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Ten years ago an article titled, "The Worldwide Warehouse Distribution Program", was featured in the DISAM Journal, Volume 2 No. 3, Spring 1998, pp. 118-124. The article introduced the Worldwide Warehouse Redistribution Services (WWRS) program to the security cooperation community. The author, lieutenant Colonel William C. Lee, USAF, described the program as:
Basically, this system splits the third party transfer of non-major defense equipment (non-SME) into two separate two-party transfers: one country returns excess items to the USG which, as the intermediary, then sells the items to a third country. The WWRS provides FMS customers with an orderly method to transfer materiel with a minimum of the "red tape" associated with normal third party transfers.
Lieutenant Colonel Lee further indicated the WWRS program has four major goals:
* Reduce foreign military sales (FMS) customers excess inventories
* Reduce materiel costs for purchasers
* Reduce lead times through redistribution of assets instead of new procurement
* Enable sellers to purchase needed FMS assets with proceeds from WWRS sales
Ten years later, how has WWRS performed in meeting these four goals?
* Twenty-four nations have transferred over 19,000 line items of serviceable, excess materiel and recouped over $6IM.
* Fifty nations have purchased materiel and saved, on average, 29.1 percent of the Department of Defense (DoD) stock list price. Purchasers have saved over $29M. Materiel quality has proven excellent with a validated supply discrepancy report (SDR) rate of less than 1 percent.
* WWRS logistics response time, from requisition input to arrival at the buyer freight forwarder, averages 73.3 days.
* Selling countries have reinvested sales proceeds back into FMS. For many nations, WWRS has proved an effective tool to recycle no-longer-needed FMS materiel and reinvest the proceeds into current requirements.
Worldwide Warehouse Today
The WWRS sales inventory has grown from $5M in the early days to $1.4B and 249,000 line items today. What began as an Air Force program is now a tri-service program. The Army and Navy have approved participation for their...