Logistics: The Backbone of Modern Warfare

In this episode of Conversations on Strategy, Mr. Patrick N. Kelleher and Brigadier General Ronnie D. Anderson Jr. discuss the importance of logistics and readiness. They recommend senior leaders shift their perspective on these topics to keep up with changes in the strategic environment and evolutions in technology. Kelleher and Anderson also discuss the role of resilience for modern logistics and new innovations and their effects on the force.

Keywords: logistics, readiness, strategic environment, senior leaders, resilience, modernization, commercial partners, technology, AI, alliances, sustainment

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You are listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

I’m talking with Mr. Patrick N. Kelleher and Brigadier General Ronnie D. Anderson Jr. today.

Kelleher is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Materiel Readiness, where he serves as the principal adviser to the Assistant Secretary of Defense Sustainment.

Among other notable achievements, he served 24 years on active duty in the Marine Corps.

Anderson is the director of the Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team at US Army Futures Command. He previously commanded Joint Munitions Command.

Welcome to the show, gentlemen.

Brigadier General Ronnie D. Anderson Jr.

Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Mr. Patrick N. Kelleher

Good morning. Thank you.

Host

Let’s talk about logistics and readiness. Mr. Kelleher, you opened a recent LinkedIn post with the line “logistics is strategy.” Please explain what that means in the context of the current strategic environment.

Kelleher

The current strategic environment is obviously, you know, for those that follow it, very different than an environment in which we have operated for the last 25 or 30 years and more similar to the environment of World War II. And so, I think what that necessitates is the imperative to think about how we approach our strategy a little differently.

In the past, I think we had the latitude to design a strategy and then determine if it was logistically supportable, or simply turn to the logisticians and say, “This is what we’re going to do. Support it.”

I think now our strategy must be predicated on achievable logistics at its foundation. And so, where in the past, maybe, logisticians weren’t as involved as much as we probably should have been in developing a strategy. I think now, logistics should drive the strategy, and we should not even consider any strategic objectives or a campaign plan without first determining logistics feasibility, given the challenges in the environment—which, as I said, [are] very different [from] where many of us have fought in counterinsurgency operations for the last 25 or 30 years. So, at the macro level, that’s how I would describe it.

Host

General Anderson, how do you see that concept playing out on the ground or in Joint planning environments?

Anderson

Thanks.

First, I would say that I believe Mr. Kelleher’s premise, his post, and what he just laid out is absolutely correct, and it’s supported by what we’re seeing in our global military history happening right now. Many nations can project power. We’ve seen Russia in Syria. We see North Korea in Ukraine. China is starting to reach beyond its first island chain. But the United States is the only country on the planet that can project power anywhere on the globe in 12 to 72 hours and sustain that force indefinitely. That is our strategic advantage. But it can also be a strategic challenge, as Mr. Kelleher said.

So, every strategy has to be rooted in supportability. I also believe that that’s why contested logistics today is so important. Our adversaries know that our ability to project and sustain power on the globe is our strategic advantage, and they are rehearsing in the Pacific and across Europe to challenge our strategic advantage.

Host

Mr. Kelleher, you made a reference to World War II and needing to update how we view logistics. Are there any specific misconceptions that you think senior leaders still hold about the role of logistics?

Kelleher

I wouldn’t characterize them necessarily as misunderstandings or misperceptions. Many senior leaders in the Department of Defense, myself included, have served over, you know, the last two or three decades in an environment where we have not been contested, where we have been able to dominate in three domains. Now, we find ourselves challenged in five or six domains, depending on how you want to list out the domains.

And I think that that is a paradigm that, while people nominally acknowledge, you know, in the words that they say, I don’t think has necessarily been internalized because too many senior leaders have been conditioned, frankly, by logisticians, who have never failed, to have an expectation that logistics will not fail. But, because the environment has changed so dramatically, there may be a misperception [about] the fundamental logistics capabilities that we have and the degree to which we will be able to leverage them and the degree to which we have the capacity and capabilities writ large—the depth and resilience—that will be necessary to support the next fight, which are well beyond the depth and resilience that we needed for the last 20 or 30 years, because the environment is so profoundly different.

And I think that’s sort of the cognitive dissonance, if you will, that might exist. Although people talk about the importance of logistics, I’m not sure how much that has been truly internalized, as manifested by the investments that are being made into logistics to compensate for the logistics debt that we have incurred over the last 20 or 30 years.

