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Captain Adam Orton: Hi, I'm Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. The NSE, or National Support Element, in Latvia is a great example of logistics in action. Where there are troops and the Canadian-led multinational brigade has a lot of them, you need food, bullets, and socks. Unsurprisingly, getting all these things where they need to be is harder than it might seem. Dialing in from Latvia, we have Lieutenant-Colonel Nathan Richards, who is the commanding officer of the National Support Element and he's going to tell us all about how deployed logistics work. Welcome to the podcast, sir.

Lieutenant-Colonel Nathan Richards: Awesome. Thanks for having me.

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Capt Orton: I've always found it difficult to explain logistics to people because there's just so many moving parts to get to how and why we need it. So how do you explain what the definition of logistics is?

LCol Richards: Yeah, logistics can be very complex, but it's also fairly simple. Logistics is about getting the right things or people to the right place at the right time for the right effect. So positioning things, making sure they're in adequate quantity to meet demand so that you can go and do the things that you need to do. I look at it a lot like a camping trip. You know what you want to do, you want to go climbing, you want to go surfing, you want to go do the things you want to do, but you're going to need food to do that, you're going to need accommodations, you're going to need to plan your trip in advance to make sure that when you want to go do the things that you want to do, you've got the right things to do them at the right time.

Capt Orton: Why can't people just integrally handle their own problems? And I'll use the example of, you know, you're talking about that camping thing. Why can't I just go and buy my own camping gear? Like, what do you as a professional in that space bring to this?

LCol Richards: Yeah, so the brigade is really focused on that defense and deterrence mission. And they're so focused on it that that's all they should be focusing on.

Capt Orton: Right

LCol Richards: They're not focused on where they're going to sleep that night or where they're going to get their next meal or where their waste services should be dumped out or where the next ammunition is coming from. And that's really what the NSC's job, the National Support Element. We're here to enable the success of the brigade by ensuring they've got a place to eat, sleep, and go to the washroom every single day, take care of all that administration behind the scenes so that they can focus on the success on the battlefield. Because it's hard to do both, and to do one excellent, you have to have a little bit of tail behind it to make it that much easier.

Capt Orton: So basically you're supporting a brigade's worth of people.

LCol Richards: The mission's evolving, really. When we look at the mission we started in 2017, there was just a battle group of about 800 Canadians and a few sending nation contingents on the ground. And that national support element was about 100 people. Since then, and recently, we've had a much larger presence here. We have a brigade. So the current NSC of about 250 is supporting 3,000 Canadian and 13 other sending nation soldiers so that they can do all the things that they need to do in support of their NATO mission. We enable their success through making sure that everything is supported from an operational perspective, also as the institutional functions, making sure that base can run smoothly.

Capt Orton: And so maybe more on the topic of what I'll call hard logistics is you fit somewhere in there along that trail of how stuff goes from point A to point B to C or whatever. Can you kind of describe that process, like what that system looks like?

LCol Richards: Yeah, so what we're talking about here are two major tasks. And what you're talking about, Adam, is operational level sustainment, which is making sure that the theater runs as it's supposed to. So underneath that operational level sustainment, there are four real lines of sustainment. We call them lines of support. And that first line of support is what the typical soldier would be really used to. First line support is support capabilities organic to your unit or squadron. It's all the integral things that are required for that unit to do their business. At the second line, this is stuff that the formation or your brigade for army guys is going to hold. We call that the maintenance load. When that first line unit runs out of their basic load, that service battalion holds that second line basic load for them, and then every night they go and replenish them. My unit, the National Support Element, is really focused on that third line of support, which is support capabilities within theater operations that are established around the strategic lines of communications. What strategic lines of communication means is we're taking many things from Canada or from industry, and we're bringing them on a ship or an airplane or a vehicle or however we get them and putting them into the chain and into the system so that the brigade can get them. We're third line support. There is one more, fourth line support, which is not really commonly well-known or understood, and that's talking about strategic level resources. So when we're talking about strategic level resources, we're talking about national depots. We have two national supply depots, one in Montreal and one in Edmonton that feed the entire Canadian Forces. We're also talking about contractors and industry. So ammunition is a great example of this. The Canadian Forces does not make their own ammunition.

