Preparedness

The debris of an organisation – thinking about how the ADF recovers from the first losses of war: Part One

‘In war, mistakes are normal; errors are usual, information is seldom complete, often accurate, and frequently misleading. Success is won, not by personnel and materiel in prime condition, but by the debris of an organisation worn by the strain of campaign and shaken by the shock of battle. The objective is attained, in war, under conditions which often impose extreme disadvantages. It is in the light of these facts that the commander expects to shape his course during the supervision of the planned action.’[1]

From Sound Military Decision, United States Naval College, 1942

Wars are usually longer than expected and are rarely fought in accordance with the plans made by military planners at their outset. Australian experiences in the Middle-east over nearly two decades remind us that war shapes itself around ever-changing contexts. The ‘new dawn’ of ‘grey-zone’ conflict, a reflection of the age-old reality that nations consistently seek to preserve strategic interests and prosperity with resources they have, reminds us that competition is not confined to a staccato of disparate actions. Success in competition requires resilience, persistence, presence and sustainability. This truism applies to conflict. The fighting in war occurs in ebbs and flows as adversaries play advantages and disadvantages until victory is assured. However, in an affliction common to Western preparations for future war, there is tendency for planners to limit their imagination to the first salvos.[2] This creates the situation where the really difficult part of war is not prepared for – how a military organisation likely left in dysfunction and ruin at war’s outset – recovers, reconstitutes and responds. It is rare that these planners, considering the capability needs that will make the ADF successful in its operations, think as to exactly how the ‘debris of an organisation’ can succeed.

This central purpose of this paper is to challenge the reader, as a heuristic, to consider how the ADF should prepare for the consequences of the first phases of intense conflict.[3] It is a paper that talks to the ideas of resilience, response and recovery; ideas that do not normally feature in preparedness plans and operational concepts. The first part of this paper applies examples to articulate concepts and ideas relevant to understanding the reality of war. From this point, the paper applies informed assumptions to paint a picture of how a contemporary, nominally conventional, conflict might unfold. The paper then concludes with several basic principles that could be employed to guide future preparedness and contingency plans.

What a war might look like – an assumption-based depiction of a future war

Competition, including conflict and warfare, is about the control of circumstances to give an advantage – potentially an irrevocable advantage – in the context of strategic requirements. Preparedness and operational plans, however, often start with an ending in mind and are accompanied by a confident assertion that they are enough to get to the desired end-state. Though planning is useful, as the adage suggests, plans can be written such that they become virtual ‘straw-men’ arguments where assumptions and facts result in an outcome that is, in reality, possible only in someones imagination. Such plans fail to capture the dynamics of competition and conflict, and adjustments become necessary to exploit successes and recover from destruction or inevitable failures. War is not a finely tuned balance of cause and effect, but a consequence of actions in a system that is ever changing. It is necessary for us in the ADF to prepare for the confluence of events that inevitable occur over a longer term than we envisage. Historian Cathal Nolan’s The Allure of Battle is a testament to the truism that ‘[w]inning the day of battle is not enough. You have to win the campaign, then the year, then the decade.’[4]

The ADF, if called upon to respond to a significant attack upon Australian interests, must be prepared for a situation in which its plans are found wanting, its capabilities caught in moments of relative ‘unpreparedness’, and its force posture offset by an enemy’s own strategic mobility and firepower. It is safe to say that Australia is not a revisionist power, employing aggressive military activities to address its strategic requirements. This means that if it is involved in conflict, even war, it will likely not have the time to prepare itself as best as we often assume it might. One study of twentieth-century conflicts since 1939 found that the average time between the ‘first indication of war and the firing of the first shots has been 14.3 months’, with smaller-scale contingencies around 10.6 months and that there ‘is a 50% probability that conflict can occur in less than four months.’[5] These timings show how quickly conflict can occur, and the folly of the assumption often reflected in Defence planning that Australian will have ten years of warning time before major conflict.[6]

There is every chance that a twenty-first century conflict will occur faster, with the first signs of conflict buried in geopolitical tensions already at play. The ADF, like Australia, will likely be surprised by the attack, or surprised by the speed at which peace gives way to war. Furthermore, and because adversaries naturally target weaknesses, in the initial phases of any conflict the ADF would likely be facing weapons and dangers that offset whatever strengths may be hastily generated by the joint force. The systems employed by the joint force will be targeted using weapons purpose built for the task, upsetting the processes of command and control that we think are our pathway to victory in a new age of war. Agility will be denied. Strengths will be bypassed, or even prove vulnerabilities, to an adversary that has chosen the time of opportunity to strike.

So, history repeatedly reminds us that militaries usually go to war ‘unprepared’. It also reminds us that militaries often go to war disorganised, having to adapt rapidly to circumstances well beyond the expected. Martin van Creveld, writing about logistics, saw that ‘…. most armies appear to have prepared their campaigns as best they can on an ad hoc basis, making great, if uncoordinated, efforts to gather the largest possible number of tactical vehicles, trucks of all descriptions, railway troops etc., while giving little, if any, thought to the ‘ideal’ combination that would have carried them the furthest.’[7] The ADF’s experiences in East Timor during Operation Stabilise in 1999 hold true to this view; in this operation – a peacekeeping operation – disorganisation resulted in tremendous inefficiencies and near-exhaustion of the operational ADF.[8] So it is not only the effects of the enemy that the ADF need be prepared for, but also the failures baked into organisational structures which remain hidden until the moment of crisis.

We need only look at the events of late 2019 and 2020 and the confluence of bushfires, pandemics, and geostrategic tensions to show how organisations and other groups respond to the foreseen but unanticipated. The idea of ‘national resilience’ – not a new idea by any means – was revisited as fires denied the population basic services and a pandemic denied the population toilet paper.[9] Complex supply interdependencies, combined with stock minimisation in the name of efficiency, amplified the impact of localised catastrophe. Trust in societal systems, trust in supply and trust in leadership declined in these events as individuals feared for their livelihoods if not lives. As Robin Dunbar wrote in ‘The Mandarin’ recently, human behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis highlighted ‘a strong tendency to prioritise the short term at the expense of the future.’[10] The evident absence of coherent plans for action over the length of the crisis exacerbated uncertainty.

The events of 2020 are a euphemism for the impact of the initial phases of future war, where surprise may conspire with inadequate planning to sow confusion, compromise plans, and results the loss of resources and lives. The reliance of the ADF on familiar command process and organisational behaviours that provide comfortable peace-time routine will be shaken by the need for frenetic activity and ad hoc changes as forces mobilise. War will come across multiple domains simultaneously, with the ADF responding to direct attack, while potentially involved in a range of non-military civil defence responses as national infrastructure becomes a site for conflict. Supply-chains will be interdicted and used as a point of leverage, denying the capacity of the ADF to scale as effectively as it might. Exquisite capabilities could be revealed as inhibitors to capacity-building for a joint force that somehow must create additional combat force mass in the short term.

Eventually whole-of-nation activity will be brought to bear as all elements of national power work more effectively with one another. The nation will bind diplomatic, informational, military, economic and other activities to strategic effect. Similarly, the ADF will bind a joint effort, gaining momentum, into coherent operations across all domains of war. Coalition partners will be increasingly involved, share resources, and develop war plans to achieve the next strategic objectives. Combat intensity might drop as the contest stabilises, the effects of surprise dissipate, forces focus upon repair and reconstitution instead of the offense, equipment is unavailable and lines of communication are interdicted. Adversaries may attempt to de-escalate, especially if nuclear and strategic weapons could be used, but competition to control the strategic environment and retain strategic mobility in all domains is likely to continue.

An ADF that endures will be quite different to the one that started the war. The characteristics of any war, whether it be small-scale localised operations or a fight for national survival, will shape the capabilities and capacities required by the joint force. ‘Seed’ capabilities – those which exist in relatively small numbers in a peacetime force to preserve skills and an emergency capability such as the Army’s tanks or certain combat aircraft and ships – will form the basis upon which a larger ADF will expand from. It is more likely than not that the ADF, reacting to a wartime adversary, will evolve to be fundamentally different to the one that is conceptualised in current capability development programs. Shaping factors will include war-time economic conditions and choices that the Australian Government, enacting domestic policies and working in partnerships with other Departments, has made. A host of variously complicated and complex issues will impact how national power manifests into military outcomes. The ADF will have had to expand its training capacity, logistics, and invest in new capabilities to create strategic advantages. This will likely be achieved in partnership with allies, each of which may also be suffering the adverse consequences of the initial engagements of the war.

These scenario parameters offer a different focus for envisaging the next conflict that Australia faces. While they merely offer a heuristic employed to test and tease out ideas, they do help to remind us that there is much more to war than we tend to consider in concepts and preparedness planning. Furthermore, it also illustrates that preparedness is not just about readiness, but also the resilience and the capacity of the ADF to recover after a conflict-induced catastrophe. If, as the 2020 Defence Strategic Update suggests, that the likelihood of conflict is increasing in an ‘disorderly’ and ‘dangerous’ geostrategic climate, it is prudent that the ADF comprehensively reflects upon the purpose of preparedness, and what it might truly deliver the ADF during a conflict.[11] The question remains, however, how might the ADF best prepare itself?

Part two will be published shortly.

This article was originally published in the compendium of papers ‘Designing the future: thinking about joint operations’ by the Australian Army’s Future Land Warfare Branch. The compendium includes a wide range of interesting essays written by those responsible for conceptualising the Australian Army’s future.

