said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dempster Upshaw, a supply technician who manages repair parts within DCOM-SPO. Instead of all parts arriving from New Cumberland and from Thailand going through Kabul, some are now flown into Kandahar where they are prioritized, sorted and pushed out.

“It is saving time by eliminating the Depot 0 warehouse (the national-level Class IX repair parts depot),” Upshaw said, “and essentially doing a ‘direct delivery’ of parts and supplies to the front doorsteps of the customers … These parts hit home to the action level directly.”

DCOM SPO receives notification of inbound parts approximately 48 hours before they arrive to Kandahar. It allows Upshaw an advanced look at what is on the particular aircraft and match up against on-hand supplies and shortages.

Once the parts arrive at Kandahar Airfield, they are signed for by a coalition representative. All parts are convoyed to the Coalition Forces Sorting Facility, that they affectionately refer to as the “Yard.” Here, service members sort the parts.

“The hard work displayed by a small team comprised of five Marines, one Sailor, three Airmen and seven Army service members is a true testament to the merits of joint service missions. The level of enthusiasm displayed by the troops involved in this mission literally breathed life back into the ANA repair parts system,” Scudder said.

Once parts are sorted, Scudder’s team arranges for transportation by either ANA transportation assets to nearby locations or coalition assets to remote locations. By simply bypassing Kabul, Scudder thinks that several weeks are shaved off the traditional processing time.

Operation Keystone 9 is a temporary solution, allowing ANA units to receive repair parts in the midst of the fighting season and also allowing Depot 0 to clear up their backlog and conduct personnel training, before all parts are routed through them again, starting later this month.