Capt Orton: That's right.

LCol Richards: But we buy it from industry. And so we buy it from industry and put it into the system through those depots and ammunition depots so that the third line guys can take it forward. So you go from 4th line to third line to second line to first line. That's all happening in the background. And for the individual unit, it doesn't really matter as long as it happens on time and on target. But when it doesn't, there's a problem.

Capt Orton: I just need bullets.

LCol Richards: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that's right.

LCol Richards: So that's basically what operational support is from first line to fourth line. The other part of what the National Support Element does is the base functions that are pretty similar to the way a base functions in Canada, except for a few caveats. So we provide the base level services like accommodations and feeding. So like the mess hall, ammunition services, so like getting ammunition. What else? We have the trades, the human resource administrators, HRAs and the financial services administrators. FSAs, they provide clerk services to everybody in the battle group. That's A centralized orderly room. So we have like 20 to 30 clerks sitting in the same spot, just bashing through 2,000 claims all the time in entitlements. It's very centralized. So those base functions, it seems pretty straightforward. But when you think about doing that for 1,800 Canadians and 3,000 soldiers that need three meals a day, they need a place to stay, they need a place to use the washroom, and all the buildings that we occupy need to be maintained. We have an engineer support squadron who just maintains all of these buildings, it's a full-time job. And the difference between a base here in Latvia and a base in Canada is that, for example, CFB Edmonton, not even close to 1000 people live on CFB Edmonton.

Capt Orton: Right.

LCol Richards: But here, there's 3,000 soldiers that live every day and require those services every single day. So it's an always-on function. We're always doing stuff. There's no lag. There's no time to do anything but your job. And it's quite a challenge.

Capt Orton: And I think one thing also that you can appreciate, which is something that's not always obvious to non-military members is, that's an operational base in the sense that it is a city that's working.

LCol Richards: Yeah, we can't afford for things to go down. So we have some redundancies. We have a few contracts that are sort of overlapping to ensure that we never run out of the things that we need to do. But this is a very different base than Canada. In Canada, you're used to like a lower security posture. Here, there's like machine guns at the gate and high fences with barbed wire. They take it very, very seriously because of how close we are to our adversaries. It's a real deal. The mission that we are here on as NATO is to deter and defend. And we take that very, very seriously. And so it's got to be working hard so that we can provide the services to the people providing that effect to NATO.

Capt Orton: Yeah, an active combat zone is not far away from where you are, like globally. You know, in Canada, we have one border to our South and everybody's thousands of kilometres away. But over there, it's like, it's pretty packed and, you know, a lot of nations, there's a lot of movement over there.

LCol Richards: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're about 200 kilometres between here and the next serious Russian base, which is a challenge. And when you think about how the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean act as that protective moat for Canada, it's a different story here when you're right next to your adversary and right next to your allies. It's a serious business.

Capt Orton: So how do you build a team to kind of make all of this happen?

LCol Richards: The way that we force generate this unit is really interesting. So for example, my national support element, this rotation, has 32 different trades in it that come from 62 different units.

Capt Orton: Yeah.

LCol Richards: Which is when you talk about a diverse unit, for example, the battle group and the Strathconas. If you're a warrant in there, you've been a sergeant and a master corporal there, you've known these people for the better part of your career and things just click. But when you've got 32 different trades coming from different units, it's a hard thing to do as far as diversity. So the trades that we have in the national support element on the logistics side specifically, ammunition techs that make sure that we properly store and house ammunition safely, which is a huge challenge. We have cooks. We have some electrical mechanical engineers. We talked about the financial services administrators and the human resource administrators, the clerk trades, logistics officers, material management techs, formerly known as supply techs, the mobile support equipment operators, the MSC ops, postal clerks that make sure our Amazon packages get to us on time.

Capt Orton: Yeah, right.

LCol Richards: Which is hugely beneficial. And traffic techs. These are the people who receive anything off a plane or a boat and ship things in, ship things out. Extremely important to us. And a few vehicle techs. That's just the logistics trades.