[1] Author unknown, Sound military decision, US Naval College, USA, 1942, p 198 from Eccles, H., Logistics in the national defense, The Stackpole Company, USA, 1959

[2] Babbage, R., ‘Ten questionable assumptions about future war in the Indo-Pacific’, from Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1.,

[3] A heuristic is an approach to problem-solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect or ration, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal or approximation. See ‘Heuristic’ at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic, [accessed 27 Sep 2020]

[4] Nolan, C., The Allure of Battle, Oxford University Press, UK, 2019, p 4

[5] Speedy, I.M. ‘The Trident of Neptune’, Defence Force Journal, 1978, pp 7-16 cited in Ball, D., Problems of mobilisation in defence of Australia, Phoenix Defence Publications, Australia, 1979, p 13

[6] Department of Defence, 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Commonwealth of Australia, Australia, 2020, p14

[7] Van Creveld, M., Supplying War, 2^nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2004, p236

[8] Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), 2002, Management of Australian Defence Force deployments to East Timor, Audit Report No. 38, Department of Defence, Australia, para 4.130, p 87

[9] Beaumont, D. J. ‘Toilet paper and total war – the psychology of shortages and what it means for resilience’ from Logistics in War, 8 March 2020, https://logisticsinwar.com/2020/03/08/toilet-paper-and-total-war-the-psychology-of-shortages-and-what-it-means-for-resilience/ [accessed 23 Sep 20]

[10] Dunbar, R., ‘Is humanity doomed because we can’t plan for the long term – three experts discuss’ from The Mandarin,6 August 2020, https://www.themandarin.com.au/136798-is-humanity-doomed-because-we-cant-plan-for-the-long-term-three-experts-discuss/ [accessed 19 Sep 20]

[11] Morrison, S. The Hon., Address – launch of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, 1 July 2020, https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-launch-2020-defence-strategic-update, [accessed 28 Sep 20]

Winning the war for prosperity – the military, supply chain security and the post-pandemic world

By David Beaumont.

Supply chain security is the concept which encompasses the programs, systems, procedures, technologies and solutions applied to address threats to the supply chain and the consequent threats to economic, social and physical well-being of citizens and organised society. – World Bank, 2009

Deborah Cowen’s book, The deadly life of logistics, describes the intertwined relationship between commercial logistics and security. ‘With logistics comes new kinds of crises, new paradigms of security’, Cowen opens, describing how the global logistics enterprise developed from Second World War experience has been employed by government and business to define the modern world.[1] The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to end the fragile order of international supply and industrial production for the short term at least. This event has direct existential and strategic consequences for Western militaries, but also requires them to be part of national economic responses.

This article is an attempt to consider a few aspects of this ‘new world’. It is an attempt to describe its implications for national security as it pertains to supply and industry, and otherwise initiate a conversation about how Western militaries might prepare for the post-COVID-19 future.

Supply chain security came upon us in the last decades of the twentieth century. A confluence of factors started the way the new world did its business. Globalisation was well in train, but economies adjusted to the opening of borders. During the 1980’s, a wave of deregulation washed over the Western world and formerly protected national economies were exposed to global forces.

Production shifted to those regions of the world where costs were low, and global supply chains became the veins of a system of wealth generation that stretched across the planet. A ‘revolution in logistics’, one shared by business and the military, was accelerated by ‘just in time’ view of supply. More stuff was moving, more quickly and to more destinations. It was a time of tremendous economic opportunity for those countries in a position to take advantage. Good were cheaper and freely available.

Supply chain security was not an idea developed by militaries to chart threats; it is an economic concept which looks to surety of commercial supply. It was conceived as a concept to recognise emerging vulnerabilities to normal patterns of human (Western human, mind you) existence. It has become militarised over time, a consequence of expeditionary wars in the Middle-east, the blurring of civil and military production in industries such as electronics, and in consideration of new challenges to the existing global order.

There are numerous ways in which militaries have experienced this problem and concept, two of which I will describe here.

Firstly, like everyone else, governments and their militaries became wedded to lower-cost procurement options which were enabled by low-cost international production and transportation. Military hardware could be produced in countries where manufacturing costs were low. The supply lines established to sustain military hardware criss-cross the globe, through geographic regions that now include real or potential ‘battlezones’ versus the depots and production facilities within the national support base.

Secondly, and perhaps even unwittingly, national strategic interests morphed to reflect the realities of global trade. Access to resources half the world a way mattered. Access to markets, or to industrial capacity elsewhere mattered. This was not just a concern for military logisticians who were interested in where sources of ammunition and parts may originate, but for those interested in protecting domestic prosperity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hammered home the fragility of global prosperity. It is now naïve to think that geoeconomics and commerce is not a national security issue. It probably is the national security issue of our time, the driving force behind a veneer of ‘hard power’ concerns and other military-strategic problems. Prosperity is what nations ultimately strive to protect. Geography, influence, options for force posture are second-order issues that are made relevant by the desire to protect prosperity. While military strategists haven’t been particularly fixed on global economics, the problem of supply chain security has certainly been fixed on them.

Problems crept up on a new generation of Western national security and military planners slowly. Operations off the ‘horn’ of Africa to protect traffic from Somali pirates gave way to concerns about ‘anti-access, area-denial’ weaponry on significant maritime choke-points, which in turn gave way to the implications of man-made island building in the South China Sea, and cyber-attacks on defence industry. People understood the strategic implications of trade, but now its importance was re-emerging, almost subliminally, in often unrelated discussions.

Sources of production were also becoming a critical part of the conversation. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland in 2010 and the Fukashima nuclear accident created shudders throughout the global economy, and all soon learned how vulnerable the connective tissue of the World truly was. Localised disruption to manufacturing now had global effects.

The economic cataclysm wrought by purposeful government decisions to slow the COVID-19 pandemic has created a new blend of the economic and military. An alarming lack of resilience in the commercial systems society has created for itself has been revealed. Military logisticians were already becoming increasingly concerned with the implications of limited sources of supply for the purposes of the armies, navies and air forces they belonged to. Now this problem has moved beyond a challenge to military supply and into challenges to ‘normal’ human patterns of existence.

Although admittedly a guess, it seems a certainty to me that the strategic calculus about supply-chains, along with concerns for national resilience, will change. It must change if nations want greater control over factors that influence resilience. This will have considerable implications for what militaries must do for their nations, if not how they create capability in the first place.

Furthermore, the nature of military and industrial / economic relationships in Western countries will necessarily evolve. Militaries receive sizable budgets for the purpose of preparedness for war, and it is evident that governments will turn to the military to deliver some return during a time of national crisis. Militaries around the world are performing tasks they were patently not expecting to be performing; from supplementing hospitals to producing medical supplies. However, militaries are being seen to offer governments a point of leverage into the national economy. Defence activities such as procurement and capability development can be rushed ahead – albeit inefficiently and with excessive costs – of timelines to stimulate some form of local economic activity. At one end of the spectrum planned expenses will simply be brought forward. At the other end, it is possible that future capability decisions will be seen to renew, even re-establish, national industries that have withered since globalisation accelerated.

As we are seeing with the recent declaration of the US President Trump to invoke the Defence Production Act (DPA), governments are willing to co-opt existing military systems and processes to deliver economic outcomes. This is an opportunity that must be taken if the situation demands it. In the case of the DPA, an Act conceived to support mobilisation, industry is being directed to produce commercial products for national security purposes. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, and as nations recover, it will be critical that defence planners consider ways in which seemingly natural links between the military and national support base can be appropriately leveraged for highly unusual crisis as is being witnessed right now. Defence industry policy and other Acts of government can be the bedrock upon which national security responses can be formed.

It may be that at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the economic recovery erases our memory of the cost of deliberately causing international trade to seize, behaviours and the interests of military and other national security organisations will return to normal. Now, amid a pandemic, it seems incredulous to suggest life will be so kind. National security is fundamentally about the preservation of normality, and militaries will have an important role in assisting their society assure it.

It is an unwritten rule of military logistics start preparing for the time in which forces will return home just as they arrive on a military operation. Perhaps it is time to start planning now for ‘what comes next’, and to reconsider the national security implications of the globalised international economy. Speaking of Western military forces, they will look out on a world that faces great uncertainty as nations strive to quickly regenerate their wealth and ensure prosperity. They will be viewed as institutions of order and support, and their people as a symbol of assurance. But they must also start thinking

[1] Cowen, D., The deadly life of logistics: mapping violence in global trade, University of Minnesota Press, USA, 2014, p1

Preparing for preparedness – how should we begin?

By David Beaumont.

Logistics readiness refers to the ability to undertake, to build up and thereafter to sustain, combat operations at the full combat potential of forces.[1]

Logistics readiness is not just a matter of prioritising Defence resources. Of course additional funding and attention can improve the capability and capacity of any military force to sustain itself in peace and on operations. Preparedness metrics, strategic goal-setting and policy making also help. However, as logistics is a comprehensive system of activities and tasks, logistics readiness can only be assured by combining effective resource use with efficient processes, good governance, well-designed organisations with articulated authorities, and a willingness to address often unglamorous issues. Moreover, the attitude of commanders and leaders, logisticians and staff planners to comprehensively and critically assess the Defence organisation – a ‘blue force analysis’ – also influences the logistics system to function as intended. When capability and attitude are misaligned, and where understanding is deficient, it is inevitable that the investment of time, effort and resources into military readiness is wasted.

In Part One of this series asking the question, ‘how much readiness is enough?’ I described the interplay between logistics and readiness. Part Two offered examples where militaries get it right, and a number of examples where events did not transpire as well as they might. These articles might suggest to some that any attempts to devote time to addressing logistics readiness are likely to fail. For those that do, consider what might have happened without the attempt? Strategic responsiveness would suffer, and a slow mobilisation process to correct a lack of effort and rigour in peacetime could result.

The first step towards improving logistics readiness is recognising that it is a product of routine and organisational behaviour, as much as it is about the appropriate allocation of resources to assigned strategic goals and the development of capabilities. This takes the matter well beyond basic preparedness requirements such as the identification of commonly used, but routinely compromised, preparedness metrics including ‘notices to move’ for logistics forces and capabilities. Logistics readiness is a function of total organisational performance and efficiency.

Logistics readiness is therefore achieved by addressing six key factors that are applicable at all levels – from the strategic to the tactical. These factors are as follows:

Balance between logistics and combat resources and elements. You cannot escape a discussion on logistics capability without raising the concept of the ‘tooth to tail’. Defence organisations habitually compare combat forces to support forces. At times, these organisations can consider support forces as ‘non-core’ to operational outcomes. In the Australian example, this ratio has featured in every review of Defence undertaken in the forty years since the ADF was formed. As the ADF’s deployment to East Timor described in Part Two showed, it’s very difficult to get a balance between logistics and combat forces right. Force structure requirements can change with different ‘demand, dependency, duration and distance.’