I mean, I think the good thing is, as you look at where the spending curves are going over the next couple of years, the trend lines are good. They’re getting better. But it’s still, I would argue, not where we need to be to compensate for the deficiencies nor the shortfalls or the compromises, [and] the tradeoffs we have made with logistics capabilities over the last 20 or 30 years.

Host

Can logistics posture alone shape adversary decision making even before conflict begins?

Anderson

I got the pleasure of serving at the CENTCOM (US Central Command) headquarters when [General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.] was the commander there. It was entirely obvious how behaviors in the region changed based on posture. One of the things that I think about now, especially in the context of the Indo-Pacific, is what would happen if we either covertly or overtly deployed THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), PrSM (Precision Strike Missile), long-range hypersonics and then just announced to the world, “Hey, look, we have this capability, and we’ve postured it forward?” Even for an exercise, right? And then we can make a strategic decision at that point to see whether it stays in position or if we bring it home and we just make a show of our ability to deploy something, get it there, demonstrate its potential, and then bring it home. It would be very important, and it would be a great lesson learned for us to observe the insights from our competitors’ behaviors when we do that.

It was completely obvious every time a carrier strike group arrived in the Persian Gulf how our adversaries changed their behaviors. When we demonstrate the ability to respond to a hurricane or a flood or an earthquake in the Middle East, our ability to sustain those things logistically and have boots on the ground in a very short order, it changed the behavior of those people competing and wanting to counter our influence in the region. And that happens in every part of the globe every time we demonstrate that capability.

Host

Turning to readiness, Mr. Kelleher, you’ve said logistics underwrites both readiness and resilience. How are we modernizing sustainment systems to keep pace with current threats?

Kelleher

Readiness equates to our ability to fight and win. Posture is a manifestation of our ability not just to deliver kinetic effects but to endure and continue to deliver kinetic effects. And so, posture is a manifestation of what I’ve written about—the logistics deterrent effect that General Anderson was just referencing. When our adversaries understand that we have the ability to endure, on top of our ability to deliver kinetic effects—to punch them in the face, and then to continue to punch them in the face—over time, as manifested by how we have our capabilities represented by posture throughout the world, I think those are sort of the foundational capabilities as [to] how readiness contributes.

Now, what I would say in terms of systems, maybe we could talk about this from a technological perspective and the application of artificial intelligence to help us make better decisions, the application of artificial intelligence to enable us to be more predictive. But I would also say that we’re rethinking the ecosystem of sustainment in a broader context to equate from a regional perspective—and so, that regional posture, coupled with a more deliberate systemic approach to regional sustainment that incorporates partners and allies; their military and commercial capability; [and] our commercial capabilities, coupled with our posture, coupled with logistics support arrangements that we already have in place with other countries, coupled with things like the state partnership program that the National Guard runs—and so, weaving that together in a logistics ecosystem that builds on posture to enable us to have a system, if you will, to support operations, to support operations from a forward perspective, as opposed to having to bring things back to CONUS [the continental United States].

Anderson

And can I pile on to that with some of the experience that Mr. Kelleher would have had while he was still in uniform? Most of us in uniform can relate to just being able to sustain Afghanistan. In all of the really rocky relationships—the on again off again between the US and Pakistan—there were multiple occasions where, in Central Command and at the highest levels of our government, we would have to plan multiple air routes to get air deliveries into Afghanistan. We had to do the same thing with ground distribution into Afghanistan and out of Afghanistan. So, we developed the Northern Distribution Network that went through the Caucuses. So, the ability to have multiple ports of entry and multiple ports of exit and having a robust distribution network helps us endure wherever we are.

So, we had distribution coming from the United States. We had distribution coming from Europe. We had distribution coming from the Arabian Peninsula. And we’re doing the same thing. It’s very exciting to see these things being built out now in the Pacific, where we, from the homeland, are experimenting with different ports of embarkation on both of our coasts. We’re exercising those. We’re establishing a robust go-to-war capability.

We have invested a lot in our power projection platforms and increasing their capability for air operations, rail operations, [and] road operations. All of those are happening, as well as all of our partners in the Indo-Pacific and INDOPACOM, in all of the investments that they are doing with exercises to test each of our ports [and] to test and improve our airports—or our partner nation airports, I should say—and then forward-building distribution hubs and networks all across the Pacific. Those are the things that are going to build us not only readiness but readiness through resilience, as well.

