Think again – supplying war: reappraising military logistics and its centrality to strategy and war

ABSTRACT

This article argues that logistics constrains strategic opportunity while itself being heavily circumscribed by strategic and operational planning. With the academic literature all but ignoring the centrality of logistics to strategy and war, this article argues for a reappraisal of the critical role of military logistics, and posits that the study and conduct of war and strategy are incomplete at best or false at worst when they ignore this crucial component of the art of war. The article conceptualises the logistics–strategy nexus in a novel way, explores its contemporary manifestation in an age of uncertainty, and applies it to a detailed case study of UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

KEY WORDS:

• Military logistics
• strategy
• asymmetric warfare
• outsourcing
• counterinsurgency
• defence acquisition
• supply chain
• revolution in military logistics

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Edward Hampshire, the two anonymous reviewers, and the interviewees cited in this article for their insights and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the UK MoD or the UK government. This paper is supported by no funding or financial interests.

Notes

¹ See Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), for a seminal historical survey of the importance of logistics in major wars. See also Julian Thompson, The Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Conflict (London: Brassey’s, 1991). See Thomas M. Kane, Military Logistics and Strategic Performance (London: Frank Cass, 2001), for the linkage between military logistics and strategic performance.

² Kane, Military Logistics, 10.

³ See Jacques S. Gansler, Democracy’s Arsenal: Creating a Twenty-First-Century Defense Industry (London: MIT Press, 2011); Eugene Gholz, ‘Globalization, Systems Integration, and the Future of Great Power War’, Security Studies 16/4 (2007), 615–36; Eugene Gholz and Harvey M. Sapolsky, ‘Restructuring the US Defense Industry’, International Security 24/3 (1999/2000), 5–51; Stephen G. Brook, Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

⁴ Dennis J. Reimer, ‘The Revolution in Military Logistics’, Army Logistician 31/1 (1999), 2.

⁵ Instead, the academic debate on privatization focuses almost exclusively on security companies.

⁶ NATO, NATO Logistics Handbook, 3rd edition (Brussels, 1997), 1.

⁷ During Jomini’s time the operational level was unknown to the military. The operational level existed in theory and practice but was only formally introduced in 1982 in US Army, Operations: FM 100-5 (Washington: Headquarters, Department of the Army), <http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/docrepository/FM100_5_1982.pdf>. Today, we could add the operational level to Jomini’s definition of military logistics.

⁸ Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, The Art of War: Précis de l’ Art de Guerre (London: Greenhill Books, 1971), 69.

⁹ Van Creveld, Supplying War, 1.

¹⁰ Matthew Uttley and Christopher Kinsey, ‘The Role of Logistics in War’, in Julian Lindley-French and Yves Boyer (eds), The Oxford handbook of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 401.

¹¹ Ibid., 402.

¹² James F. Dunnigan, How to Make War (London: Harper Collins, 2003), 499.

¹³ Heinz Schulte, ‘Industry and War’, in Julian Lindley-French and Yves Boyer (eds), The Oxford Handbook of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 517.

¹⁴ Regarding information see William G.T. Tuttle, Defense Logistics for the 21st Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 2005), 6.

¹⁵ See Richard Stewart (ed.), American Military History: The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917–2003, Vol. 2 (Washington: Center of Military History, US Army, 2005), 273–74; Martin Edmonds, ‘Planning Britain’s Defence, 1945–85: Capability, Credibility and the Problem of Time’, in Martin Edmonds (ed.), The Defence Equation: British Military Systems: Policy, Planning and Performance (London: Brassey’s, 1986), 9.

¹⁶ Regarding the UK see Matthew Uttley, Contractors on Deployed Military Operations: United Kingdom Policy and Doctrine (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2005), 29–30. Regarding the US it should suffice here to point to the Defense Science and Defense Business Boards to underscore DoD’s proactive consultation of industry views and experiences. For a detailed examination of this process see Mark Erbel, ‘Contractors and Defence Policy-Making: Examining the Drivers, Process, and Future of Military Outsourcing’, PhD dissertation, King’s College London, 2015, 95–129.