Eccles argued that ‘no problem presents more difficulty than trying to determine in advance the most efficient balance of logistics resources and combat forces that will be needed for any campaign’.[2] In reality, however, we don’t tend to start with the right question in the first place. What we should be asking before we embark on any ‘tooth to tail’ discussion is ‘how do we deliver the most combat potential or firepower at the time and place of our choosing, and in such a state we will be successful?’ Rather than a ‘tooth to tail’, perhaps we really have an ‘arm and a spear’.

As Dr Peter Layton wrote a very good summation of ‘balance’ for ASPI in 2013;

‘The planned duration of a war is an important consideration, although it can be very different from the actual duration, as recent conflicts have amply demonstrated. If a short war is anticipated, the focus can be on the ‘teeth’ as the ‘tail’ is much less important. The combat force becomes a ‘one-shot wonder’ with little in reserve or in the training pipeline. For a long war, a larger and more costly logistic system needs to be built up, a training system maintained while combat is underway and sufficient trained personnel held in reserve to allow rotations into theatre.’

We have to be realistic about solutions to resolving military force structure problems, as the answer cannot be a trite ‘add more logistics troops’. There’s no easy answer to achieving the right balance, especially when defence funding cannot be increased and more staff or capabilities directed to the task. As technology becomes increasingly sophisticated we are finding our capacity to perform organic support functions diminishing. Our ‘tail’ now incorporates partners whose efforts are instrumental to our successes, and for our operations in the future, we will have to develop plans, policies and arrangements to ensure that a high standard of logistics readiness and operational flexibility is maintained.

Logistics plans and policies. Assuming we do get the force structure balance right, we must also introduce the doctrine, plans and policies to use it appropriately. We must be serious about the possible wars of the future and start developing concepts and doctrine to suit. Governance and logistics reliability and assurance frameworks which ensure strategic and tactical concepts are viable depend on this analysis. This effort shouldn’t be dismissed as bureaucracy, as it is the basis for accurate logistics planning – the quality of which determines exactly what resources will be needed and when. In the case of rapid force projection, there will simply not be the time to redesign logistics systems without severely disrupting the way in which the force will deploy. Sometime adaptation will win us victory, other times it will do quite the opposite.

There are a few areas that do require additional attention. As I inferred earlier, one area most militaries are grappling with is the changing nature of its workforce and the integration of its intrinsic sustainment capabilities within the national economic infrastructure. We’re good at working with partners, but a technology-centric future force will have to be informed by good policies and doctrine that supports the flexible and scalable logistics support we require operationally. If logistics readiness is maintained through organisation stability, it is appropriate that plans and policies be developed to accommodate rapid changes to that stability.

Logistics organisation. Most large restructures of Defence organisations – such as the First Principles Review – are heavily influenced by the need to more efficiently and effectively organise logistics processes. In the wake of the First Principles Review, Defence has made progress in the way it modernises as a joint force. Defence and the ADF has adapted to operational needs over twenty years, and has a well-established ‘joint logistics enterprises’, an appointed strategic logistician and medical officer with articulated responsibilities, and Services who have acceptability responsibility for raising, training and sustaining the operational components of the joint force.

Time will tell how effective this organisation will be. In the meantime, we should study its strengths and weaknesses, and the how and why of its present design. This is because organisation influences the flow of information and will impact upon the quality and number of logistics staff devoted to the different tasks and efforts. Moreover, it will enable us to identify the right responsibilities for each component of the logistics process; given there is no one owner for logistics within Defence, accountability and authority are incredibly important.

Materiel readiness. It may be self-evident, but the state of our equipment has as much an influence on preparedness as that of our people. Militaries ‘limp’ to war. The reason they do is what Dr Robert Betts describes as the ‘paradox of more is less.’ The act of staying in a state of heightened readiness is not only expensive, but it can result in ‘evanescence and self-destruction.’ Readiness literally consumes a military waiting for war. There comes a point where materiel and personnel become run down, supplies are exhausted and organisations are pushed to their limits. Sometimes the best thing a preparing military might do is wait otherwise limit the use of its capabilities if it wants its technologies to be available when they are required.

Logistics organisation must be tested. It is impossible to understand logistics constraints and limitations if they lie un-examined. All militaries enjoy large-scale exercises, simulations and desk-top analyses but very rarely do they focus upon the logistics process. When a logistics exercises does occur, they are often confined to bespoke activities with limited participation, or results ignored for the questions they raise. In writing Logistics In the National Defense seventy years ago, and even after the lessons of the Second World War, Eccles described that ‘[t]oo seldom have the reports of these exercises included a realistic appraisal of the logistics problems and situations that would have been encountered under wartime conditions’.[3] Most logistics activities conducted during exercises primarily occur such that the exercise can actually be conducted!

It is important that when exercises do occur that opportunities are taken to assess logistics performance, especially in the preparation for these training events. Logistics is sufficiently complex that it is only through observing the system in action that gaps be identified and risks adequately prepared for.

Professional culture: Finally, and most importantly, logistics readiness is underpinned by the acceptance that it is a ‘shared problem’ that is only solvable through the mutual efforts of commanders and logisticians. Many documented problems experienced in ADF responses in the latter have of the 1990s and early 2000’s came from conspicuous, self-admitted, failures in the sharing of knowledge. Information and concerns become vital when managing risks; and managing risks is what military preparedness systems are fundamentally about. When any future force is designed, or as operational concepts and plans developed, it is essential that conceptual problems are clearly articulated and issues shared widely. This sets expectations and better prepares one another for challenges when they inevitably arrive.

Conclusion

Specifics will change in war, but effective logistics readiness can make a combat force worth the organisational effort to raise or comprise it’s design entirely. Too many highly professional militaries have dismissed logistics readiness as a higher-order issue, and operations did not proceed as well as they might have otherwise. There is always a temptation to focus attention inward and on what militaries such as our own do very well – preparing the elements at the forward edge of the operational area so that they may be re as ready as practicable. Yet doing so risks compromises with respect to the preparedness of the logistics ‘system’ as a whole, or creates a logistics process that is inefficient or ineffective due to poor practices and inadequate discipline across the military. Either way, the ability of force to rapidly respond to a crisis or threat will be constrained as a consequence.

There is a need for a much more detailed study of logistics readiness than the three articles of this series allows. That being said, most militaries already know where their problems lie. Readiness cannot be treated as a ‘buzz-word’ in a professional force. Actionable recommendations and actions have to eventuate in a future discussion about preparedness, conducted in a strategic environment where threats are indeed ‘accelerating’ in scale and magnitude. I can only emphasise that effective logistics readiness comes from a realistic appraisal of force structure, sensible operational concepts and doctrine, good policies and governance, and above all, an acceptance that our logistics problems require all to work together to solve. It must be supported by adequate resourcing, an investment of technology that is sorely needed, and with a critical mind applied to practices that might have to change as we face the future.

We may never know of the command decisions that might have changed wars had the impact of logistics on preparedness been better articulated and overcome prior to war beginning. In this regard, we start to venture into the realm of strategic decision making. In this realm logistics truly defines opportunities and choices, and can often be the true measure of whether a military is ready for combat.

Almost never will all logistics requirements be satisfied in an exact balance, and as long as this is true, and as long as military operations are governed by the finite, some phase of logistics is bound to be a limiting factor.

– Dr James A. Huston, Sinews of War

This is an edited adaption of a presentation given at the Australian Defence Force conference ‘Rapid Force Projection’ in April 2019. It has substantially altered to suit the format here.

The thoughts are those of the author alone.

[1] See Eccles, H., 1959, Logistics in the National Defense, The Stackpole Company, USA, p 290 available courtesy of the USMC here.

[2] Eccles, p 291

[3] Eccles, p 300

Burying the hero – how logistics and readiness changed war

By David Beaumont.

This is part two of a three-part series on logistics and logistics readiness.

In ‘The water in the well – how much logistics readiness is enough?’ I described the idea of logistics readiness as the ability of a military force to build up and sustain combat power at their full potential. Logistics, as a process, is the system of activities which begins in the economy and fills the ‘well’ with ‘water’. Through capability acquisition and integration with the national support base, through multiple Defence and military echelons, right to the battlefield; ineffective activities at any stage along this long line will compromise the logistics readiness of the force as a whole.

That’s the theory. In practice, however, attempts by militaries to develop logistics readiness have led to mixed results. Too few commanders have realised that logistics readiness underpins their strategies, or defines capabilities or the way their forces will fight. Some get it right, and base strategies on the capacity given to forces by their sustaining echelons, bases or auxiliary vessels. This article looks at how logistics readiness has shaped military success and failures, created the nature of operations, and most certainly the capacity of militaries to be viable as a force.

Well before petroleum and gunpowder, logistics grasped on armies and their expeditions. Donald Engels, in Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, echoes the words of Major General J.F.C. Fuller in his biopic of Alexander; supply was the basis for operational – if not strategic – mobility.[1] Alexander’s approach to logistics readiness shaped strategy, and the design of a force that could achieve such a strategy.[2] Engels attributes the successes of the Macedonian advance through Asia due to a focus upon movements to and from sources of supply, a reduction in the number of horses on campaigns to reduce logistics requirements, insisting troops carried as much of their own equipment as possible, and eliminating the practice of soldiers deploying with family members accompanying.[3] It was an expeditionary army designed with logistics in mind.

Roman advances through Europe and Asia similarly show what logistically ready armies can achieve. Jonathon Roth in The logistics of the Roman Army at war (264 BC – AD 235) argued that the Roman’s success didn’t just come from military culture, training or weaponry. Rome’s ability to provision large armies and shift resources at continental distances was the preeminent factor in the projection of military power. It came from the organisation of servants, soldiers, infrastructure and an expansion based upon access to private markets. Logistics drove the strategy of the most powerful nation of the time. In fact the logistician might have been more important than the strategist given that ‘the necessities of military supplies influenced and often determined the decision of Roman commanders at war.’[4]

The military profession became more aware of the link between a new conception of logistics, readiness, organisation and force projection as our root theories of war were written. Clausewitz’s survey of history, as well as the Napoleonic Wars, led him to write that ‘[t]he end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed and trained, the whole object of his sleeping is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time’.[5] In his chapter describing the ‘problem of supply’ he articulated that the means of supply could change the ‘form and factor’ of operations.[6] What was possible was shaped by what was immediately practical.