Host

I’d like to ask you to speak a little bit more about that. How, if you can share any specifics, is resilience built into logistics today?

Anderson

If you have a very fragile supply chain like we saw during COVID-19, where a multitude of extremely important parts, pieces, or components are coming from one chain, that becomes very brittle. It’s like a very, very hard piece of metal that does its job very, very well. It’s sharp, and it is precise and it’s accurate. But when it gets dinged, when a very, very hard piece of metal gets tested and twisted, it can shatter. What we really have to have is a piece of metal that is durable. And that is resilience of supply chains—and that is by having multiple distribution hubs and multiple distribution networks and multiple modes and nodes.

So, in the air, on the sea, across ground, when we get there, leaving from multiple ports and arriving at multiple ports, that is going to be resilience.

Host

Talk to me a little bit about commercial partners. How do we balance organic logistics capacity with the commercial partners aspect?

Kelleher

Obviously, the administration has prioritized reinvigorating the defense industrial base. I like to remind folks that the defense industrial base is comprised of two different aspects—the organic industrial base, which my office is responsible for, and the commercial industrial base. To General Anderson’s point, the investments that we’re making in the commercial industrial base build depth and resilience. We expand the number of suppliers. We have more options to produce things more quickly. And the same is true in the organic industrial base. We now have the opportunity to potentially leverage private capital and forge a closer relationship between organic industrial-base organizations and private equity in ways that we haven’t done before to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship where we can accelerate capability expansion in the organic industrial base, you know, let through capital investment by commercial entities. And so, they get production capacity potentially more quickly because they’re leveraging existing industrial facilities, and we get capability more quickly and at lower cost, possibly because we don’t have to invest in capital equipment.

I think the other aspect is the balance, from a regional perspective, of how we leverage global commercial capabilities, perhaps more effectively. Again, thinking about things regionally, many of our commercial partners operate global networks. Our ability to tap into those global networks, via established partnerships, to think about those partnerships in a different way, to enable a more mutually beneficial supporting relationship in locations outside the United States, is a way to more effectively achieve regional support capabilities and closer ties with commercial partners.

There’s a lot we could talk about in terms of how we leverage and balance commercial capabilities, but I’ll leave it at those two macro thoughts.

Host

I’d like to build on that a little bit and ask about technologies or potential policy shifts that might be moving the needle.

Kelleher

From my perspective, the evolution of technology is going to be foundational. General Anderson is in the middle of driving the Army and the Department to accelerate our adoption of technology. I will tell you, some of the things that we’re doing is incorporating the use of artificial intelligence to leverage the data foundation that the Department has established over the last couple of years in a more effective way. I challenge my team to really operationalize our data by applying artificial intelligence. And so, we are in the process of doing that. We’ve got a couple contracts. And so, we’re going to start looking at departmental level data with new technologies in a way that I don’t think the Department has leveraged data before. The services are doing great stuff, but they are looking, obviously, at service data.

Our ability to leverage technology to look at departmental data will provide more insight into the readiness drivers, the readiness degraders, that are impacting capabilities across the board [and] across multiple services. You know, obviously, our AI will enhance our ability to be more predictive about what we need, what parts we need to order, our demand planning, where and when to put things, [and] how and when to move them.

Our ability to leverage data at echelon will enable commanders to leverage the foundation, again, that we have, but to be more effective in decision making because they have greater visibility into and the tools to access and leverage data via AI. I mean, the good news is those things are underway. I mean, we may be nascent in our application of AI, but the Department has a really good data foundation now, I think, that is really going to enable us to accelerate those capabilities.

Host

General Anderson, I would love to hear, from your command perspective, what innovations are making the biggest difference for war fighters?

Anderson

I will say that in the last couple of weeks, I have got to observe some really exciting capabilities that’s really going to enable the AI in the data use and analytics that Mr. Kelleher just laid out. I think earlier this year in Project Convergence Capstone 5, we worked with the PMs (program managers) so that we were able to get real-time data off of a tank so that we could communicate in real time on the fuel consumption, the ammunition consumption, and when a tank had a maintenance fault that was going to be a problem.

