‘The conclusion is irresistible that the military themselves know next to nothing about logistics’– United States Marine Corps Colonel George C Thorpe, Pure Logistics, 1917.
The Importance of Logistics
The need for Logistics of the Armed Forces was created from the moment the first soldier appeared, and its evolution is influenced by the technology used. This finding is important because without effective combat logistics support of the Armed Forces, it would be impossible to equip, feed, treat, move or support the soldier, sailor, or airman during a conflict. Its evolution is linked to every period of military revolution, considering that changing the way an army operates affects how soldiers are logistically supported. Conversely, every revolution in logistics support results from a profound, immediate and destabilizing change. A theory that has been examined by various researchers because of its importance in the relationship between the military, states and society.
Logistics support is essential to maintain the operational readiness of the armed forces. This readiness includes ensuring that soldiers are properly equipped, supplied with what they need, and fully supported in terms of medical care, transportation, and appropriate lodging. A timely and reliable supply of ammunition, spare parts and fuel can make the difference in the outcome of a battle, particularly when battles are fought long distances from unit bases or when large quantities of materiel are required to achieve strategic objectives. This strategic capability is critical to responding to crises and conflicts around the world.
In simple words, I want you to imagine a bullet fired by a soldier, during an operation. The result of the shot is achieved through the efforts of literally hundreds of people. While the soldier is an important part of this picture, he is in many ways simply the final actor in a well-designed system that results in this bullet being in that particular time and place. A system designed and implemented by Armed Forces logisticers.
Main Components of Logistics
Logistics support can be distinguished into several key components, each of which is essential to the smooth functioning of the armed forces.
1. Supply and Distribution: This component includes the procurement, storage and distribution of equipment, fuel, food, medical supplies and other essential supplies.
2. Transportation: Logistics includes land, sea, and air transportation for the movement of personnel, equipment, and supplies. This includes coordinating convoys, aviation and naval forces to achieve strategic objectives or to provide care to wounded or sick soldiers.
3. Maintenance and Repairs: Equipment maintenance is vital to extend the life of the equipment and keep it in working condition as well as for the operation and availability of facilities.
Challenges in Logistics
- Supply Chains
Ammunition often determines the length and intensity of warfare against an adversary. To prevent running out of ammo during combat, ammo should be stockpiled as close to the battlefield as safely possible. Global supply chains provide the means to transport munitions to the appropriate destination using a combination of military/commercial ships and infrastructure. Various problems at critical points can easily disrupt these supplies, including manufacturing, transportation and interconnection points.
Supply chains provide the transportation and production of raw materials into finished products and include producers, warehouses, transportation companies, distribution centers, and suppliers. In the case of ammunition, it is produced in factories, and then distributed to the armed forces. Armed Forces Logisticers at the end of this chain distribute ammunition for training, day-to-day operations, and during crises the combat load for missions. If ammunition and explosives are not where and when they are needed, planning and execution are disrupted.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global impact. This has led to disruptions in commercial supply chains by around 75%. Supply disruption can easily prove fatal to the defense sector, particularly during periods of conflict or escalation near the onset of a conflict, where ammunition needs to move rapidly through the global supply chain. Ammunition differs significantly from other categories of military supplies, such as food and construction materials. This is due to their dangerous nature, requiring special handling and storage. Ammunition supply chain problems can occur at various points in this complex system.
- Industry and Production
Munitions production is one sector of a country’s defense industry and is directly related to a country’s ability to conduct war on its own. The forms of the ammunition industrial base vary by country. One example is the Australian Strategic Munitions Domestic Manufacturing Contract, which allows the private sector to access government-owned and contractor-operated (GOCO) facilities to produce the most critical explosives and munitions. Another example is the United States, which also has GOCO facilities and has a significant organic category of government-owned and operated (GOGO) generating facilities. Although there may be many munitions production facilities in a country, economic constraints prevent surplus production of military equipment.
An example is the Mulwala facility, a vital propellant and high explosives manufacturing facility in Australia, and the ammunition manufacturing facility in Benalla, Victoria, which uses the warheads in its products. Similarly, in the United States, the Army Ammunition Plant in Lake City is the primary supplier of small arms ammunition to the military and provides over 99% of all small arms ammunition for the United States Army. These two examples highlight the reliance on a single facility as the primary source for a military-only product. While the production of unique products for military use does not attract the private sector, and private companies are more interested in products that can be used by the commercial and military sectors, this dependence can create excessive disruptions in the supply chain when there are significant problems.