Clausewitz’s contemporary, Jomini, articulated that logistics occupied a leading position in the organisation and execution of strategy and tactics, and that logistics was not just the purview of staff, but of generals. In getting ‘men and materials’ to the front, logistics was centrally concerned with how war was forced upon an enemy. For example, Napoleon’s ability to organise his Army on the basis of administrative necessity by dividing it to support local subsistence shows cognisance of logistics concerns in designing the French Army – at least until he seemingly ignored it all and nearly led his armies to their end.

The transformation in the way that war was being fuelled and fought was definitive in logistics moving from the margins to one of the most significant influences upon success. No longer could a commander assume that the soldier could survive by foraging off the land. Supply was no longer part of a Clausewitzian ‘paper war’ but shaped important strategic and tactical choices. Technology – from the rifle, steam engine, gun to the internal combusting engine had changed the ways armies operated. But military commanders were increasingly pressured with logistics constraints when commanding these soldiers on the battlefield. Technicians began to be required in readiness, and forces designed around their logistics echelon.

Somewhere on the Eastern and Western Fronts of the First World War technology and logistics, hand in hand, buried heroic ideas of the soldier under spent ammunition cases, sacks of fodder, and equipment requisition orders. Industrialised, globalised, warfare saw the supply lines increasingly become the ‘how’ which shaped the ‘what’. We remember the First World War for its ‘storm troops’, the guns, aircraft and tanks, and the doctrinal revolution which gave us early combined arms tactics and intellectual reform in some militaries. But it was also won by raw economic power transformed through military logistics processes into tangible combat potential and eventual military strength. Industry had always been inseparable from warfare, but now the importance of it being ready prior to the first shots of war was blatant.

Supply continually occupied the minds of planners. Initially low levels of logistics readiness prevented strategic responses, despite the arms race that had preceded the war. This cost lives as it was much quicker to deploy soldiers into the field than it was to arm them properly. Initial ammunition shortages limited the ability of the British and allies to crack the Germans front-line; once mobilisation drove industry to full production two years later the problem shifted to one of available distribution capability. It took three years for the British to get in place before the guns could truly be unleashed.

Martin Van Creveld’s Supplying War describes that it was the mobility afforded by motorisation which logistics to the fore in war. The moment fuel was fed into an engine, the motorised or mechanised force became an arm of its logistics capability. Stalin reflected on the Second World War summing it by stating ‘the war was decided by engines and octane.’[7] Churchill exclaimed ‘above all, petrol governed every movement’. Fleet Admiral Ernest King, in 1946 to the US Secretary of the Navy, noted the Second World War as ‘variously termed as a war of production and a war of machines,’ but, ‘whatever else it is … it is a war of logistics.

In a world of rockets and torpedoes, aircraft and submarines, where superpower interests went global, force posture, mobility and preparedness made the connection between war and logistics more obvious. Logistics readiness was reflected in the ability to move forces at transcontinental distances, or through well-supplied forward positions and propositioning fleets of ships. Manuel DeLanda went so far to assert ‘modern tactics and strategy would seem to have become a special branch of logistics’ in 1991.[8] His statement was timely; in the same year the world witnessed a US-led coalition taking six months to move the US military’s strategic reserve to the Gulf region to set an operation which could be won in 100 hours in motion.

Operational deception and airpower might have been important in winning the war. In reality it was seven million tons of supplies and 5.2 billion litres of fuel that gave the ‘left hook’ of Operation Desert Storm form. The supply of refined fuels to Operation Desert Storm was that large, and the speed it was required so fast, it was highly unlikely that the operation could have occurred anywhere else in the world. Logistics readiness was a product of lucky strategic timing in this case. American logistics resources were at their zenith in the waning years of the Cold War, and the US had yet to comprehensively draw down its positions and supplies to reflect a new ‘peace’. General William ‘Gus’ Pagonis, the US Army logistics architect, popularised this episode as ‘moving mountains’ in his best-selling book.[9]

Treading into a time where strategic manoeuvre and mobility was vaunted, Western militaries recognised that the real purpose of logistics was to bring as much power to bear at any one point. The greater the level of logistics readiness, the easier it was to mobilise forces, and the easier it was to deliver a decisive outcome. Unfortunately, logistics readiness could no longer be based on the luxury of heightened resourcing and with the benefits of the forward positions of the Cold War had provided. Western militaries had to be mobile and lean, as had Alexander the Great’s centuries earlier, with a sustainment infrastructure capable of impossible flexibility.

In the US a ‘revolution in military affairs’ not only set in but was matched by a ‘revolution of logistics’ which sought to replace mass with velocity, where the ‘iron mountains’ of Desert Storm were replaced by a belief that adaptive distribution systems could supply a force in the necessary time. Logistics transformation was about reducing the logistics footprint.[10] The 1990s were a time where deregulation saw military organisations embracing organisational reform to reduce the cost of their back of house functions.

New business methods, outsourcing of organic capability, better professional skills and new technology characterised an approach to logistics that was believed to be cost efficient, but would also improve the mobility of the operational force. Rather than logistics readiness being underpinned by copious quantities of war-stocks or believed to be ‘bloated’ support organisations, Western militaries leapt at the possibility for a logistics system that employed what we viewed as ‘best-business practice’ and delivered the right resources, to the right place, at the right time. Logistics readiness would be underpinned by distribution rather than supply; computer-powered information networks that could tell what needed to be where and when rather than inefficient dumps of supplies ordered in sequential echelons of support.

Ambition met reality south of Baghdad. In 2003 the US Army halted for an operational pause outside An Najaf.[11] Though the advance faltered in a desert storm of ‘biblical proportions’, such a pause was patently necessary as the combat force simply outran their supply lines. The promise of a logistics revolution gave way to the age-old impact of operational tempo without adequate supply. Some units lacked water, others food, certain commodities of ammunition had been all but consumed. There were insufficient vehicles to support the dispersed force, and the combination of a command desire to keep the force lean and a ‘just-in-time’ strategic approach to logistics flirted with disaster.

The communications systems essential for command decision-making on the priority and allocation of logistics resources were incoherently spread throughout the force in an abortive modernisation program. Had the wars intensity been maintained beyond the thirty-day mark, even the most powerful military might have run out of ammunition. The ability to project sustained military power over extended periods of time required quantities of the materiel of war that militaries had, ironically, fought so hard to keep from the theatre.

At the time this was happening, the ADF and Defence as a whole, was emerging from its own catharsis. In fact, the organisation was reforming itself about logistics and command problems which emerged in its own operational experiences. Operation Stabilise / Warden in East Timor in 1999 required a rapid response, but the logistics organisation to underpin the deployment had been incapable of anything other than operating in a state of permanent crisis.

Twenty-year old assumptions about what constituted the readiness of the ADF’s logistics – assumptions that had driven force structure and preparedness choices right from the interface with industry to the tactical approach to logistics in the operational area – were challenged and widely reported. The preceding two decades of force rationalisation saw many of the capabilities which enabled a rapid response reduced to woefully inadequate dimensions for the ADF’s largest operation since the Second World War.

Two decades after this operation, the ADF is a very different organisation. Substantial capability gaps were overcome in the years after East Timor, and over the period the West moved its attention to operations in the Middle-east. Will it be enough to prepare the ADF for future operations, even war? It’s incredibly hard to predict whether it will be logistically ready for its next operation. As this article shows, readiness is a consequence of context and even the most adept military and Defence professionals can be surprised by an unpredictable world.

You might infer from this article that logistics readiness is so elusive a topic that it’s pointless trying to speculate how war might be like, or what aspects of the logistics ‘well’ we should work to make more resilient. Perhaps we should rely on our personal experience and judgement, and hope we can get it right? That’s arguably more risky an approach than attempting to predict the future and trying to design and resource a logistically ready force. An in-depth examination of any of the cases mentioned earlier would attest to this fact. It’s therefore critical to ask the question ‘how much logistics readiness is enough?’ while we’ve got the opportunity to do so.

In Part Three, I’ll articulate a framework to help us when we do.

This is an edited adaption of a presentation given at the Australian Defence Force conference ‘Rapid Force Projection’ in April 2019. It has been adjusted significantly to suit the format here.

The thoughts are those of the author alone.

[1] Engels, D., 1978, Alexander the Great and the logistics of the Macedonian Army, University of California Press, USA, p 1

[2] Ibid., see Chapter 1 ‘The Macedonian Army’ for a detailed description.

[3] Ibid., p 119

[4] Roth, J., 1999, The logistics of the Roman Army at war (264 BC – AD 235), Brill, USA, p 279

[5] Clausewitz, C. von, On War, edited by Howard, M. & Paret, P., 1976, Princeton University Press, USA, p95

[6] Ibid., p 330

[7] Cowen, D. The deadly life of logistics, University of Minnesota Press, USA, 2014, p29

[8] De Landa, M., 1991, War in the age of intelligent machines cited in Cowen, D. The deadly life of logistics, University of Minnesota Press, USA, 2014, p 30

[9] Pagonis, W., 1994, Moving mountains: lessons in leadership and logistics from the Gulf War, Harvard Business Review Press, USA

[10] Ransom, D., Logistics transformation – reducing the logistics footprint, Strategy Research Project, US Army War College, USA, 2002, pp 2-3 at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a404441.pdf

[11] See Pelz, E., Halliday, J., Robbins, M. and Girardini, K., Sustainment of Army forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom: Battlefield logistics and effects on operations, RAND Corporation, 2005 at https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG344.html

Making ‘self-reliance’ meaningful – preparing the military to operate alone

By David Beaumont.

The concept of ‘self-reliance’ has resurged in over the last few years. I use the term ‘concept’ with meaning to separate ‘self-reliance’ from strategic doctrine. It truly is an abstract term and can mean a lot of different things to different commentators. On one hand it harks back to the Australian strategic policy of the post-Vietnam War years, but it has also been raised in recent debates about the limits of the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) capability, or even the nations defence industrial capacity. This narrow focus of this article is on the materiel aspects of ‘self-reliance’, and provides a starting point for a conversation that the ADF must have.

