In his vision for a more strategically responsive Army, Chief of Staff of the Army General Eric K. Shinseki tasked Army logisticians to achieve three maneuver sustainment goals in support of Army Transformation—
As the Army reduces the maneuver sustainment footprint in the combat zone, the deployment timelines improve and tactical mobility increases. The challenge will be to sustain the momentum of the strategic deployment.
Reducing deployment timelines refers to General Shinseki's goal for the Army to be able to deploy one brigade in 96 hours, one division in 120 hours, and five divisions in 30 days to deter any kind of threat anywhere in the world. If the deterrence force can be deployed quickly enough, the Army can keep the enemy from establishing a geographical and tactical advantage. The faster the deployment, the more options there are for ensuring strategic and tactical overmatch.
Reducing logistics costs without reducing warfighting capability is one way to make more resources available for the first two goals. The initiatives needed to accomplish this goal center on improving business processes and reducing overall demand for sustainment. Business process improvements flow around automated information systems such as the Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-Army) and initiatives like the Single Stock Fund and National Maintenance Manager concepts. Reducing demand for sustainment includes designing and fielding common chassis for vehicles, greatly reducing fuel consumption, and producing more reliable spares and repair parts. If the requirement for sustainment can be reduced, the personnel required to provide that sustainment will be reduced accordingly. This has a ripple effect that ultimately reduces the sustainment required by the sustainers (support to support).
Responsiveness, deployability, agility, versatility, lethality, survivability, sustainability, and trainability—these are the cornerstones and enduring principles that will enable the Army, through its Transformation efforts, to execute its portion of the National Security Strategy and the National Military Strategy.
What does it take to make these principles a reality? World events do not allow the Army the luxury of a "time out" to consider where it has been, where it is now, and where it needs to be. While the Army is developing its future plans and prosecuting various levels of conflict today, it must move forward simultaneously along the road to Transformation.
In keeping with the Army Vision; Joint Vision 2020; the Chief of Staff of the Army's White Paper, Concepts for the Objective Force; and draft Army Training and Doctrine Command Pamphlet 525-3-0, Objective Force Operational Concept, the Army Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM) has developed maneuver sustainment concepts that will build, generate, and sustain combat power for the Objective Force. When logisticians successfully execute these sustainment concepts, the maneuver and support elements will be able to see first, understand first, act first, finish decisively, and be masters of transition. It will not be business as usual.
The Objective Force must be responsive to any threat, over any distance, within extremely short timeframes, and must be able to sustain its deployment momentum. Deployment of the Objective Force will require near 100-percent force readiness at home stations and the ability to transition immediately from local support to national and organic sustainment. The transformed Army must be able to establish and operate an adaptive, rapid, and responsive distribution-based logistics system anywhere in the world within hours of notification. The distribution-based logistics system will be evaluated on its velocity, accuracy, stock accessibility, and ability to meet deployment timelines and customer requirements.
One of the basic principles of the Objective Force and Army Transformation is the ability to decide when and where to prosecute the fight. To do that, the Army must be able to shut down a crisis before it becomes unmanageable. This means that an extremely lethal force must be on the ground and ready to fight within hours—not the days, weeks, and months that it has taken to deploy forces in the past.
To meet the required deployment timelines, the Army must design units that can fight immediately on landing and sustain themselves in an austere environment until follow-on sustainment arrives. Identifying and accepting austere support requirements—deploying with only absolutely essential capabilities—must become a cultural trait.
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While continuing to design units that require only minimal support, the Army also must count on the other military services to provide assets needed to achieve strategic deployment timelines. Force-projection platform infrastructure—the deploying installations and the air and sea ports of embarkation and debarkation—must be able to accept and process the large volume of personnel and equipment that will be needed to prosecute whatever contingency arises.
U.S. forces must be able to transition rapidly with minimal adjustments, whether at the tactical, operational, or strategic level. The maneuver sustainment system must be designed for speed and agility from the national level to the using units. The Objective Force will be expected to move greater distances in shorter times with both efficient and essential sustainment to maintain maneuver force momentum. Critical to the agility concept will be the ability to execute split-base operations and tailor maneuver sustainment on the move. Maneuver sustainment elements must be able to deploy in modular task organizations and reach other organizations and their home stations for support. They also must perform the same en route planning and rehearsal as the maneuver elements.
Versatility is the ability of Objective Force formations to dominate at any point on the spectrum of military operations. There are far-reaching doctrine, training, leader development, organization, materiel, and soldier (DTLOMS) implications for the maneuver sustainment community, because the conditions of commitment for future units (maneuver battalions and brigades) are likely to differ greatly from those of today. In particular, the Army must be vigilant to ensure that the Army of Excellence (Legacy Force), Force XXI, and the Interim and Objective Forces can deploy and fight together seamlessly. This creates significant challenges for the sustainers who must service all four forces, possibly simultaneously, in a joint, multinational environment. The ability to support digitized and nondigitized forces on an asymmetric battlefield will require increased emphasis on the tactics, techniques, and procedures needed to sustain multiconfigured forces.
