Regardless of your branch, every officer is first and foremost a logistician: you manage time, people, and resources. Readiness is about maximizing the management of all three.

Understand there’s a difference between readiness and responsiveness. When alerted, your focus as an officer becomes all about responsiveness. You as a company-grade officer must do what you can to ensure that when the alert comes, your people are focused on the mission in front of them and not some admin requirement behind them.

Here’s where I think you can contribute to your unit’s readiness at the company level:

1. Admin Requirements. DD93s, SGLV certifications, Periodic Record Reviews, Immunizations…these are not things for an S1 to track at a battalion headquarters. This is where I see readiness starting for personnel. Yes, they are mundane but without them, you can’t even leave your company offices. Ensure your unit has a system in place for completing these on a regular basis (birth month audits, quarterly SRPs, etc). While not exactly time consuming by themselves, these administrative requirements become a huge bottleneck during alert periods. Remember: systems, not surges. Plans, not projects.

2. Non-deployable Personnel. Bars, chapters, ETS, med boards, etc. Get them out of your unit as fast as you can. This may sound unduly harsh, but carrying non-deployable personnel on your roster prevents you from demonstrating to HRC that you have a valid requirement for new personnel. This is especially important in low-density MOSs in a BCT–specifically logistics, med service, and engineers.  The BSB and BEB are full of positions that have a bench just one or two deep. Frankly, a handful of infantryman being non-deployable isn’t as impactful as a missile tech to the brigade commander of an IBCT. He only has (maybe) two missile techs, and if one is non-deployable, his ability to kill tanks across the entire brigade is severely limited. Remember, sometimes the best thing for your unit is to look bad on paper! Dropping your on hand number can make you first in line for replacements. Just be sure to socialize this with your higher beforehand so they can see you shaping the battlefield.

3. Maintenance.  This is really a two-step process. First step is identifying your broken equipment. If you don’t know how to pull your ESR in G-CSS Army, or how to read it, you’re behind the power curve. The most effective company commanders I’ve watched always came in and increased the size of their ESR after taking command. Why? Because they were enforcing their command maintenance program, identifying broken pieces of equipment, and putting parts on order. Their ESR increased (by a dozen pages in one instance), but this directly translated into equipment readiness. Within 90 days, those commanders had the most ‘ready’ formations in the brigade.

The second part is follow through. It’s not enough just to get parts on order, you must complete the process.  Ensure operator-level parts are hung on broken items of equipment. Pick up parts from the SSA within 24 hours of them arriving at the warehouse. Ensure your work orders are being closed out in G-CSS Army. Follow through is extremely important: don’t put yourself (or your commander) in a position where you have to explain equipment readiness issues while you concurrently have a stock pile of “parts on hand, not installed.” Your BSB SPO or BN XO will eat you for lunch.

4. Mobility. Do you know how your unit will actually leave the unit area in the event of a deployment? Which outload nodes do you hit first? Where is your MHE support coming from? Which containers are going with you downrange, and which ones are installation owned? Are the 1750s on the containers updated and accurate? At the company level, in most cases, I don’t expect you to develop this plan but I do expect you to be able to articulate it. Ensure your container control officer, unit movement officer, and supply sergeant are well trained and well versed in the outload process.  Ensure the containers you intend to deploy with are found in JCMS.  Finally, ensure your UMO isn’t just the Company XO. That XO can be tasked to go ahead of the main body, and if you only have one UMO–or one person that understands the outload plan–once the XO is wheels up there will be no leadership at home station to keep pushing equipment and personnel forward.

Notice none of these things is training related. You have NCOs who can manage that. I’ll explain a bit further: I’m an 82nd guy. I will tell you that I am only minimally interested in the actual jump; that’s just a method of insertion. I don’t need to focus on the bump plan, scatter plan, and tactical cross-load as much as I need to focus on developing the ground tactical plan. My NCOs will do the manifesting, sustained airborne training, and developing the details at the departure airfield. I’ll be with my fellow Officers in a room with no windows, conducting IPB and staring at maps. The NCOs will ensure I get there, my job is to make sure they can get the job done once we arrive.

Again, you are focused on time, people, and resources. My point about mobility is about managing time as effectively as possible, so that in the event of an alert you have more time to conduct mission-related TLPs rather than focus on outload nodes. Ensuring your admin requirements are met and all your soldiers are deployable is all about people-management. And maintenance operations are resource-driven events. Combined with your NCOs focus on training your formation, you’ll end up with an organization of trusted professionals who are prepared to execute whatever complex mission our nation requires.