Discussions about self-reliance or military interoperability, like many other conversations among defence planners, infrequently begin with a conversation on supplies, maintenance and repair, or other logistics functions or capabilities. Often these conversations end when the scale of the logistics problem is revealed. Interest in ‘war-stocks’ has grown with commentators showing scepticism of the capacity of globalised supply chains to deliver. The ability of a military to conduct operations independently of another’s aid is intrinsically linked to the capacity to prepare, move, supply and support that force. But it would be a mistake to think that the ADF can go into a future large-scale conflict, especially one that tests the upper limits of its capabilities, without the support of others.

Australia’s military logistics is intertwined with the strategic fortunes of its coalition partners. Much of the ADF’s weapons, ammunition and components are acquired from other nations. We’re increasingly witnessing major capability programs producing weaponry in partnership with others. Interoperability is exceptionally important for Australia and its allies to function with flexibility. It builds resilience within a coalition by creating new options for sustaining forces, and contributes to deterring potential aggressors who might otherwise act against an isolated nation. Naturally, even more effort should be applied towards improving interoperability.

It is, of course, prudent to be as self-reliant as practicable. The Second World War proved, even in a coalition conflict there will be times the ADF will need to ‘go it alone’ and sustain itself as our allies resources are drawn elsewhere. We should expect the same in the future. Uncertain times – where threats can manifest themselves quickly and from unforeseen quarters – require the military to be as prepared as possible to react at short notice. Waiting for a friend to provide the necessary supplies to deploy may be impossible.

It is therefore important for planners and policy makers to understand, right now, what the limits to self-reliance are. How else can good strategic decisions be made if the limits of the ADF’s combat effectiveness and sustainability are misunderstood?

Part of the problem with the contemporary discussion on national self-reliance is that it has been dominated by monumental problems; problems that are beyond the ability of most to influence. National fuel supplies, prioritised sovereign defence industries and national manufacturing capacity, economic resilience in an era of globalisation; these contemporary, popularised, topics give us pause to consider major national security concerns in a time of increasing strategic competition. They have been topics of interest to Australian governments and strategists for decades, beyond the period in which self-reliance was ensconced in the strategic doctrine of the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, and to the interwar period where lessons from the First World War reminded them to be prepared for national mobilisation.

The ADF, its partners in academic, industry and government, are at a point where they can afford to be specific. Commentators should help to reduce problems to the point that are actionable by the groups that can devote time and effort to resolving the problems of self-reliance. Importantly, this discussion must tread into the deep, dark, recesses of Defence modernisation with questions asked as to how long our impressive new capabilities, from the RAAF’s F-35 to the Army’s Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle, can endure on the battlefield of the future when our friends are far away. This article will briefly touch upon some areas which the professionally interested will have to tread.

Logistics has long been regarded as a crucial component of military capability, and the supply and support given to armed forces a major constituent of operational success. Logistics constraints and strengths can shape strategy, determine the form and means of operations, and if given nothing more than a passing glance by military commanders and civilian planners, will prevent combat forces from ever achieving their full potential in the air, and on the sea and land.

As we seek to answer the question, ‘what can we achieve on our own?’, a really difficult question to answer, solutions to our logistics problems and concerns must be front and centre. A suborned view of logistics in this discussion about self-reliance is way out of step with the strategic reality facing the ADF. In engaging with this reality we might see that logistics is, in fact, a strategic capability in its own right.

What are the big logistics challenges to confirming our limits and freedoms of action in terms of self-reliance then? I’ve already mentioned some of the primary national security and strategic concerns above. Without necessarily delving too deep into national security infrastructure, what is arguably more important are the political and policy levers which set in motion the national endeavours that ultimately manifest in military logistics.

In recent years we’ve seen defence industry policy renewed alongside strategic policy, we’ve seen the Services develop close and valuable ties with industry partners, and we’ve seen a commitment to sovereign defence industries. Only time will tell whether this will be enough in a time of significant crisis. It may be a time to seriously question what full or partial industrial mobilisation might entail for the nation – or more importantly how to actually do it. Many years ago the Minister for Defence held a ‘War Book’ which set the ground rules for the process of mobilisation at the highest national levels; while a War Book or a revised approach to national security apparatus might be worth considering, this should not stop the military from developing its own plans if it must ‘go it alone’. In fact, it is it’s job.

A productive first step may be found in the understanding of exactly how long the ADF can sustain itself for certain contingencies based upon the resources it has at hand now. At the military strategic level, the ADF’s capacity for ‘self-reliance’ will be measured in the time it can sustain operations without replenishment from other quarters. If it lacks the warstocks or support capabilities to sustain its materiel, the capacity of the global supply chain to support the operational requirements will be crucial. There are some commodities essential for our way of war that we can’t produce nationally such as precision weapons and ammunition.

The problem for Defence is that it is very difficult to determine how self-reliant the ADF might be while global supply-chains are opaque and Australia lacks the levers and economic scale to advantageously intervene in global markets. It may be that in a time of crisis traditional boundaries such as intellectual property rights will need to be challenged, industry capacity seconded to defence interests, and projects redirected in new directions at very short notice (see here). At the very least ADF and industry should discuss how industry ‘scales’ in parallel with any adjustment in the roles, tasks and size of the fielded force.

It’s impossible to talk about coordinating this activity without commenting on the nature of strategic logistics control in the Defence organisation. Because the problems are large, the ways in which concerns on self-reliance will be addressed will invariably be pan-organisational in nature. Commander Joint Logistics Command might be the CDF’s ‘strategic J4’ or key logistics commander, but he or she must partner with the Capability, Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Estate and Infrastructure Group, the Services and others within what’s called the ‘Defence Logistics Enterprise’. Further into the military organisation, there are operational commands and those headquarters responsibility for preparing force (what might be called ‘force-generation’). Then there are a range of other units and users of resources.

Each organisation naturally has a different perspective as to what ‘self-reliance’ means, and there is always a risk that Defence will have difficulty identifying where its preparedness risks and opportunities truly lie in this context. Quite clearly the analysis of what the ADF’s ‘logistics limits’ are requires a coherent effort with solutions achieved through mutually supporting activities conducted across the organisation.

In the 1990’s, the ADF developed a prescriptive ‘Defence Strategic Logistics Planning Guide’ – a ‘Chiefs of Service Committee’ level document – that provided explicit guidance to each organisation contributing to national defence. This guide was based upon the ‘Chief of Defence Force’s Operational Readiness Document (CORD)’ that stipulated the scenarios the ADF should prepare for, and hinted at what resources would be required. Perhaps a similar guide, issued at the highest level, before embarking on any future analysis.

The strategic level challenges to self-reliance might fundamentally shape whether the ADF could perform in the way intended, but we can’t forget the challenges to operational self-reliance either. The most significant operational-level challenge to self-reliance, I argue, is with respect to strategic mobility. The ADF regularly seeks operational-level support in terms of intelligence and a wide range of capabilities that a military of our size simply could not realistically produce.

Perhaps there will be a time in which very long-distance fires will overcome the geography between Australian and an adversary, but until they do to a level that satisfies the desired military outcome strategic mobility capabilities will be continue to be critical to the ADF. Until then, the ADF’s strategic mobility will be critical to achieving a persistent response (whether that be on land or at sea) to an offshore threat.

Lift aircraft, helicopters, watercraft are all necessary if the ADF operates anywhere within Australia’s immediate region. Most of our partners declare their own paucity in strategic mobility capacity which suggests that even if our future conflicts are shared, we might still need to invest heavily in order to meet our own requirements.

On top of the mobility capabilities themselves, the aircraft and the ships and the contracted support we can muster from the nation, we cannot forget the ‘small’ enablers that support a deployed force. In our recent campaigns in the Middle-east, we have been heavily dependent upon our coalition partners for the subsistence of our forces. There is a real risk that our operational habits may have created an environment which gives false expectations of the logistics risk resident within the ADF, especially when it comes to conducting operations without coalition support.

As the Services look to their future force structure, it will serve them well to scrutinise not only those capabilities essential for basic standards of life, but the wide spread of logistics capabilities are essential complements to their major platforms. These include over-the-shore logistics capabilities for amphibious operations, expeditionary base capabilities as well those elements of the force that receive, integrate and onforward soldiers, sailors and airmen and women into the operational area. These will enable the ADF to sustain forces that are working with neighbours, create force posture options, and give the ADF the flexibility to manoeuvre to where its forces are required.

You don’t have to deeply analyse Defence logistics to understand that self-reliance is underpinned by the ADF’s – if not the nations – capacity to sustain and support its operations. The comments here are certainly not revelatory, nor are the allusions to the limits of ADF’s capability particularly surprising. For the ADF to be effective in a major war there is still a way to go yet, irrespective of whether it deploys within a coalition or not.

There is every chance that even if the ADF does deploy as part of a coalition, it will still be necessary for it to have a capacity to support itself. It is understandably important that we have a conversation about the limits to self-reliance in the current time of peace and think deeply about establishing the policy infrastructure and organisational arrangements that will enable us to make good judgements on what the ADF can or can’t do alone. Without doing so we risk logistics capability being reveals as a constraint on ADF operations, not a source of opportunity and the well from which the joint force draws its strength to fight.

This article is an expansion of an article originally published at ‘The Central Blue’ in 2019.

What an operation twenty years ago can tell us about preparedness now – lessons from INTERFET in 1999

By David Beaumont.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) went to East Timor in 1999 armed with luck and sustained by the outstanding initiative and resolve of its personnel. The logistics system, in contrast, was cobbled together from the remnants of twenty-five years of unceasing organisational change. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that the successful outcome of the International Forces East Timor (INTERFET) operation was achieved despite the state of logistics in the ADF, not because of it.

The ADF lacked the logistics resources, organic or those from civilian or international sources, to fulfil the requirements of a realistic approach to preparedness prior to the operation. Its joint command and control mechanisms were in their infancy, and the ADF’s strategic logistics and acquisition organisations were in the throes of major upheaval. The ADF had smart people, well-intentioned leaders both military and civilian, and was supported as best as possible from a Department that grappled with a complex and complicated mix of national circumstances in preceding years.