Major problems, such as industrial accidents, can easily stop production. The Lake City munitions plant had an accident in 2017, with subsequent investigations revealing concerns about the safety of warheads. These accidents not only stop production, but also require extensive restructuring of production processes, which costs time and money. There is also the possibility that these individual points of production are susceptible to other forms of disturbances. Like terrorism, as seen at Naval Air Station Pensacola, or as in the case of COVID-19.
- Transportation
The main means of transporting ammunition to the port of departure are roads and railways. Continuing with the two national examples of Australia and the United States, the countries use the Australian Code for the Transport of Explosives by Road and Rail, and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 49 – Transportation, respectively. Both regulations set strict requirements for the marking of packages, vehicles and transport containers, requirements for documents and for storage and segregation. National regulations are extremely detailed and specific to ammunition. Transportation from the ports of export to the national port of destination is by air or sea and there are specific requirements both nationally and internationally. Internationally, regulations are governed by the Maritime Dangerous Goods Code (IMDG) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Code.
Transport disruptions are the easiest to overcome as different modes of transport can be used if there are restrictions. For the United States, this includes the ability to use different modes of transportation based on operational needs and the ability to have interoperability and interchangeability for optimal supply. For example, using 20-foot Interchangeable Containers (TEU) of dangerous goods, used with the Australian Roll-Out Commodity System (CROWS) or the United States Container Roll-Out Commodity (CROP). Combined, munitions containers on ships with a cargo carrying capacity of more than 27,870 square meters can be transferred to a terminal for sea transport. The only downside is that certified ships carrying ammunition are few and far between, with their numbers often being a planning constraint for operations.
- Transit Hubs
Transit Hubs do not have the flexibility to deal with disruptions in supply chains. In Australia, limits on the quantities of explosives are set by law, and some ports are not suitable for any quantity of explosives due to the presence of densely populated areas with schools and hospitals. Sea transports from military installations are carried out in accordance with the NATO Security Principles Manual for the Transport of Military Explosives and Ammunition. While shipments of containerized goods via state/commercial ports are conducted in accordance with Australian Standard AS 3846. Shipments may only enter or exit ports with approved explosives limits.
The Australian Ports Authority of New South Wales provides separation distances for the import and export of Class 1 explosives and Net Explosive Quantity (NEQ) limits allowed on board for specific terminals. The multipurpose port, Eden, requires a separation distance of 689 meters to a “Protected Area” for a Net Explosive Quantity (NEQ) of 30,000 kg allowed on board for hazard categories 1.1, 1.5 and 1.6. The NEQ is relatively small compared to other parts of the Australian continent or other countries. Port Alma, near Rockhampton, is the designated east coast port of Australia for bulk Class 1 explosives and ammonium nitrate, with a limit of 1,500 tonnes of explosives. Explosives limits are requested by the port authority to the Chief Inspector of Explosives and approved for each port. Strict adherence to these limits is important and failure to adhere to them can cause serious damage to the explosives supply chain infrastructure.
The consequences of not meeting these limits can be seen in an incident in the port city of Tianjin in China, where 49,000 tons of highly toxic chemicals, including ammonium nitrate, exploded in a warehouse. The explosion destroyed buildings and surrounding infrastructure, while debris was thrown into the neighboring area. The damage was extensive and caused mass unrest in the city. Another case of a serious accident is the shutdown of the port of Morehead City in North Carolina, United States, and the evacuation of residents due to the leakage of a container with a high explosive. The range of accidents can range from the unfortunate death of individuals to simple evacuations.
Catastrophic accidents or the effects of any form of disruption at critical locations such as those described here will have far-reaching consequences for the supply of essential supplies to the Armed Forces. As we have seen with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the private sector, disruptions at key points in global supply chains can have far-reaching effects from the inability of businesses to serve their customers to the closure of businesses themselves. The only way to ensure the supply of the Armed Forces and reduce the exposure of the EDs to volatile factors is the cooperation of the Public and Private sectors to promote and develop a defense industry that can be called “to arms” during a crisis.
Logistics and its Impact in Modern Warfare
The nature and characteristics of strategic competition have taken on new life in recent months. Analysts, writers, military professionals and many others are looking for signs of tectonic changes in the way war is waged. One of the more abstract theories prevailing in this debate is the concept of national power. The Lowy Institute recently described national power as a “relational quantity.” Not surprisingly, military capability is one of the eight power indicators used in a study recently published by the same Institute – the Asia Power Index. The ability to use military force to influence the strategic decision-making of another country, even without direct coercion, is the ultimate expression of national power. In an era of constant conflict and competition between states, military power is becoming increasingly important – so much so that the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces have developed a new concept that defines its use.
