Colonel Steve Ward is the crisis action team (CAT) chief at the Army Operations Center (AOC) in the Pentagon. The AOC is primarily a resource provider - soldiers and equipment - and serves as a conduit for information flow to senior leadership. The AOC is also capable of tracking major battles in real time to the company level. The CAT is staffed primarily with National Guard and Reserve officers who were called to active duty after 9/11. Team members gather information and conduct two formal briefings per day for senior Army leadership. They also expedite any and all actions required to support soldiers downrange. For example, Ward worked with a variety of Army staff agencies to address the up-armoring of Humvees and for providing improved individual body armor for soldiers. The AOC also helped plan for the training of Iraqi forces by locating and providing highly skilled US soldiers to serve as trainers and by facilitating the transfer of necessary equipment. The CAT also tracks all requests for forces. Ward explained that combatant commanders decide how many and what mix of troops they need, while the Army senior staff (with the CAT's assistance) provides the manpower and equipment to accomplish the mission. Finally, the CAT has developed a number of additional metrics for tracking/forecasting reconstruction projects, Iraqi unemployment, US casualties, IED use - the IED task force was part of the AOC initially - civil affairs/psychological operations projects, intelligence trends, detainee operations, weapons caches and unit transitions.

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