The ADF’s preparedness prior to this operation has been scrutinised through reports and analysis, at levels range from tactical to committees of Government. The lessons learned, or still waiting a resolution, have either morphed into what is thought to be daily business for Defence. We are fortunate in that an Official History of the INTERFET operation is being written. Similarly, the occasional articles such as Brigadier (retd) Mick Kehoe’s series at Logistics In War, remind us that there are pertinent personal stories from the past that remain eternally relevant to the soldier, sailor or airman. It’s always a good time to reflect upon messages from the past.

This article will describe the impact of strategic resourcing and logistics problems on operations. It will give a general sense of the traps the ADF and others fell into prior to leading this important coalition force. The problems of the ADF deployment in East Timor were not only because of the characteristic confusion caused by an unforeseen operation. Many preparedness problems had their origins in a long line of innocuous decisions made for the best of reasons. These had significant second-order consequences. A few will be outlined here.

Policy and concepts are important, but economics (and money) is everything

The hollowness and general inadequacy of the ADF’s logistics support was not a result of any strategy concept or policy including the ‘defence of Australia’ concept outlined in the policy document ‘Defence of Australia 1987’. Any operation defending the Australian north-west demanded was a difficult logistics enterprise, as highlighted by exercises such as the long-standing ‘Kangaroo’ series. A lack of logistics preparedness was a consequence of national economics, fifteen years of financial pressures on Defence, and a paradigm of Governmental outsourcing of functions considered enablers to combat forces.

From the moment that the strategic policy paper ‘Defence of Australia 1987’ (DOA) was published, the Australian defence budget began to tighten and senior decision makers in Defence had to compromise the strategic concept they were promoting. Four years after the document was aired, Australia was in the worst recession since the Great Depression and any chance that the funding ambitions to realise an ADF capability of delivering what DOA advocated were dashed.

Defence was compelled by Government to cut its costs. 1991, a year in which Recession was declared by Government, was a fateful one. It was the first year since the White Paper’s release that the ADF’s force structure was examined in detail. All planners in the review knew the commercialisation of Defence’s organic logistics and support agencies had to be accelerated to lower annual Defence costs. The report ‘Defence and the Community’ by former Secretary Alan Wrigley (Wrigley Report) advocated greater use of national industry for Defence needs, with a subsequent Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) agreeing.

The 1991 Force Structure Review and the accompanying outsourcing program known as the ‘Commercial Support Program’, as well as the Howard Government’s 1996 Defence Efficiency Review and 1997 Defence Reform Program, substantially cut the logistics capabilities of the three Services. An assumption in all cases had been made that industry would – without any coherent prompts from Government or Defence – fill any short-notice operational needs. But there was another reason that the ADF’s logistics capabilities were in a parlous state by 1999.

Beware paying for future capability with present-day preparedness

The cuts made to logistics capabilities had been a part of a long-term trend that had become unstoppable. Substantial components of the ADF’s organic logistics capability that existed well within the national support base operating messes and canteens, bases, supply depots, distribution services and numerous other functions had been systematically reviewed, assessed and outsourced. There was a belief, at the time, that though these services could be legitimately outsourced the depth of the logistics capability within the ADF would suffer as a consequence.

Defence leaders, however, had little choice other than to support these initiatives. Despite the intense funding pressures, ADF combat capabilities had to be modernised out of a period of ‘block obsolescence’. From ANZAC-class frigates to combat aircraft to Protected Mobility Vehicles (PMV); capabilities essential for the ADF’s combat capacity were being acquired and funds to these programs had to be protected. The size of the combat force had to be preserved as best as it could, though even these elements of the three Services couldn’t escape a portion of the personnel cuts.

Government and Defence broke one of John Collins principles of preparedness by failing to ensure present and future preparedness were in proper balance. The ‘consumption’ of the ADF’s enablers to fund long-term capability objectives would inhibit the ADF’s ability to respond to the unforeseen. But there were other areas of concern. One prominent issue related to the inadequate stockholdings of materiel and supplies for contingencies. After twenty years of trying, the ADF did not have an adequate supply of stores, equipment and vital consumables such as ammunition immediately prior to East Timor.

Paul Dibb, as a Deputy Secretary, could not entice the Services to spend their funds on adequate stockholdings in the early 1990’s to support the strategic concept he advocated prior to DOA87. Nor could successive Assistant Chief of Defence Force – Logistics (ACLOG), the then ‘strategic J4’, do the same afterwards despite policies and preparedness plans being created. Strikingly, these were exceptionally capable individuals; Major-General John Grey served as ACLOG during the 1991 force structure review and was promoted immediately afterwards to Chief of the General Staff.

The ADF, as part of Defence, ended up taking steps in the opposite direction by implementing a policy of ‘direct unit funding’. This approach to supply entailed unit commanders procure commonly available items from local civilian sources (i.e. hardware stores etc.). The concept sounded logical when conceived, and it reduced the need for units to hold stocks. It also reduced the need for costly deep storage. As forces consolidated in Darwin in 1999 these advantages were soon forgotten.

Units concentrated with inadequate stocks to sustain the operations planned for them in East Timor, and commercial supplies in Darwin were unavailable in the quantities required for a force that eventually exceeded 10000 personnel. Procurement of essentials was eventually transferred to Sydney, where the operational supply-chain eventually began. Thus, a decision made to reduce Defence costs had created a preparedness liability and required correction at the time the supply-chain should have been functioning effectively.

Effective logistics control requires organisational stability

The timing of peacekeeping operation into East Timor could not have been worse for Defence. As described earlier, the preceding fifteen years were organisationally tumultuous. As if the manipulations of the ADF’s logistics echelons wasn’t enough, the constant shifting of accountabilities and authorities with Defence magnified the uncertainty.

Since the Sanderson Review of 1989, the ADF had gained and lost a two-star ‘Assistant Chief of Defence Force Logistics’, replaced it with a two-star National Support Division to steward the ADF – national support base relationship, and created a two-star ‘Support Command Australia’ and ‘Joint Logistics Command’ out of Service Logistics Commands. With the size of the ADF decreasing, similar levels of turbulence were also seen within the Services and elsewhere in the Department of Defence. Operational-level command was less than a decade old, and the ADF lacked experience in planning major operations.

The ability of ADF commanders or logisticians to make high-quality decisions about logistics resources, or to coordinate support obtained from industry, international partners or elsewhere in the national support base, had been unintentionally damaged by the time of Operation Warden. Responsibilities for various levels of logistics had yet to be set by practice, command was diffuse, and control over logistics processes was conflicted. This manifested in range of issues during the mounting of the force, emblemised by the chaos witnessed in Darwin.

There was no appointed ‘strategic J4’ for the ADF with the ACLOG position disestablished, and Head National Support Division (HQ NSD) in HQ ADF was appointed as the CDF’s logistics advisor well under the operation was underway. Joint Logistics Command, merely two years old, lacked the proficiency and capacity to support the mounting of the force in Darwin. There was little choice but to rely upon available the single-Service logistics systems (predominantly Army’s Logistics Support Force) and employ ad-hoc arrangements to get by.

Force posture is critically important, but is irrelevant if it is only defined by the forward positioning of troops

Would these problems have been as severe had a greater portion of the force positioned in Northern Australia early? Perhaps, with some important caveats. Established military force posture is an outcome of answering ‘how much time does it take to get the most military ‘power’ to a given point in a given time?’. Forces are positioned in advance of military operations because it eliminates the time otherwise taken by transporting them.

Forward forces alone, however, are not enough. It should be self-evident that access to logistics support, ‘supply-chains’ and maintenance sites also ensure personnel and machines practically useful at the point of need. Industry and national infrastructure must be available, especially in the case of deploying a force. As established above, this was not the case in Darwin in 1999.

The relationship between industry and defence forces are typically focussed upon the acquisition and sustainment of materiel and specific services. This focus reflects, perhaps rightly, the nature of defence funding. However, it is also critical that concepts in which the national support base is ‘leveraged’ to support military operations are discussed.

In 1999, despite twenty years of intellectual investment in concepts for the defence of Australia, despite the establishment of NSD in HQ ADF to develop the plans and policies to marshal ‘national support’ for ADF operations, and despite military exercises, it concerned many at the time that Australia was ill-prepared for a sizable military force in its north let alone ready to project it much further than the shoreline. Risk was accepted from Government to the ADF that Australia would never need to enact policy or test its concepts.

Could defence industry made greater contributions during the East Timor crisis? They were involved at all levels, but as with the ADF, industry partners lacked the capability or capacity that was needed at short notice. Transportation services supported the deployment, telecommunications companies deployed, and a range of businesses offered opportunities to share the burden of military operations alongside the ADF’s logistics forces. The challenge was coordinating these inputs. At the time policy intent was not matched by ADF doctrine about ‘employing civilians in the theatre’ and the arrangements and capacities necessary to make the most of an otherwise health Defence-industry relationship wasn’t there.

Conclusion

In considering the points this article makes it is important to remember just how unexpected the INTERFET deployment was, and that Defence worked tirelessly to make the operation the success it became. Similarly, it was a time of seemingly incredible difficulty for senior leaders in the ADF and elsewhere who had to make fundamental force structure and preparedness decisions, fully aware that no one could adequately advise them on the operational costs of their decisions.

This article is therefore not to criticise but to critique; to look to history to determine how best military leaders and civilian officials can best posture the military when the nature of future operations is unknown. It is an example which reminds them of the importance of every decision they make as the second-order consequences may have ramifications well beyond the considered strategic horizon.

The INTERFET deployment is a potent reminder of the intrinsic link between logistics and overall preparedness. Twenty years have passed since the operation and many of the problems have been addressed by the ADF and others across the national security community. A period of consistent operational commitments since INTERFET has created an experienced defence force that should be able to avoid a recurrence of the severe problems in preparedness experienced in 1999.

However, as operations are unique, we really can’t be too sure that the future ADF will avoid the problems which afflicted INTERFET. What is important that the ADF, and those that support it, now look for warning signs in preparedness that emerge from time to time. Risk acceptance is expected in defence planning, and it is impossible to prepare for every conceivable military circumstance.

The best option is to have a logistics process that can adapt quickly and effectively. For the ADF in 1999, this was not the case. Only time will tell if it is now.

The thoughts are those of the author alone.

Planning to sustain the force – Reflections on East Timor by a Logistics Unit Commander Part Two

By Brigadier Michael Kehoe (Retd).

