United States Army Transportation Command
ARTRANS moves the Department’s surface cargo. It is the Army service component to USTRANSCOM and simultaneously a major subordinate command of AMC - a rare dual-hat. It was called the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) until Army Secretary Dan Driscoll redesignated it on September 24, 2025.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | Army Service Component Command (ASCC); also a major subordinate command of AMC |
| Headquarters | Scott Air Force Base, Illinois |
| Subordinate to | US_Army for ASCC purposes; AMC for materiel enterprise purposes |
| ASCC to | USTRANSCOM |
| Redesignated | September 24, 2025 (from SDDC) |
| Lineage | Military Traffic Management and Terminal Service (1965), MTMC (1974), SDDC (2004), ARTRANS (2025) |
Mission
ARTRANS provides global surface deployment and distribution: it books, moves, and tracks Department of Defense cargo by ocean, rail, and truck, and it operates the strategic seaport network that gets Army units from home station to a theater of war.
Core functions:
- Ocean cargo. Contracting and managing commercial sealift and liner service for DoD cargo worldwide
- Strategic seaports. Managing the designated commercial and military ocean terminals that deploy units
- Surface transportation in CONUS. Rail and commercial truck movement of unit equipment, ammunition, and sensitive cargo
- Personal property. Oversight of the household goods and privately owned vehicle programs for service members
- Deployment and distribution planning in support of USTRANSCOM and the geographic combatant commands
Subordinate Organizations
- 596th_Transportation_Brigade (Joint Base Langley-Eustis, VA) - east coast strategic seaports
- 597th_Transportation_Brigade (Joint Base Langley-Eustis, VA)
- 598th_Transportation_Brigade (Sembach, Germany) - Europe and Africa surface distribution
- 599th_Transportation_Brigade (Wheeler Army Airfield, HI) - Pacific surface distribution
- 831st_Transportation_Battalion and other port battalions
- Transportation_Engineering_Agency - deployability engineering, the Defense Table of Official Distances, and infrastructure analysis
Why it matters
This is where commercial carriers meet the Department. ARTRANS is the contracting relationship for U.S.-flag ocean carriers under the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement, for Class I railroads moving unit equipment, and for trucking companies carrying arms, ammunition, and explosives. If a company moves freight and wants DoD business, this is the door.
Household goods is a multi-billion-dollar program. The Global Household Goods Contract, the single largest personal-property services vehicle in the Department, is managed here. It has been protested, restructured, and re-scoped repeatedly, and it remains one of the largest logistics services awards in government.
Contested logistics is a stated Army problem. USARPAC’s dispersion problem is ARTRANS’s throughput problem. Port opening, austere-terminal operations, in-transit visibility under denied communications, and cyber-hardening of commercial transportation data systems are active requirement areas connecting this command to CPE_Combat_Logistics and ARCYBER.
In-transit visibility is a data business. RFID, sensor tagging, and the software that tracks a container from a depot to a forward operating base run through ARTRANS systems - a persistent IT modernization market.
The dual-hat matters. Because ARTRANS answers to both AMC and USTRANSCOM, its requirements can be funded through Army channels or through the Transportation_Working_Capital_Fund. Know which before you plan a pursuit.