By Major General David Mulhall.

What do we need of our military logisticians in the future?  Or perhaps, what skills, attributes, experiences and education will best prepare logisticians to deliver outcomes in a Joint environment? An environment that is characterised by change; changes in war fighting concepts and capabilities, quantum leaps in our capacity to source and manipulate information, and the possibilities of artificial intelligence to improve our decision-making and management of system performance.

I had the great fortune while visiting the US last September to attend a thought-provoking presentation by the American political scientist, international relations scholar and specialist on 21st century warfare, P.W. Singer.  He posed a number challenging questions that day, but four ideas in particular resonated with me:

• How do we prepare our logisticians to think about and develop future requirements beyond what we know currently?
• How do we prepare our logisticians to best enable joint war-fighting in the Digital Age?
• Our logistics enterprise needs to be relevant today and tomorrow in support of the Joint…