The essential elements of lethality will remain fires, maneuver, leadership, protection, and information. When deployed, every element in the warfighting formation must be able to generate combat power and contribute decisively to the fight. The force protection challenge facing sustainers will be complex, multidimensional, conventional, and unconventional. Sustainment organizations must be capable of both lethal and nonlethal deterrence. A force protection capability must be built into sustainment commands to provide continuous security of scarce and critical assets.
The security of sustainment assets will remain
an overarching concern. The likelihood that operations
will occur in complex, urban terrain is increasing.
Survivability must be linked to an inherently offensive orientation.
By seizing the initiative and seeing, understanding,
and acting first, the Objective Force will enhance its own
survivability.
Protecting lines of communication and nodes will be difficult, but it is critical to operational success. Airports and seaports located near supporting and supported units will be vulnerable at times. Access to the theater of operations through multiple, unimproved points of entry will be required. Sustainment units must be equipped with the latest night-vision devices, combat identification systems, armed escort platforms, mine-clearing resources, and armored cargo vehicle technology.
The Army is aggressively pursuing opportunities
and technologies to reduce its logistics footprint and
replenishment demand. The Objective Force will deploy
fewer vehicles and leverage reach capabilities. The
Objective Force sustainment organizations must be able to
reach vertically, horizontally, and globally to order, receive,
and issue the stocks needed to support the pace of maneuver.
The sustainment system also must reduce redundant
nodes, both physical and decisionmaking. Echelonment will
not be practical in many scenarios, nor will it allow the
response times necessary to support the future force. At
the strategic and commander-in-chief levels, the Army
pre-positioning strategy must undergo reform. Army pre-
positioned stocks afloat must be capable of
responding more rapidly to a wider range of contingencies.
Workload sharing, resource prioritization, manning, and enabler modernization must be reexamined. All sustainment echelons must be contingency ready in the Objective Force. The various echelons of sustainment must coordinate with other services to satisfy critical shortfalls. Evolving concepts must allow for modular, tailorable units that provide the flexibility to move requirements and capabilities quickly, both vertically and horizontally, within echelons. This concept does not allow for the traditional methodology of handling and holding stocks at every echelon. The use of strategic-, unit-, and mission-configured loads will help reduce stocks and handling, which, in turn, will expedite resupply to the maneuver units.
Trainability is central to all Objective Force capabilities. Training must ensure that soldiers and leaders employ their units' capabilities fully and execute the total sustainment potential across the full spectrum of conflict. The Objective Force must exploit training technologies and performance enhancements. There are far-reaching training implications that may impact Active and Reserve component capabilities. All segments of the Objective Force must be trained to operate as a cohesive unit; however, the challenges presented by full-spectrum training across all components and types of forces will be difficult to overcome. Objective Force organizations, materiel, and doctrinal solutions must be integrated into a force that can adapt to various training strategies and scenarios.
The principles of responsiveness, deployability, agility, versatility, lethality, survivability, sustainability, and trainability come with their own issues that must be resolved. But how do these principles fit into the overall operational environment? How does the operational environment fit into Army Transformation, and how does it support the Joint and Army Visions?
The operational environment has changed. In the past, the Army has planned for a major theater of war or a major combat operation. However, a wide range of commitments have been made in the past decade: major theater of war, regional conflict, stability operations, humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and, most recently, homeland security.
Physical environment is part of the challenge. The topography of a region often prescribes the nature of the conflict. In some regions, conflicts in complex or urban terrain degrade technological superiority. In other regions, an extremely limited or austere infrastructure affects the Army's ability to respond. Adding human issues and complex political relationships makes it even more difficult to program appropriate responses.
The military force that controls the time and tempo of the operational environment has more options to resolve conflicts. This makes the ability of U.S. forces to respond rapidly absolutely critical to their ability to deter conflict. Arriving in a region too late decreases the options of U.S. forces and their allies, and the costs can be severe.
The political environment, to include that created by the media, is another operational concern. It takes time and energy to build coalitions, and the intolerance for collateral damage caused by military operations is increasing.
The Army Vision, articulated clearly by
General Shinseki, is the enabling strategy to support Army
Transformation. The Army will continue to increase its
strategic responsiveness (deployability) while improving
its ability to operate in a joint and combined environment.
Leaders must be taught to understand joint warfighting
and to integrate Active and Reserve component
capabilities fully. The Army already has taken steps to ensure that
its warfighting units are manned properly. At the same
time, it has provided for the well-being of soldiers and their
families.
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The strategic doctrinal framework that moves the Army forward on the road to a maneuver sustainment force modernization strategy is being coordinated closely to ensure that Joint and Army Visions are being promulgated to the planners and operational units.
An underlying challenge to implementing the doctrinal framework is the requirement to support Army of Excellence, Force XXI, Interim, and Objective Forces simultaneously. Each type of warfighting unit is unique, with differing sustainment concepts.