The importance of logistics, an internal military activity that keeps the Armed Forces functional is self-evident, yet its impact is underestimated. At the risk of sounding overly critical of the Lowy Institute, the ability of an “armed force to develop rapidly and over a long period” probably deserves more weight than 10% of total military capability. John Louth once wrote about a widespread tendency to misunderstand the importance of portability and force retention in war. What good are sophisticated weapons of war when they cannot be maintained, replaced or repaired, deployed in a reasonable amount of time, or ready for war? The threat of using these powers as a means of pressure, or their actual use, is undermined when accounting is neglected.
Kenneth Boulding, in his book “Conflict and Defense,” defined Military Power by how it can be used practically. Military power (or power in Boulding’s terms) is a function of the cost of transporting it to and from the conflict site. Geography, of course, plays a dominant role in determining the exact amount of military force a country can exert against an adversary. The farther a country must operate from its bases, the longer and more complex are its lines of communication, and the less power can be sent into the field of operations. By connecting the relationship between distance and military power as the linear loss of power, Boulding also demonstrated the dilemma that “campaign” military forces face when considering the relationship between force structure and posture. Either you “front line” your troops to make them easier to maintain, or you maintain a capable, logistically viable, expeditionary force. Thus, one of the most important strategic decisions for any military is to rationalize (perhaps even cost) the consequences (trade-off) between the posture (posture) of the force and the development of its capabilities.
Boulding’s theory primarily looked at the relationship from the perspective of portability versus the ability to deliver Firepower from afar. He ultimately argued that the importance of having forward bases will decrease in the future because the cost of transporting Firepower, measured in terms of speed and risk to deploying forces, will decrease due to the vast increase in the range of air force missiles and Artillery. The post-Cold War closure of US and allied military bases, the subsequent expansion of expeditionary forces into many military forces, and the impressive successes of these forces in expeditionary operations since the 1991 Gulf War could be seen as part of this trend. This trend in military theory continued until the dramatic reversal of the “cost” of carrying Firepower. The cost has increased with “anti-access/area exclusion” threats, a competitive approach to Western military consideration by emerging military powers. Distance again became important to military thinking. Western militaries are now facing a significant reduction in their strategic mobility and are inevitably redesigning their structure and the way they deploy their expeditionary forces. Not surprisingly, a recent USPACOM exercise highlights the vital importance of strategic transportation in this environment.
Strategists and logisticers must both be innovators in this day and age. They must not only find a solution to the significant challenge of projecting force in a threat area against a potentially highly capable adversary, but do so in an era where formations with heavier equipment make it difficult to transport. As we think about abstract measures of power, be it the Lowy Institute Index or Boulding’s theoretical model, we must not forget that what really matters is not the size of a distant power, but the relative military strength it can produced against an opponent in a given period of time. Strategic mobility is, therefore, an important factor, but the ability to produce military power in any place also depends on many other logistical parameters.
Transportability, the ability to deliver materiel efficiently, the ability to minimize the need for maintenance, and the ability to provide emergency support locally are equally important to supporting a military force at the time and place of the General Staff’s choice. It is enough to refer to Kenneth Privratsky’s work ‘Logistics in the Falklands War: A case study in expeditionary warfare’ to understand the accounting factors involved. Logistics rigor is now necessary at the operational level, and the luxuries to which military forces have become accustomed will in many cases endanger the military force as a whole. Also, it is necessary for the military forces to work seriously to reduce their logistics costs and to increase their strategic mobility.
The mobilization of logistical resources and the ability to maintain forces in remote areas are important factors in any conception of national military power. When thinking about how conflicts might develop, or how military forces might be used to exert pressure outside of armed conflict, it may be best to begin with a detailed analysis of the logistics for how those forces will be maintained. Strategic theories and policies based on an assessment of the relative forces between our own country and a potential adversary will greatly benefit from the results.
Logistics as the ultimate means of preventing war
The natural competitiveness of nations leads to the primary role of the military to deter military action within that competition. The modern view holds that the traditional distinction between peace and war is obsolete, and has now been replaced by a continuous hybrid competition. This ongoing hybrid competition is evident in global supply chains and the need for Nations to secure the raw materials needed for their defense and civilian industries. The global supply chain architecture is vital to national interests and attracts the attention of every government as major trade hubs and economic corridors gain strategic value. Governments use diplomatic, military and economic means to control these hubs and corridors. Supply chain security is a concern for every government, balancing the need for national prosperity through global trade with maintaining the ability to build new and maintain existing military capabilities. Fragile supply chains and industrial capabilities expose militaries to new risks, making it easy for nations to influence or cripple a nation’s military response capability. In this context, logistical support is the link between the beginning and the final outcome of a war.
