Improving Logistics Support for the Combatant Commander

摘要

Logistics support to Combatant Commanders has improved significantly since DESERT SHIELD/STORM. DOD logistics has benefited from investments in afloat prepositioning, newer and more capable airlift and sealift platforms, and improvements to mobility infrastructure. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) demonstrated that many logistical challenges still remain. Support units had difficulty keeping pace with a highly mobile combat force. Logistics planners encountered difficulties in meeting unit sustainment demands due to problems with in-transit and total asset visibility (ITV/TAV), which impacted their ability to identify shortages and availability of theater stocks, and pass and track requisitions for critical parts. These impediments prompted decisions to push materiel into and throughout the theater preempting the normal requisitioning process. Overall, OIF demonstrated logistics success; however, it also showed that logistics transformation is needed to adapt to future warfare requirements. Transformation of DOD logistics must occur with emphasis on linkage of sustainment with operations. Logistics planners need battlefield awareness to enable them to respond to warfighter needs as they occur. Future maneuver warfare will have to rely on a transformed logistics system that can effectively push all classes of supply to units in a timely and highly synchronized fashion. This paper will propose a push system of supply as part of a migration to a Sense and Respond logistics model, which represents the type of transformation that is needed to support 21st century maneuver warfare.