“In the two decades since the Australian deployment to East Timor as part of the International Force East Timor (INTERFET), much has been written about the operation predominantly from the national and military strategic perspectives. This focus is not surprising given Australia’s decision to act decisively in the immediate neighbourhood in a leadership role, and the nature and scale of the intervention, remains unparalleled since Federation. At the operational and tactical level, East Timor may not be a great case study for combat arms officers however for the logistician, there are lessons to be learned at every level from the Commander Joint Logistics down to the private soldier. As the operation recedes into history, we need to ensure the key lessons identified do not also fade.”

– from Reflections on East Timor by a Logistics Unit Commander – twenty years on

Editor’s note – this article continues with the experiences of the then Commanding Officer, 10th Force Support Battalion (10 FSB), deploying to East Timor (now Timor Leste) as part of the INTERFET operation.

Provisioning the force

Supplying any force requires an understanding of ‘provisioning’ and ‘stockholding’. To say these were done poorly is an understatement. At the tactical level, effective supply support results from the provision of appropriate in-service items of supply necessary for the identified force to conduct the operation. Without getting into too much detail, the logistic planners require crucial information from the Joint Military Appreciation Process including a dependency and anticipated rates of effort from which usage rates are derived. From this point, logistic planners can assess stockholding levels and locations, transport assets required and warehousing infrastructure needs.

Obviously there’s a symbiotic relationship. Logistics both enables and constrains the operational plan but the key is that operations and logistic planning must be synchronized at every level. ‘Surprise’ is a great principle of war but is not a good principle of planning. Suffice to say that 10 FSB, my unit, had none of the essential information ingredients to plan and build the logistics information systems infrastructure to enable the appropriate third line supply support to the force. In that crucial pre-deployment time, other than HQ INTERFET and 3 Bde (-), we really had no visibility of the force dependency.

As the combined Australian and coalition force built up, force elements just got swept up, included in our growing list of dependencies and the operation rolled remorselessly on. Of course we expect our people to be flexible, to ‘improvise, adapt and overcome’, and they did this magnificently. However people are part of a wider logistic system that could not react in the quick time-frame wanted. Criticism that 10 FSB took the wrong provisioning information into theatre is misguided. Any District we took would have been wrong given the lack of key information. We built the plane in flight with predicable outcomes.

When addressing supply, I must mention the Operational Viability Period (OVP) concept. The OVP ‘…is the period immediately following deployment during which forces must maintain self-sufficiency until the logistic resupply system is in place to conduct replenishment.’ This system requires a layered approach meaning each level (section, sub-unit, unit, formation, force) carries with it a degree of inherent sustainability. This allows supply elements and units appropriate time to stop their support in one location, pack up, relocate, set-up and recommence support.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in the initial deployment phase. I recall one unit submitted over 300 high-priority demands in the 14 day period before they deployed, all for items they arguably should have held at unit level. The supply system was swamped with high-priority demands for every item imaginable, both in-service and those requiring procurement action, and the demands kept coming during and after units deployed. Combat units particularly had fallen into a very austere mindset exacerbated by short exercises where soldiers and unit-level Q staff were able to be self-sufficient for the duration. Additionally, no logistics units held stock remotely near the requirement. In many cases, this resulted from deliberate decisions by Fleet Managers seeking to manage peace-time budgets; an unenviable task I acknowledge.

Staff Capacity

Ten years before the INTERFET operation, Army had considerable deployable logistic staff capacity and capability. The Commanders in the headquarters of Divisional Transport, Supply and Electrical and Mechanical Engineering were both commanders in their own right and staff officers, known as ‘Advisers’, for the Divisional Headquarters. Their staff crunched the numbers and came up with the Distribution Plan, the Supply Plan, Repair and Recovery Plan and so on for the next operation or phase of the campaign. These plans were issued as Orders or Annexes to Orders and importantly, were issued under the authority invested by the Divisional Commander. For example, Commander Divisional Transport had the authority, responsibility and resources to plan, direct and execute the Distribution Plan on behalf of the Divisional Commander.

When these units were disestablished to form Brigade Administrative Support Battalions in the 1990s, the staffs at the brigade headquarters were not increased to off-set the elimination of that capacity. Army now lacked a considerable logistics planning capacity, replaced with units designed to only perform in accordance with higher direction from the Brigade planning process and subsequent orders. This has a significant impact on the ability of headquarters to plan logistics operations.

Fast forward to 1999. We had a particularly lean Division Headquarters with a Personnel / Logistics branch (J1/4 branch) trying to contribute to the operations planning process, conduct parallel logistic planning for the combined joint task force of an unknown size and composition, and get itself in a position to deploy. At the same time, a Force Logistic Support Group headquarters (HQFLSG) was pulled together from across the ADF, but this had no experience as a team, no SOPs, equipment or establishment and also had to get themselves to East Timor and into the fight.

Not surprisingly, the deployed logistics system (in the broadest sense of the term) lived hand-to-mouth for about the first two months. Ultimately, the in-theatre support arrangements that had developed in the first couple of months were formalized by the operations staff at HQFLSG and a range of orders were issued under the authority of Commander FLSG in his capacity as Joint Logistics Component Commander.

Individual Readiness

In the lead up to the deployment, I was heartened by the professional approach taken by the soldiers. In deploying the unit we crashed through readiness notice and in many cases worked around the clock to get ready for a deployment of which the nature, dependency and duration were largely unknown. To borrow liberally but not literally from Donald Rumsfeld, ‘You go to war when you’re told, not in accordance with your readiness notice.’

As I moved around the unit and spoke to sub-units and platoons and spoke about the expected duration of our deployment, I told them to plan on nine months and I could tell a number of soldiers swallowed hard at my estimate. Privately I felt it would be less than that for most, but I wanted to get people in the right mindset. This would not be like a month-long exercise in the local training area.

I recall one reassuring example of a young NCO who was either a single mother or her husband was in another high readiness unit; I now don’t recall. Her response, relayed to me through her sub-unit commander was gold. ‘That’s fine Sir. I just need a couple of days to fly my kids to Adelaide, settle them in with my mother and I’ll be back and good to go’.

Why did 10 FSB deploy, and 9 FSB supoport Darwin operations?

I was recently asked my view on the decision to send my unit to Dili and the 9th Force Support Battalion (9FSB) to Darwin. 9 FSB was a partner battalion within the Logistics Support Force (now the 17th Sustainment Brigade), with both battalions supporting land forces in the main. I was surprised by the question; at no stage during the lead up or during the deployment had anyone sought my opinion. To me, it was self-evident and my boss – Brigadier Jeff Wilkinson – got it right. Some flesh on the bones of this comment:

During the INTERFET operation, both units anchored the supply ‘bridge’ between Darwin and the area of operations. Key tasks for both units were mainly but not exclusively supply chain management tasks. Ideally, joint, strategic, Support Command elements including a Joint Logistics Unit in Darwin should have anchored the Australian end of the bridge with augmentation from elsewhere in Support Command (uniform, APS or hire-assets). However, this Command was newly formed an ill-prepared for the task of supporting the mounting of the force. In the absence of that, some other organisation needed to.

Although a joint operation, RAN had no suitable organisation and although RAAF had the Combat Support Group, whether Air Force would have been capable or interested in doing the job was doubtful; whether the question was ever put to them I don’t know. Ultimately, I suspect Commander LSF as the appointed theatre ‘Logistics Component Commander’ knew he had to find a solution from within the assets he controlled.

At the time, 9 FSB was structured similarly to the 9 Transport Regiment. It lack no capacity to supply beyond its own needs and lacked certain capabilities normally associated with third line support. 10 FSB, on the other hand, had under command a:

Combat Supply Coy (for rations and water, fuel and ammunition);
Supply Coy (other commodities);
Local Purchase capability;
Water Transport and Terminal Squadronincluding an Amphibious Beach Team;
Postal Unit;
Third line Workshop Platoon that knew the 3 Bde dependency (and to my recollection, the only third line workshop element in the Army); and
Battalion HQ that had a habitual relationship with 3 Bde.

These comments are not a criticism of 9 FSB. The battalion did sterling work in Darwin, having deployed there at short notice, eventually replacing 10 FSB in Dili in late February 2000 with little respite in between. What Army really needed was Support Command to step up and own the ‘Darwin problem’. It would be a few years yet before the joint force could support a force as large as INTERFET became.

Brigadier Kehoe’s experiences will continue over coming articles at Logistics in War.

Brigadier Michael (Mick) Kehoe served in a wide range of Australian Army and Joint appointments throughout his long and distinguished career. He is currently advising the UAE defence force professional military education program.

Images from Department of Defence.

Planting the right trees – logistics and its role in the ‘Phase Zero’ campaign

by Air Commodore Hayden Marshall (Ret’d).

In a previous life, I had the opportunity to become very familiar with operational planning and experience first hand the impact of logistics (positive and negative) on various phases of a planned or active military operation. I also started to hear increasing reference to Phase Zero as a distinct and important shaping phase in the lead up to the commitment of military forces to an operation and it became quickly apparent that logistics needs to be part of this discussion.

The use of Phase Zero as an element of military planning is credited to General Charles Wald, who in 2006, authored “New Thinking at EUCOM: The Phase Zero Campaign” while he was the Deputy Commander US European Command. The paper discussed the need to recognise the difference between theatre security cooperation and traditional war fighting. The Phase Zero concept highlighted the importance of a range of measures to ensure that all elements of national power were being correctly focussed and applied to areas of potential threat. Phase Zero has since been formally recognised as part of US military doctrine and is defined as “those activities conducted in a ongoing, routine basis to enhance international legitimacy and gain multinational cooperation in support of defined national strategic and strategic military objectives”.

For the military logistician, the carefully crafted road to war is often too short to enact required long-term preparations to allow the force-in-being to fully transition into an operational force that has available all capabilities – there are always plenty of compromises along the way. Consequently, improvements in advanced logistics preparation is critical to ensure that the most critical suite of capabilities is available (at the right time) and this can only be realistically achieved if logistics efforts are in work well before detailed operational planning has commenced.