¹⁷ See Stewart, American Military History, 370–88; Stuart Croft, Andrew Dorman, Wyn Rees, and Matthew Uttley, Britain and Defence 1945–2000: A Policy Re-evaluation (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 93–98; Malcolm McIntosh, Managing Britain’s Defence (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 137–39.

¹⁸ On the ‘core competency military’ see Christopher Kinsey, The Transformation of War: The Rise of Private Contractors (Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2009). The key policy documents were US DoD, Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces, Report of the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces (Arlington, VA, 1995) in the US, and UK MoD, Frontline First: The Defence Costs Study (London: Stationery Office, 1994).

¹⁹ Moshe Schwartz and Joyprada Swain, ‘Department of Defense Contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. Background and Analysis’, Congressional Research Service, No. R40764, March 2011, 7, 10, 13, 15, 24.

²⁰ Cf. P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, rev. edn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 66–67; Deborah D. Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 34–38.

²¹ See US DoD, Defense Business Board, Supply Chain/Performance-Based Logistics Task Group: Report to the Senior Executive Council, Department of Defense, Report FY03-4 (Washington, 2003). In a nutshell, supply-based systems work off existing stockpiles while distribution-based systems focus on the process of rapidly supplying a customer with minimal turnaround times at the stages an item passes through.

²² See US Department of the Army, Army Science and Technology Master Plan (Washington: Department of the Army, 1998), <http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/docs/astmp98/index.html>, Annex G, Section B.

²³ See e.g. UK MoD, Defence Equipment & Support, DE&S Business Plan 2010–2013 (Abbey Wood, n.d.), 2; idem, Policy Paper No. 4: Defence Acquisition (London, 2001); Kevin Carroll and Colonel David W. Coker, ‘Logistics Modernization Program: A Cornerstone of Army Transformation’, Army Logistician 39/1 (2007), 11–15.

²⁴ Reimer, ‘Revolution in Military Logistics’.

²⁵ Interview with Dr Frank Camm, Senior Economist, RAND Corporation, April 2012.

²⁶ C.V. Christianson, ‘Global Dispersion, Global Sustainment: A Mandate for a Global Logistics Organization?’, Joint Force Quarterly 65 (2012), 45.

²⁷ See US Congress, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, HR 4310, 2013, Section 823; UK MoD, DE&S Business Plan 2010–2013, 2. In through-life models the manufacturer is responsible not only for delivering a capability (e.g. an unmanned aerial vehicle) but also for maintaining, repairing, upgrading, and sometimes operating it – the military purchases an asset’s capability rather than the asset itself.

²⁸ Robert Johnson, Improbable Dangers (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994), 2.

²⁹ Christopher Coker, Globalisation and Insecurity in the Twenty-First Century: NATO and the Management of Risk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 54, 59–64. The government publication most clearly epitomising this shift was US White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington: White House, 2002).

³⁰ Gary H. Mears and Ted Kim, ‘Logistics: The Way Ahead’, Joint Force Quarterly 4 (1994), 40, 42.

³¹ Kane, Military Logistics and Strategic Performance, 5.

³² In a personal interview with the author in February 2012, retired Major-General Jeff Mason, former assistant chief of defence staff for logistics (ACDS [Log Ops]), for instance recounted how he repeatedly invited himself to meetings to ensure that the logistics aspects were taken into account on the strategic level.

³³ See e.g. Matt Cavanagh, ‘Ministerial Decision-Making in the Run-up to the Helmand Deployment’, RUSI Journal 157/2 (2012), 51–52.

³⁴ On additional chains of command, see Lexington Institute, Contractors on the Battlefield: A Support Force to Manage (Arlington, VA, 2007), 10. For the more specific impact of the introduction of contractors into the Total Force on civil–military relations see Thomas C. Bruneau, Patriots for Profit: Contractors and the Military in U.S. National Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Meghan O’Keefe, ‘Civil–Private Military Relations: The Impacts of Military Outsourcing on State Capacity and the Control of Force’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Montréal, 16 March 2011, <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p500011_index.html>.