 So, having that data feed commanders in real time, they [the commanders] can shift their focus. They can change their tactical decisions or operational decisions, or at a grand scale, the combatant commander can change the campaign very, very rapidly based on all of this data being aggregated. We also just saw a capability where the tactical wheeled vehicle fleet, a large portion of it down at 1st Armored Division, has been instrumented so that it can collect data in real time. And, as vehicles enter back into their motor pool, data such as the speed of the vehicle during different segments, any maintenance faults—and it would be maintenance faults that our normal manual processes would not be able to see—it  can tell you that a sensor is going bad instead of “hey, this thing is no longer working.” So, those kinds of capabilities across our war-fighting and our sustaining systems are going to provide us better data at the ground level. And as that better, cleaner, more organized, and labeled data gets consolidated and democratized, we will be able to make AI machine-learning-enabled decisions at machine speed from the tactical edge, all the way back through depots and into the supply chains, so that we can continue to improve our readiness on a day-to-day and our readiness in a campaign fight.

Kelleher

So, some of these things, you know, as we adopt new technologies may, may, necessitate policy changes. But, I would offer, for those that are listening, we should view policy as an enabler and not something that is restrictive. I think too often when we are thinking about new technologies, new capabilities, we view policy through a lens of what we can’t do as opposed to what policy can enable us to do. A lot of times I’ll hear people say, “Well, you know, the policy won’t let me do A, B, and C.” But when I ask what volume, what page, what chapter, what paragraph [is holding them back], we tend to lose a degree of specificity.

One of the good things about being at OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) is that between my office and my colleagues here, we own all the policy. And so, when we do encounter, as General Anderson talked about, policy obstacles when they’re trying to do things at the tactical edge, I challenge people to send us what page, what chapter, what line, what paragraph needs to change, and what does it need to be so that we can help you—the folks at the tactical edge—do their jobs more effectively when and if policy is actually an obstacle as opposed to a perceived obstacle.

Anderson

The Army Materiel Command and the Army Headquarters is really doing exactly what you said. So, there are policy constraints about advanced manufacturing repair parts, and they have absolutely gone after improving those policies so that [when we need] a part that has a lead-time of somewhere from six months to two years, we can get that part manufactured through an advanced manufacturing technique, whether that’s machining or 3D printing, and we’re able to qualify those as temporary repair parts so that we can get our piece of equipment back into the fight. And then we will continue to pursue the permanent solution. And, I think the Army has really made huge strides in that in the last 45 days.

Host

Army-specific, it seems like, is coming right along. How are we ensuring these innovations scale across other services?

Kelleher

Between my office and organizations like Industrial Base Policy and Research and Engineering, for things like advanced manufacturing, I mean, we collaborate at our level to identify best practices across the services—you know, things that work based on individual efforts. And then, it’s a deliberate effort to share information across the services. So, when we identify things, or folks like General Anderson’s team identify things that work, as those percolate up through deliberate assessments that we execute, we can then elevate and share those best practices across the Department. And then we can help prioritize them and advocate for resources for the things that work well. And, the flip side is sharing information across the Department for things that don’t work so well. You know, one part of innovation is to try a lot of, but not all of them are going to work. And so, we want to know when things don’t work, as well, so we can share those best practices across the Department. Again, between my colleagues in Research and Engineering and Industrial Base Policy, we are all sort of taking the same focus where we can elevate [and] advocate for things and for resources, particularly.

Anderson

In the requirement space, it is inherent that we have to go to the other services to make sure that if we’re going to develop something that’s going to be a Joint solution that we’re nested. But there are so many experiments going on right now. We’re working with the Marine Corps on a cargo UAS (unmanned aircraft system). We’re working with the Navy on developing an autonomous resupply vessel. The Air Force has taught us a lot about predictive logistics in terms of getting operational data or maintenance data off of a platform. So, all of the services have really been working well together in that space as well.

Kelleher

One of the things that we are pursuing in a deliberate fashion, from our perspective, is policy to enable reciprocity of both the qualification and certification of parts and the qualification and certification of the manufacturing process that produces those parts. And so, when the Army, as General Anderson was talking about, produces a part and approves it for form, fit, function application on a Humvee, other services don’t then have to go through that same approval process because what the Army has done is sufficient.

