When you're in a quick response unit responsible for deploying globally at a moment's notice, you can't just show up wherever you hit the ground with a credit card in your pocket.
Many places the Ft. Bragg, North Carolina-based 82nd Airborne Division is expected to deploy, often with no time to plan ahead, don't have chip readers, ATM machines or even banks; all the electronic financial luxuries to which the modern world has grown accustomed.
And "sorry, I don't have any cash," is not something you want to say.
"The banking industry or electronic funds transfers or debit cards don't work in austere environments where we are typically called to go, so the ability to put cash in the commander's formation, jump into an austere location, the financial management piece on the back end to support that is pretty significant," Lt. Col. Greg Worley, the chief financial officer for the 82nd told Defense News in an interview.
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When the 82nd is called to respond to a contingency, it often has less than a day to mobilize the unit to board C-130s with all its gear and equipment and then parachute into the designated place.
The unit can't just land in a country and have no means to pay locals for fuel, food or other kinds of assistance. "If you don't have enough money, you'll come to a halt," Worley said.
At the same time the assault force gets its call to deploy, mobilizing paratroopers to rapidly gather up their gear, the financial manager gets the same call, and financial management soldiers certified to carry money, go to "the vault" and draw out cash, Worley explained.
The 82nd employed exactly that practice, hitting a poppy-dotted field running with a bounty of cash 25 hours after being called to drop into Northern Poland during Swift Response, an exercise happening in tandem with the country's major military exercise Anakonda in June.
But grabbing cash on the way out the door wasn't that easy 20 months ago; then the Army gave the unit the authority to set up the vault.
Before, the unit would have to run a treasury check to the bank and cash it "and what we found, it just doesn't support operations, the speed of operations," Worley said.
The 82nd has seen after-action reports from exercises in the past where the ground force commander could not draw cash in the support region, he added.
The military deputy for the Army's comptroller, Lt. Gen. Karen Dyson, said in the same interview that a core competency for financial management soldiers is handling cash on the battlefield. "It's very important to enable that commander on the ground from the minute they get off the plane," she said.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