³⁵ Sharon L. Leary, Sustaining the Long War (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 2007), 8.

³⁶ For a concise discussion of the outsourcing of military logistics, see Mark Erbel and Christopher Kinsey, ‘Privatizing Military Logistics’, in Rita Abrahamsen and Anna Leander (eds), Routledge Handbook of Private Security Studies (Abingdon, Routledge, 2016).

³⁷ C.V. Christianson, ‘National Security and Global Logistics: Adapting to the Uncertainties of Tomorrow’, Army Sustainment 44/6 (2012), 6–7. See also Leary, Sustaining the Long War, 1.

³⁸ David B. Gaffney, Army Logistics Transformation: A Key Component of Military Strategic Responsiveness (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 2008), 7, 9, 12.

³⁹ Daniel R. Lake, ‘Technology, Qualitative Superiority, and the Overstretched American Military’, Strategic Studies Quarterly 77 (Winter 2012), 83.

⁴⁰ Christopher L. Elliott, High Command: British Military Leadership in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (London: Hurst), 104. Elliott is a retired major-general of the British Army who served among other things as director of military operations. For another critical perspective on the Iraq and Afghanistan deployments, see Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Ledwidge is a retired lieutenant-commander of the Royal Navy, and a barrister, and worked in Afghanistan during the time studied here.

⁴¹ Authors’ interview with David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ For an overview of the deployment to Helmand see Michael Clarke (ed.), The Afghan Papers: Committing Britain to War in Helmand, 2005–06 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).

⁴⁴ Authors’ interview with Col. (ret.) David Wiggins, July 2013.

⁴⁵ UK House of Commons Defence Committee, ‘Operations in Afghanistan’, Fourth Report of Session 2010-12, HC 554, Stationery Office, London, 2011, 23 (para. 38).

⁴⁶ ‘UK military “made wrong calculations” on Afghanistan’, BBC News, 23 October 2014, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29714738>. See also Elliott, High Command, 113.

⁴⁷ ‘UK military “made wrong calculations”’.

⁴⁸ Elliott, High Command, 112; ‘UK military “made wrong calculation”’.

⁴⁹ The supply of British forces, especially with helicopters in Helmand, was headline news for years after 2006, as well as the subject of numerous parliamentary debates. See for instance UK House of Lords Hansard, 6 March 2006, Columns 521–23; 21 June 2006, Columns 752–54 and 433WH–439WH.

⁵⁰ David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁵¹ Elliott, High Command, 108.

⁵² David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁵³ Jeff Mason, July 2013.

⁵⁴ Written correspondence of the authors with Captain Andy Curtis, March 2015. Curtis served as chief of staff of the UK National Support Command (later renamed Joint Force Support HQ), which was responsible for commanding the in-theatre end of the UK’s initial deployment into Helmand province from January to July 2006.

⁵⁵ Andy Curtis, March 2015.

⁵⁶ Elliott, High Command, 110–11.

⁵⁷ David Shouesmith, March 2015; Elliott, High Command, 111.

⁵⁸ David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁵⁹ Elliott, High Command, 114–17; David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁶⁰ Elliott, High Command, 120–21.

⁶¹ Ibid., 134.

⁶² Andy Curtis, March 2015.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ David Shouesmith, March 2015; Elliott, High Command, 136.

⁶⁶ Ed Butler, ‘Setting Ourselves up for a Fall in Afghanistan’, RUSI Journal 160/1 (2015), 51.

⁶⁷ Daniel Marston, ‘British Operations in Helmand Afghanistan’, Small Wars Journal, 13 September 2008, <http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/british-operations-in-helmand-afghanistan>, 2.

⁶⁸ Andy Curtis, March 2015; David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁶⁹ Marston, ‘British Operations in Helmand’, 2.