 And that’s an aspect of policy that we are going to work on to provide that top-down guidance so that we can save time across the Department where we’re not continually reinventing or having to recertify things that services have already done. And, the same would apply for manufacturing processes. So, if I have a process using this material, this machine, these conditions, produces this widget, and the Army says it’s good to go, it should be good to go across the Department, as opposed to each service continuing to have to do their own certification.

Host

Do we want to talk about the role that allies play in integrated sustainment innovation?

Kelleher

We must incorporate partner and ally capabilities—not just logistics, but war-fighting capabilities across the board. There are a lot of different efforts underway to enhance our ability to do co-production, enhance our ability to do co-sustainment, [and] enhance our ability for interoperability of weapons systems and munitions.

 And so, I think there’s a lot of good efforts going on there because there is the general recognition that we cannot do it alone, particularly from, as we think about the logistics perspective, our ability to leverage partner and ally capabilities will be one of the foundational elements, or is one of the foundational elements, of a regional sustainment approach.

Host

We’ve talked a little bit about policy, about innovation. What are the tangible effects of these changes for the men and women on the ground?

Anderson

We’re starting to see the effects on our equipment fleets. And, when our equipment fleets have higher readiness, then our soldiers have better training outcomes. When we have better outcomes, we have more lethal forces that are available to deploy. And we are seeing the effects when we are going into our combat training center rotations in preparation for an operational rotation.

 And, all of those things are really starting to make the decision calculus today look different for a commander as it has in the last, probably six to seven years. So, when a commander is weighing their strength against their determined enemy, they’re able to make decisions with better data, with better foresight of the data and their readiness, and with better-trained soldiers and better ready equipment.

Kelleher

From the Department’s perspective, [I will] weave together a lot of things that we talked about. Depth and resilience in your supply chain, plus capabilities to overcome contested logistics like the distribution network, a robust distribution mesh network that General Anderson talked to, plus posture, enables a regionally oriented sustainment, which then produces readiness at the point of need, which enables maneuver, which, at the end of the day, maneuver enables us to fight and win. And so, I think when you look at the totality of the logistics capabilities that we have talked about, it produces more effectively our ability to fight and win.

 And then, the flip side to that is that ecosystem that I just talked about has a deterrent effect in and of itself, which manifests that our ability to fight and win is, in and of itself, a deterrent against war to begin with.

Host

What are the on-the-ground indicators of good sustainment?

Anderson

For me, it’s operational tempo that a commander is able to press against an enemy, and it’s the reach—so, the amount of distance that a commander can actually push his force or push his or her opposing force back into their battle positions. That is a fantastic indicator of your sustainment tail enabling the tooth that is out there getting the war fight to the enemy.

Kelleher

I would 100 percent agree. I mean, our ability to fight and win, maneuver, predicated, as General Anderson said—tempo and reach—and the degree to which the network that we have talked about enables that is how you can measure success.

Host

What’s one thing that the Department, or the public, still underestimates about the role of sustainment?

Kelleher

As we develop strategies, we have to take a hard look at whether or not the logistics required to support that strategy is actually feasible in execution. And so, instead of developing the strategy in the absence of logistics feasibility, we develop a strategy that is informed by, and directly derived from, logistics feasibility assessments, which arguably hasn’t been the way that we had necessarily thought about strategy in the past because we have not been contested in ways that we are going to be in the future.

And then, I think the other aspect that is important to really think about is the logistics deterrent effect that manifests through a robust, resilient, network architecture with depth capability that an adversary will assess and factor into their calculus as to whether or not to go to war to begin with.

Anderson

And, ma’am, my point would be readiness is expensive. And, we all acknowledge that. But if we are not postured to prevent a fait accompli, the US and our allies and partners will lose, or we will pay in blood. If we can’t get to the fight, sustain the fight, or transition to a reestablished balance after the fight, we will continue paying that debt in blood.

However, if we build the capacity and the capability to project and sustain our forces that our competitors know they cannot defeat, we can shift the calculus to, hopefully, prevent a conflict altogether. And, I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t think about when they think about logistics and sustainment.

Kelleher

Investment now, even if not as efficient as we might like it to be, is certainly more effective than waiting until conflicts start, and we have to pay a much higher price.

Host

What a great note to end on. You both have been very generous with your time today and I thank you. I enjoyed this very much.

Listeners, for more Army War College podcasts, check out Decisive Point, SSI Live, CLSC Dialogues, and A Better Peace.