Phase Zero efforts to date in Australia have largely focussed on joint interagency and multinational engagement efforts that seek to support diplomatic endeavours to maintain peace and cooperation in potential threat areas. The Australian Civil Military Centre, established in 2008, is a tangible example by providing an institutional platform to develop and deliver a range of support programs that work towards Phase Zero goals. More lately, Phase Zero discussions have turned towards understanding aspects that require long-term assessment in the information arena, both in an offensive and defensive context.

A Phase Zero focus on military logistics provides an opportunity for logisticians (military and commercial) to apply some structure and priority around development programs that may otherwise be regarded as “business as usual”. Many logistics support matters that are not resolved in Phase Zero will never likely be resolved, or delivered too late to be of any operational benefit. This must raise enough concern as to whether these matters deserve further attention pre-crisis, or whether resources are reassigned to higher priority matters during one.

Building infrastructure, training staff, stock piling inventory, assessing alternative supply support arrangements and establishing meaningful relationships with suppliers all take time to develop, implement and test in conjunction with raise, train and sustain activities. Phase Zero is the best time to get this done before it’s too late. One of my favourite investment gurus, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway fame, best captured the essence of the importance of Phase Zero and deliberate planning in a quote where he observed that “someone is sitting the shade today because someone planted a tree long ago”. Trees are generally not planted in the heat of battle, but rather in quiet times where they have the chance to be sited in the right location and nurtured during their early years.

However, as David Beaumont has eloquently captured in several of his posts on the matter of readiness and preparedness recently, maintaining a focus on logistics readiness is seriously challenged when it gets to a point where it becomes overwhelming and impossible to support. Prominent military historians from Eccles to van Creveld have recognised turning points in history where efforts to enhance logistics readiness has provided no meaningful contribution and distracted focus from the required main effort. This was most likely due to logistics efforts being applied to cover all possible contingencies for extended periods of time with the expectation that this will provide a decent start point at the commencement of operational activities. Unfortunately, all it has done has been to produce a broad collection of mediocre and sub-standard results that have been of no real assistance and wasted valuable resources.

Ongoing development and changes to supply support arrangements associated with new military capabilities for all elements of the ADF will require significant changes as to how the ADF manages logistics support in the ‘national support base’ and deployed locations. Expanded and targeted use of experimentation is vital to identify how logistics needs to be delivered, but more importantly, should identify where efforts need to be directed in Phase Zero to deliver optimal outcomes. Once we effectively understand the basis of these supply support activities and their mission criticality, we can start to prioritise new programs and activities that will deliver the best logistics outcomes. This does not mean planting lots of “trees” everywhere, but rather taking considered action to ensure correct placement of the “trees” along with the resources needed to keep them healthy until needed.

Many years ago, Sun Tzu observed, “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” Structured and deliberate efforts in Phase Zero to improve the logistics capability of military forces works directly to strengthen and enhance the credibility of both offensive and defensive military plans and must be an credible deterrent (or threat) for potential adversaries. Similarly, strong alliances with other military partners is a key logistics enabler and if this aspect is not only strong, but obvious, it will also be pause for concern by any potential adversaries. Ideally, logistics should be seen as one of the strength’s of Australia’s centre of gravity.

At its most basic, if Phase Zero is about doing everything to prevent conflict from developing in the first place, logistics must have a key role. Future logistics developments must be guided by a clear and comprehensive understanding of the logistics support requirements needed to support the application of combat force.

Air Commodore Hayden Marshall retired from the PAF in March 2018 after 36 years of service in a range of logistics roles. He is currently enjoying plenty of recreational travel, sightseeing, golf, reading and reflecting on issues that may be of interest for the next generation of military logisticians.

The thoughts are those of the author alone.

Committing to preparedness, and the balance between ‘all of it’ and ‘just enough’

By David Beaumont.

Logistics In War has been exploring preparedness and logistics in a series of articles over the last three months. The role of logistics in preparedness is self-evident. However, while we know that this is the case, it has been difficult to rationally or accurately state why it is or ‘how much logistics is truly enough?’. On one hand, it is tempting to answer ‘all of it’. It certainly helps to have ample logistics support at the outset of a crisis or in response to a contingency, but it is also wise to use resources sparingly and at the time their value is highest. Alternatively, it is also tempting to answer ‘just enough’. Yet giving this answer also requires a tremendous ability for insight as to future requirements. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. This series on logistics and preparedness aimed to allow for a gross calibration of the truth; before concluding the series with a few thoughts on major shortcomings in preparing militaries for their operations, let’s recap the previous posts.

‘The water in the well – how much logistics readiness is enough?’ started with why logistics is an understated yet central feature in the contemporary discussion about strategic competition. We’re in a time where commentators are discussing strategic logistics from the resilience of defence industry to the way in which modern capabilities are integrated into forces; from force posture to the marshalling of strategic resources such as fuel and ammunition. The ability for a military to respond quickly depends upon its ability to mobilise resources, national support base capability and to give support where it is required, as soon as it is required. This is the playground of logisticians who attempt to control a ‘system of activities, capabilities and processes that connect the national economy to the battlefield’, establishing a ‘well’ from which the force draws its combat potential or firepower. Together, with a range of others who contribute in the policy-space to the commanders who provide direction and intent, they establish logistics readiness being:

The ability to undertake, to build up and thereafter to sustain combat operations at the full potential of forces.

So, how successful have militaries been at working out a satisfactory level of logistics readiness? In part two of the series, ‘Burying the hero – how logistics and readiness changed war’, we confirmed that in the context of Western militaries the answer is a reserved ‘well enough’. Perhaps the conclusion is that these Western militaries have learned that logistics increasingly influences operations as forces become more technical, as combat power per person increases, and force projection is incredibly logistically demanding. The assumptions we make based upon our views of the sustainment requirements of earlier wars might not meet the new requirements of militaries that are simply getting more resource-intensive and difficult to sustain. I encourage you to read the article to see the important trend driving the sustainment of militaries at play.

Part three, ‘Preparing for preparedness – how should we begin?’, summarises six factors that should be considered to have any chance of meeting a high standard of logistics readiness. Militaries must get the force balance right – and the ‘tooth to tail’ ratio is important. We do, however, have to recognised that the ‘tooth’ and the ‘tail’ does not just constitute capability organic to militaries. Secondly, they must have the right plans and policies in place to support effective planning. More on this later. Thirdly, they must understand that ‘militaries limp to war’ meaning materiel readiness must be managed so that equipment and supplies are available when required. Fourthly, the logistics organisation must be exercised and be the subject of experiments which qualify risks. Finally, militaries must have a professional culture that shares knowledge and risks. They must be able to work with partners to clearly articulate issues and develop solutions collegiately.

In concluding the series, I thought I would address some of the major problems and shortcomings that prevent effective and efficient solutions regarding logistics readiness. Arguably, they are problems germane to preparedness more generally. Quite a few issues are raised through previous articles, so the focus here will be on resourcing readiness. Furthermore, they relate to how requirements are articulated so any investment is worthwhile.

Rational decision-making concerning preparedness suffers when the operational requirements guidance for the logistics system is inadequate. There comes a point where vacillating about the likelihood of a contingency or crisis starts to consume readiness, or when a concept full of non-committal jargon detracts from efficient logistics planning. This problem is exacerbated by inadequate or compromised logistics information systems and analytical tools that would normally be used to react effectively and efficiently to any requirements given, or contingency requirements encountered. Because logistics is a product of context, the more specific any guidance given, the better. There is good reason to give it, even discounting the operational or preparedness needs. When guidance is imprecise there is little reason for logistics system to be refined by military organisations, nor the logistics system held to the strategic requirements desired.

Secondly, it is reasonable that military leaders – even Governments – ask what the value of an investment in logistics preparedness gives them. This is a question that is often considered in terms of the maintenance of reserve stocks of materiel where the value is not always evident to senior decision-makers. These leaders must make trade-offs with respect to Defence resources and vacuous analysis provided by logisticians and others offers nothing to them in decision-making. It is not easy to answer this question without giving logistics capability and outputs a value such that comparisons can be made. This value might be set by preparedness policy, or other logistics plans and policies that prioritise the maintenance of capability. Whatever the case, any tools used to assist decision-makers must also provide the means to express the value or impact of logistics shortfalls.

Thirdly, logistics communities need to be able to respond well to external scrutiny. This means that they must be able to explain any rationale or justification for maintaining a high state of logistics readiness above all other factors. The series concluding here shows that this is not an easy thing to do. Irrespective, logisticians must be able to demonstrate the value of logistics readiness in a way that is operationally meaningful. Without doing this, how else can it be expected that an investment in logistics is meaningful?

Finally, there is the problem of contingency in logistics readiness. There has been a tendency in recent times to confuse major strategic supply chain issues with the day-to-day problems with supporting short-notice responses to contingencies. It is incredibly tempting to view readiness with the glaring light shining from the huge problems blinding out the many smaller challenges before militaries. National fuel supplies, global supply chain vulnerabilities and other vitally important issues in an environment of increased strategic competition cannot be let to obscure the things that are most likely needed a short-notice for the highly credible contingencies that might be faced. The things that matter most of the time will be high-use supplies and commodities, transport, pool items, communications equipment; the list is virtually endless. But it is an important list as tedious a list of logistics tasks it may be.

I hope you have enjoyed the series on preparedness and logistics. Preparedness is an organisational responsibility, but it plays on the mind of logisticians the most. It is important to understand the links between the two, and the fault lines that may lead to an unready force. This is the difference between a military that is able, and one that is little more than an ornament.

The thoughts are those of the author alone.

Preparing for preparedness – how should we begin?

By David Beaumont.

Logistics readiness refers to the ability to undertake, to build up and thereafter to sustain, combat operations at the full combat potential of forces.[1]

Logistics readiness is therefore achieved by addressing six key factors that are applicable at all levels – from the strategic to the tactical. These factors are as follows:

As Dr Peter Layton wrote a very good summation of ‘balance’ for ASPI in 2013;

Conclusion

– Dr James A. Huston, Sinews of War

This is an edited adaption of a presentation given at the Australian Defence Force conference ‘Rapid Force Projection’ in April 2019. It has substantially altered to suit the format here.

The thoughts are those of the author alone.

[1] See Eccles, H., 1959, Logistics in the National Defense, The Stackpole Company, USA, p 290 available courtesy of the USMC here.

[2] Eccles, p 291

[3] Eccles, p 300