⁷⁰ James H. Lebovic, The Limits of U.S. Military Capability: Lessons from Vietnam and Iraq (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 40.

⁷¹ Cf. Colin McInnes, Spectator Sport War: The West and Contemporary Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005).

⁷² On US strategic and political failures regarding planning the Iraq invasion see e.g. Christopher Kinsey, Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq: Transforming Military Logistics (London: Routledge, 2009), 34–40.

⁷³ Elliott, High Command, 139.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 134–36.

⁷⁵ C.V. Christianson, ‘Joint Logistics in the Future’, Joint Force Quarterly 41/2 (2006), 77.

⁷⁶ See ‘Turkey votes to allow U.S. to use airspace’, Associated Press, 20 March 2003.

⁷⁷ See ‘US says sorry, Pakistan opens Afghan supply lines’, Associated Press, 3 July 2012. On access more generally see also Kurt J. Ryan, Exploring Alternatives for Strategic Access to Afghanistan (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 2009).

⁷⁸ See Amie Ferris-Rotman, ‘The Long Haul: The Monumental Task of Packing up a War’, Foreign Policy (September–October 2013), 37–38. The US was also paying US$100 million instead of US$17 million per month to fly equipment out of Afghanistan rather than transport it overland through Pakistan in 2013, adding financial pressures on the operation at a time of pressured budgets.

⁷⁹ David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁸⁰ Andy Curtis, March 2015.

⁸¹ David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ Nick Turse, ‘Afghanistan’s Base Bonanza’, Tom Dispatch, 4 September 2012, <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175588/>.

⁸⁴ See US House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Warlord Inc.: Extortion and Corruption along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan (Washington: Congress of the United States, 2010), 2 and passim; Mark Mazzetti, Scott Shane, and Alissa J. Rubin, ‘A brutal Afghan clan bedevils the U.S.’, New York Times, 25 September 2011, A1.

⁸⁵ Elliott, High Command, 131.

⁸⁶ David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁸⁷ See Dina Rasor and Robert Bauman, Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 15.

⁸⁸ Interview with Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Jeff Mason, February 2012.

⁸⁹ UK House of Commons, Committee of Public Accounts, ‘Ministry of Defence: Operation TELIC – United Kingdom Military Operation in Iraq’, 39th Report of Session 2003–04, Stationery Office, London, September 2004, 8.

⁹⁰ Leary, Sustaining the Long War, 8.

⁹¹ David Wiggins, July 2013.

⁹² David L. Scholes, Without Prejudice: Iraq, Afghanistan. A Personal Account of Nations in Conflict (Leicester: Matador, 2008), 196.

⁹³ David Shouesmith, March 2015.

⁹⁴ Jeff Mason, July 2013.

⁹⁵ David Wiggins, July 2013.

⁹⁶ Kane, Military Logistics and Strategic Performance, 10.

⁹⁷ US Army Field Manual 3-24 recognizes the unusual role that military logistics plays in COIN operations, i.e. that ‘support provided to the population may become … the decisive operation. Logistics providers are often no longer the tail but the nose of a COIN force.’ US Army, Counterinsurgency: Field Manual 3-24 (Washington: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2006), chapter 8, 1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Erbel

Mark Erbel is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. His research interests are in the areas of international security, empire and imperialism, foreign and defence policy-making, the supply of war, and military-to-military relationships with a regional specialisation in the US, UK, Germany, and the Middle East. His research has been published in the Journal of Contemporary European Research, the H-Diplo International Security Studies Forum, and is forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook on Private Security Studies and is forthcoming in the Ashgate Companion on the Outsourcing of Security.

Christopher Kinsey

Christopher Kinsey is Reader in Business and International Security at King’s College London, located at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Shrivenham, UK. His research explores the interface between markets and war. His work has been widely published in international journals. He is the author of Corporate Soldiers and International Security (Routledge, 2006) and Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq (Routledge, 2009), and he co-edited Contractors & War (Stanford University Press, 2012) and the forthcoming Ashgate Companion on the Outsourcing of Security.