Capt Orton: Plus a bunch of other engineer trades, I guess?

LCol Richards: When we talk about engineer trades, this is a whole other can of worms here. When we talk about construction techs who help us maintain these buildings and build the things that break, we have electrical distribution techs, ED techs. They make sure that power can get to where it needs to be and taking things from huge generators or from shore power and putting them into buildings. Electrical generation systems techs, these are the people that help us fix those generators when they go down, which is a huge deal in the middle of the night when it's 20 below in the wind and the lights turn off.

Capt Orton: Yeah

LCol Richards: Part of engineer traits too is the firefighters. We have a few firefighters here that keep us safe linking into the host nation services, as well as making sure that we're compliant with Canadian and host nation regulations. Plumbing and heating techs, extremely important. RM techs or refrigeration and mechanical techs. And lastly, the water fuels and environmental techs, helping us ensure that the lines stay fresh.

Capt Orton: The reserves have also been part of the plan since the beginning. How are they integrated into all of this?

LCol Richards: About 37% of my folks are reservists on their first time tour.

Capt Orton: Oh, that's huge.

LCol Richards: What an opportunity. It's amazing. Reservists represent such an opportunity in energy, not necessarily in experience because it's their first tour, but also they bring such a vital energy and a wanting to do great things, which is extremely important for us. So I have lots of combat arms folks, infantry, armored, artillery, that come from the reserves to augment our ranks in things that are not necessarily technically driven. For example, we have a defense and security platoon, and their job is to make sure there's no shenanigans going on when we talk about some of the threats that exist to some of the logistics nodes that we have. They help us keep an eye out and make sure that things are safe. I've also got a military police platoon that deal with making sure that the National Defence Act and the Canadian Criminal Code are enforced. And they're linked in right with the multinational police, too. They have a really tight group of folks there, too. So it's crazy diverse, right? Again, 32 different trades from 62 different units, and we all got to come together, and we got to form a cohesive unit. And that's been a huge challenge for me, is making sure that they can be that, they can be united in purpose, despite their diversity. So it's been a challenge, but it's been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done.

Capt Orton: How do you prepare for that? Because if I think of myself as an infantry captain, like I have an understanding of what other trades do, particularly in a combat context, then I can probably use some of those efficiently. But generally speaking, I know how to do infantry stuff. So how do you, as the commander of the NSC, prep to handle all these different trades?

LCol Richards: I think it comes down to a few things. One is you got to get together. You have to come together as a unit and you have to give the unit a vision of what's going to happen. So just like any task, when you come together as a unit, there's a lot of unknowns and people don't really understand what's going on. What I spent a lot of time doing in the 10 days of pre-deployment training that I was afforded was getting people together, giving them a vision with expectations and showing them, this is how I visualize this tour. This is how I see our weekly battle rhythm going on. We're going to do PT together as a group. We're going to do professional development sessions for the officers and NCOs. We're going to prioritize the important things like making sure that our equipment is properly taken together through a stables program. And as soon as you explain to somebody what a week looks like and what they can expect and what the lockout policy is and how many beers can I have on the weekend, as soon as you visualize that with them, it clicks.

Capt Orton: Gets real.

LCol Richards: And you say, okay, I can do this.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that's right.

LCol Richards: Yeah. I think it's the unknown that's scary for people. And once you demystify that, people can come together. But I think also it's the vision. When you look at some of the folks that I have, some come from the Navy, from the Air Force, from the Army, like literally from submarines to Air Force bases to reserve infantry units. What does PT look like for that one person? They've got 62 different answers of what PT looks like. But when you tell them, this is what PT looks like for the NSE, it all comes together and people can get on board with the program and I think that's really helped. But the challenge is too, we don't get a big collective training window like the battle group does. Like they get to train for six months together doing the unit level training from section, platoon, company, battalion. Like I said, this scattered group of ragtag trades gets to do 10 days of IBTS training together. And we put a bunch of extra stuff in, like we did a bunch of team building activities to find out who's who in the zoo, who is really suitable for their position, who might need some mentorship and coaching as we go forward. But again, 10 days to do that is a challenge. And especially when, for my unit, for the NSC, the relief in place, the rotation is the hardest part, right?

