Senior military leaders and representatives from 22 partner nations gathered June 4-6 for the U.S. Southern Command- (SOUTHCOM) sponsored Senior Leader Logistics Symposium (SLLS), at SOUTHCOM’s headquarters in Doral, Florida. Under the theme “Readiness,” participants discussed improving logistics and interoperability for exercises, operations, and disaster efforts in the region.
Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uruguay took part in the annual logistics event sharing lessons learned, discussing future collaborations, and learning about the progress made on the Human Assistance Disaster Response (HADR) Handbook project.
The three-day event featured key speakers and presentations on strategic and operational logistics and new technologies that enriched participants and “opened their minds,” said Argentine Army Colonel Pablo Alberto Filippini, military director of Emergency Assistance (DIMAE) at the Argentine Armed Forces’ Operational Command.
U.S. Army General Laura J. Richardson, SOUTHCOM commander, welcomed partner nations and highlighted the region’s commitment to readiness to face the challenges ahead. “We face a host of multi-domain and cross-cutting challenges throughout this hemisphere, from malign state actors and transnational criminal organizations to cyberthreats and climate change,” Gen. Richardson said in her opening remarks. “Only together, as Team Democracy, can we overcome these threats. What you do — the men and women in logistics — matters. What you do saves lives. With you, we succeed; without you we fail. It’s that simple.”
Following a review of SLLS 2023, participants dove into this year’s topics, exchanging best practices to promote interoperability for the effective and efficient conduct of multinational logistics operations. Reiterating the advances of the SLLS since its 2017 inception, U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Douglas R. Burke, SOUTHCOM director of J4 Logistics, stressed the “importance of having conversations with partner nations to really put readiness into perspective.”
Col. Filippini concurred, highlighting the importance of working together for advances at the regional, but also at the national level. “The proposals for cooperation and mutual support among partner countries are extremely interesting for our country in this new stage that we are starting from every point of view,” he said.
Among the hot topics of discussion during the SLLS 2023 and again during this year’s iteration of the symposium was the Theater Maintenance Partnership Initiative (TMPI). The SOUTHCOM-sponsored program aims to provide an array of support and engagement to partner nations in Latin America and the Caribbean with their U.S. defense articles, bought or donated, including aircraft, vehicles, vessels, and communication equipment.
“When the concept of the Theater Maintenance [Partnership] Initiative came on board we saw there was synergy within the efforts, the number of objectives, and aims that we were trying to obtain through our logistics center of excellence,” Jamaica Defence Force Lieutenant Colonel Nadine Notice, vice president of Training at the Caribbean Military Academy (CMA), said addressing the Maintenance Center of Excellence that Jamaica will host to expand maintenance training.
Among the goals of TMPI is to establish nine maintenance centers of excellence throughout the region by 2027, each focusing on specific domains or capabilities, with three of those going up in Colombia and Jamaica by 2025. The other six are planned in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Panama, with one to be determined.
“Without logistics, there’s nothing, no military operations nor anything else. This symposium is very rich, why? Because it gives new solutions or alternate logistics solutions to our forces; it’s a very rich source of professional information,” Chilean Navy Captain Eduardo Torres, head of the Logistics Department of the Chilean Armed Forces, said. “In Chile we are not exempt of the economic and daily challenges, especially when the demand for solutions is at the highest levels and the resources are specially limited, so it’s a very useful seminar to learn from all countries in the region”, Capt. Torres said, emphasizing the extreme weather conditions the region has faced and how regional interoperability has contributed to successful rescue missions in 2023.
Capt. Torres, who has been personally involved in the draft of the HADR Logistics handbook, serving as chairman of the Handbook’s Movement and Transportation Working Group, provided an update on the progress of the project and welcomed more participants to join in the elaboration of the “continental language.”
“We spoke a lot about the necessity of having a manual with a common language and procedures. In our experience, even simple procedures need to be standardized. If a country asks for help, every country needs to know what to expect, how to send it, and with the handbook we can standardize it”, Capt. Torres said.
On day three of the event, Paraguay became the 16th partner nation to join the HADR Logistics Handbook project, which is estimated to be 60 percent complete. “We welcome and recognize Paraguay for joining the charter; it says a lot about the importance of the handbook to the region,” Col. Burke said.
The HADR Handbook will be tested for the first time during exercise Tradewinds 2025 in Trinidad and Tobago.
Participants closed the symposium by looking ahead and addressing opportunities for future cooperation and collaboration, recommendations for topics for next year’s iteration, including the use of Artificial Intelligence in logistics platforms, and with the commitment to keep building strong partnerships for the region’s stability, peace, and prosperity.