While logistics support plays a central role in strategy and international competition, its importance in deterrence is often overlooked. Examining the logistics of the Roman Empire, John Roth emphasized that the ability to provide logistical support over long distances was a key factor in the Romans’ military success. Beyond military culture and training, effective sustainment of forces over long distances became both a tactical and a strategic weapon. In history, logistics enabled the Romans not only to win battles but also to establish their Empire. This concept remains relevant today, where, in addition to nuclear weapons, the power projection and global presence of the US military serve as deterrents to potential adversaries. Cold War exercises like REFORGER and modern counterparts like Operation Atlantic Resolve are vital amid growing competition. While strike aircraft, artillery, and naval groups are common topics of discussion, it is logistics that determines the conditions for their use, including when and where to resupply as well as speed of repair on the battlefield. As Western militaries focus on programs to develop forces and acquire new capabilities, attention is now turning to the performance of the military organizations that maintain these critical capabilities.
In summary, the proximity of military forces serves as a deterrent by reducing the “cost” of business logistics, as suggested by economist Kenneth E. Boulding’s “force loss” theory. Boulding emphasized the evolving importance of transportation capabilities and long-range firepower in shaping conflict dynamics. However, the late twentieth century saw a shift in non-nuclear deterrence towards mobility and long-range firepower, reflected in the closure of overseas military bases and investment in expeditionary forces. The subsequent rise of A2/AD threats from emerging military powers brought about a strategic upheaval, once again reinstating the importance of distance in military operations. In logistics, the transformation of national economic power into military capabilities plays a critical role in strategic competition. Factors such as industrial policy, strategic organization, leadership appointments, and doctrine formation become decisive in determining a nation’s ability to compete and prevent the imposition of the will of a competing Nation. These often overlooked aspects are integral to understanding deterrence and play a critical role in shaping conflict outcomes from the earliest stages.
Essentially, the dynamics of competition and military deterrence are shaped by various logistical factors. Nations are implementing different strategies, from building islands to procuring air mobility or creating logistical support corps, to enhance strike capabilities and power projection. While the relentless development of offensive and defensive capabilities remains a constant in international competition, the critical role of logistical support in counterbalancing opposing military forces is often overlooked. Effective deterrence, an integral part of strategic competition, requires a robust logistics system to support deterrence forces. Recognizing the connection between the national economy, military logistics and force support is vital as the supply of the Armed Forces becomes increasingly an essential component of strategy. Logistics activities not only precede armed conflict, but significantly influence the mindset of potential adversaries in the realm of deterrence. In the event of an armed conflict, the focus on defending the supply chain and the efficiency of logistics processes becomes as important as achieving victory on the battlefield.
Conclusion
Military logistics is the lifeblood of the armed forces, ensuring their readiness and effectiveness in a rapidly changing world. Its importance cannot be understated, as logistics operations directly affect the outcome of military campaigns. By incorporating advanced technologies and evolving military doctrines, logistics continues to adapt and meet the challenges of the 21st century, supporting the security and defense needs of nations worldwide.
Conclusions on logistics:
Military logistics is the lifeblood of the armed forces, ensuring their readiness and effectiveness in a rapidly changing world. Its importance cannot be understated, as logistics operations directly affect the outcome of military campaigns. By incorporating advanced technologies and evolving military doctrines, logistics continues to adapt and meet the challenges of the 21st century, supporting the security and defense needs of nations worldwide.
Conclusions on logistics:
- Logistics essentially deals with the movement, creation, maintenance of forces and their logistical support.
- Logistics connects the National economy to the battlefield.
- Logistics deals with what can be moved and when. It is therefore the essence of strategy and ‘sets the scene’ for tactical operations.
- Logistics is a self-sustaining system of many elements and countless often related factors. If left “unchecked” in war, it tends to become ineffective, and in this way, the forces devoted to logistics tasks increase in size.
- A country can prepare for a war and for this reason logistics as a means of supporting the Armed Forces affects everything (bureaucracy, economy). However, once the battle begins, it is almost impossible to change its design. In case of failure, the logistics of “brute force” often prevails, or in simple words, improvisation which always results in bad results.