Capt Orton: Yeah

LCol Richards: So when you get into theater, you literally land and your handover begins for the next four days. So it's like game time immediately. So any chance you can get together to do pre-deployment training and do that storming, norming, performing is extremely important. And it's something we must do as the national support element if we're going to continue to be force generated this way.

Capt Orton: You mentioned the idea that talking about the day-to-day creates that expectation and you know, sets everybody up to be on the same page. What does your day-to-day look like?

LCol Richards: For us, the unit wakes up at 6 o'clock and we start PT at 6:15. This is usually at the base gym, but now that it's getting nicer out, we go and do runs and rucks.

Capt Orton: Wait, sorry. So the whole NSC every morning is doing PT together.

LCol Richards: So the whole NSC is doing PT 5 times a week. So the way that I've broken it up is on Mondays, I take the officers, the RSM takes the NCOs, that leads the section commanders able to run their sections through PT, empowering those master corporals and sergeants to be leaders. Tuesday and Thursday is down to the platoon levels, enabling the platoon commanders to do their thing. Wednesdays is company PT, and the RSM and I will jump in with the company doing something that enables the company commanders to do their thing. And then on Fridays, we do it as a whole unit. We get all the 250 folks out on the field doing relay races and team building competitions. Just being together is extremely important. It's a really good indicator of how different people are doing. But I think group PT is fundamental to what we do as soldiers. And if you're not doing it as part of your unit and you're not doing it as a group, yeah, you're missing out and your unit will be worse for it.

Capt Orton: Amazing.

LCol Richards: I've had soldiers increase their fitness and really change their lives just by focusing on this as a core fundamental and I don't regret it for one minute.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's how you do a priority for sure, is you just make it happen. We've done PT, what happens next?

LCol Richards: Yeah, so PT has to happen in the morning for the NSE because we have a day job. We've got customers to provide services for throughout the day. So we go to the DFAC, get our supper, and at 9 o'clock, everybody's in at work. And that's a lot different than the battle group and the other maneuver units, because they have time to do stuff. If they're not in the field doing a training exercise, they can do PT until 10 or 11, no problem. We can't. We have to make sure that our business is getting done. So between 9:00 to 5:00 and often later, we are doing our functions, whether it's ammo techs doing ammo things, driving vehicles, preparing contracts, policing the base, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We are doing our job all the time. After that, it's their downtime, which is really important. There's a lot of introverts here, and when we talk about the accommodations, for some people, it's four to a room, for some people, it's eight to a room, which is a big change. And for extroverts, it's great. For introverts, they need their alone time. So we focus on finding some times for that. We have another crew, which I didn't mention before, which is quite important. They're called Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services, CFMWS. They're the PSP folks that provide morale stuff. So like, they do so much stuff. It's not only just running PT classes for us. They run everything from like a knitting night to day trips to Estonia and Lithuania, where you can just get on a bus, they'll drop you in the middle of town. You go and tour the city on a few weekends a month. They also got things like bingo, which is a huge hit. You wouldn't think bingo is a big thing, but it's a huge thing here in Gazi. People are going crazy. And it's all in a multinational environment so they provide a bunch of services. Also, we have a Tim Horton's here, so if you want an ice cap on a hot day like today, what an opportunity to have a little taste of home. And it's the only coffee shop on base, and I'll tell you, it's busy.

Capt Orton: I've always heard the fact that the proof that the Americans had superior logistics during the war was the fact that they could drop a McDonald's anywhere. Or at one point, they had an ice cream barge floating off the coast of one of the countries and just supplying troops with ice cream in the middle of the war. And it's like, that's how you do logistics.

LCol Richards: Yeah, exactly. So that's what our Tim Horton’s is. Like I can tell you, like there's people getting coffees every single day. Ice caps are used in the summertime. It's really important. We have another store called the Commons, which is similar to a Canex here, which is the only store on the base. And I'll tell you what, Adam, we go through 1000 monsters every single day. So we think about the logistics of getting a monster in the theater and sustaining that chain of supply.

