PRESS RELEASE
HEADQUARTERS, COMBINED JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS TASK FORCE-AFGHANISTAN
Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan
Phone: DSN (318) 787-3420 or SVOIP (308) 787-3362
October 28, 2013
Challenges Met and Overcome
By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Les Long, SOTF-SE Combat Camera
Logar Province, AFGHANISTAN – On Oct. 1st, after more than three years at Tarin Kowt, Special Operations Task Force-Southeast (SOTF-SE) officially closed Forward Operating Base (FOB) Ripley with a de-commissioning ceremony. The SOTF-SE headquarters was moved from FOB Ripley to FOB Shank in Logar province.
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Moving a SOTF headquarters to a new location while simultaneously expanding a new location was not easy but the personnel of SOTF-SE proved more than up to the task.
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Lieutenant Commander Kellen Headlee, Director of the SOTF-SE Supply Center, said, “You not only have to move materials from the old site to the new one, you also have to have a place to put them at the new site.”
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A small contingent of Seabees remains at Ripley to complete the retrograde process and prepare the site for turnover to Combined Team Uruzgan (CTU). The CTU will turn the former FOB over to Provincial Response Company Uruzgan (PRCU). The PRCU is comprised of Afghan National Police partnered with International Security Assistance Force Special Operation Forces.
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Commander Lewis Kasper, SOTF-SE Chief Staff Officer, said, “The people left at Ripley put us way ahead of the schedule set by CTU. The PRCU guards are moving onto the site 15 days earlier than originally planned.”
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To prepare for the headquarters shift to Camp McCloskey on FOB Shank, Seabees began to expand the camp in September. The Seabees had their work cut out for them as the number of personnel at Camp McCloskey was going to be doubled.
New office spaces, sanitary facilities and berthing had to be built which meant the need for building materials was great. The delays in getting lumber led the Seabees who were on-site to get creative to maintain their tight schedule.
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“The Seabees had to scrounge for lumber,” said Headlee. “A lot of this camp is built from scraps they found around the base.”
In the span of approximately a month and a half, SOTF-SE closed one camp and expanded and moved to another. The headquarters is fully operational and all personnel and equipment have successfully moved but camp construction and improvements are on-going.
Kasper said, “It’s easy to quantify the magnitude of the SOTF headquarters move but difficult to describe in a few sentences. We had very few hiccups considering we moved from one FOB to another, expanded the new FOB, transferred our network to a new system, and were able to continue operations seamlessly. It was an amazing feat on the part of the personnel of the SOTF headquarters.”
Special Operations Task Force-Southeast will maintain a presence at Camp McCloskey until U.S. and coalition forces end their mission in Afghanistan in Oct. 2014.