Within Legacy Forces, logistics support depends on the buildup of significant stockpiles of equipment and repair parts. The organizational structure supporting the Legacy Force is echeloned, with each level providing reinforcement support for the forward area, which results in multiple sustainment activities. In most cases, the maneuver sustainment capabilities are organic to the maneuver battalions, and organizational support is conducted through combat and field trains.
The Force XXI concept of support is the base for beginning maneuver sustainment transformation. Within Force XXI, the Army has bypassed some of the echelons of support and consolidated some maintenance capabilities. Doctrinally, Force XXI maneuver sustainment elements have been centralized in forward support battalions, base support companies, and forward support companies to free the maneuver elements to move and fight without accompanying logistics tails. However, in some instances, the maneuver battalions have maintained operational control of the forward support companies to provide additional flexibility and surge capability. Force XXI units also are the first "digitized" units. They have a situational understanding capability and a common operational picture of the battlefield. However, most sustainment still is provided on a daily basis, which involves some redundancy, and the units still maintain significant stockpiles of equipment and spare parts.
The interim brigade combat team (IBCT) takes another step along the evolutionary path to the Objective Force. Within the IBCT, the Army has eliminated echelons of support and backup capabilities and depends on external support from division and corps elements for surge requirements, while accepting the risk of nonsecure lines of communication.
In the IBCT, some revolutionary concepts have been identified for maneuver sustainment capabilities. Every-other-day resupply or resupply on an as-needed basis will replace the traditional daily delivery of supplies and other sustainment. Design considerations for new equipment also will call for greatly increased reliability, improved fuel efficiency, and greater commonality of vehicle chassis and repair parts in an effort to reduce the overall demand for sustainment.
The Objective Force concept of support is still a work in progress, but more revolutionary ideas are in the conceptual phase. Current considerations include removing all maneuver sustainment capabilities from the maneuver unit. All sustainment may be external to the unit through elements known as "expeditionary support forces" or some other title that denotes nonorganic capabilities. Design and operational considerations for this type of support are complex and center around developing habitual relationships between supporting and supported units. If current design considerations prove to be sound, maneuver sustainment capabilities will be truly modular and focused on task organization to execute operations in a wide range of scenarios.
Sustainment management is the centerpiece of the sustainment "puzzle" (see chart above). It links the other four integrated maneuver sustainment functions—sustainment protection, sustainment projection, unit sustainment, and warrior sustainment—into one globally oriented sustainment management and provider system that has no functional boundaries. It is a key component of focused logistics.
Focused logistics is the fusion of information, logistics, and transportation technologies to provide rapid crisis response and sustainment directly to the warfighter. Sustainment management enables operational commanders and sustainment providers to see and anticipate losses, monitor supply consumption, and generate replenishment automatically to a predetermined level based on operating tempo and battlefield mission requirements. It enables the precise, anticipatory distribution of sustainment—the capability to provide the right commodity at the right place at the right time. A global Joint and Army-oriented system of embedded information management technologies is required to develop, implement, and execute an advanced, distribution-based sustainment management system that will integrate the supply chain fully from the national level to the tactical distribution manager and operational force.
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Objective Force military operations require that sustainers become masters of supporting maneuver transitions from home station node to deployment node—from offense to defense and back to offense while transitioning from peacekeeping to warfighting and back again—all with minimal adjustments. This mastery of supporting maneuver transitions requires sustainment versatility and agility.
Emerging sustainment doctrine highlights the need for mission staging and sustainment replenishment. Mission staging is an intense, time-sensitive operation that includes all preparations that will ensure the success of an upcoming mission—planning, leading troops, rehearsing, training, reconstituting logistics support, configuring mission loads, tailoring for the next mission, and conducting reconnaissance, surveillance, and information operations. Sustainment replenishment will be a quick, in-stride operation that fits within the battle rhythm. It will be either a deliberate operation or a hasty operation as opportunities exist or circumstances require. Ultimately, future sustainment missions will be performed with the agility and tempo of maneuver operations while demonstrating the precision of providing the right support at the right place and time.
Undoubtedly, the Objective Force Army must become a reality to meet the Nation's future security needs. To remain relevant, the Army's Objective Force must be more rapidly deployable. At the same time, the Army must continue to operate competently and confidently in the midst of complex, risk-laden, and evolving global military and political environments. Full spectrum dominance in offensive and defensive operations, as well as in stability and support missions, requires a highly maneuverable, extremely agile, capabilities-based Army. Sustainment of the Objective Force will be complex, uncompromising, hazardous, and nonnegotiable. Operational success requires responses that will be both rapid and decisive to terminate crises at the outset or to place opponents at an early, continuing, and ultimately decisive disadvantage.
Larry L. Toler is chief of the Force Integration Division of the Directorate for Combat Developments for Quartermaster in the Army Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee, Virginia. He is a certified professional logistician and has a master's degree in business management from Florida Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Alabama.