Capt Orton: Troops love their energy drinks.

LCol Richards: They need them. It's a food group over here.

Capt Orton: Yeah.

LCol Richards: Yeah, so they provide those services and it really helps us focus on our job. And their motto is serving those who serve and boy do they do a great job.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that's awesome. I just want to come back to a little bit of the, you know, some of the base operations and stuff you were describing. Particularly, let's say clerk stuff. I have this conversation a lot and people are like, why does the military have these functions as opposed to having them done by civilians? Or why do people need to be on site to do them as opposed to remotely? Why is it important that everything is integrated into that structure?

LCol Richards: Well for one, it's more responsive. And when you want to have an effect, having people be there with you, working extended hours when required is extremely important. I can tell you the 20 HRAs that I have are working non-stop, ensuring entitlements are good and responsive and as they're needed. The massive amounts of paperwork they do, like, talk about like 1800 Canadians here. And each of those folks at a minimum will have about 10 paper processes that needs to go through. That will not happen if you outsource that nine to five to a company. And not only that, when you need to change things, or if you say you have an alternative new meal plans or entitlements change, you want somebody there who's responsive. And that's what these HRAs and FSAs provide. They go above and beyond. I've got to tell you, Adam, I've never seen these folks work harder than when they first got here, making sure that we could get people's allowances right to where they need to be, and that you just simply would not get that if you did it any other way.

Capt Orton: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I've always felt like the clerks are definitely the heavy hitters. Like back in my infantry company days, the company clerk was the hero. Like they're doing the stuff that I definitely don't want to be doing. You know what, I'm doing Army stuff for sure.

LCol Richards: Yeah, for sure. And one thing you got to know too is that when we're working here, a lot of the exercises are not necessarily in Latvia. We have training events going on all over the three Baltic states. other places in Europe and it's just go, go, go, go, go. So when you talk about that kind of stuff, claims and feeding and all that kind of stuff, it just is happening too fast and at too high a rate to do it any other way.

Capt Orton: I think about all these descriptions that we've been doing and I see it kind of like almost like the circulatory system too, where it's like you've got major arteries that are pushing big chunks of equipment, you know, packs for thousands of people. And then that gets down to that next node and then that's distributed and kind of branches out like blood vessels and stuff. And that's how the whole system works. It seems like a very refined process.

LCol Richards: Yeah, we've been working on our doctrine for quite a long time. And it's interesting because we have this system that's pretty slick, we're able to adapt when the operation chooses to do things differently. And this is a really interesting mission. There's people here who are on a rotational deployment of six months. There are also people here who are posted here for a year without their families. And there's other people still who are posted here for three years on LCAN. And that number is growing every single rotation. So the way that we do things has to be really slick so that we can adapt to the needs of the mission. And I think our system is that flexible and that robust and that agile that we're able to accommodate all these different types of deployed people.

Capt Orton: How would you say this experience will affect you moving forward, like the next stages in your career? Like this seems like a big thing.

LCol Richards: Yeah, I have learned so much in this awesome unit. I've learned a lot about leadership and personal development. One of my next jobs may be being a commanding officer within a mechanized brigade group. And I've learned a lot personally. I've learned a lot about joint logistics. And I think the most important thing is just learning the importance of relationship building. Relationship building is key to what we do. Here in Latvia, we are ambassadors not only between units within the Canadian context, but also with the sending nations. We've got 13 other nations that we got to do our best to be ambassadors for. And every interaction we have with them is for better or for worse. And I think the Canadian approach of listening more than we speak and treating people with respect and valuing other people's perspectives is just a huge enabler here in Latvia. So that's one thing I'll take back. Relationship is really important.

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Capt Orton: Well, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day to tell us a little bit about the experience over there and how logistics works pretty much everywhere, I guess.

LCol Richards: Awesome, Adam. Thanks. It was a pleasure.

Capt Orton: All right. Well, that was Lieutenant-Colonel Nathan Richards, who is the commanding officer of the National Support Element in Latvia, dialing in from Latvia. And I'm Captain Adam Orton for the Canadian Army Podcast. Orton out.

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