Evolving Logistics and Surface Transportation Innovations
Speaker: MG Mark T. Simerly, USA, Commanding General, United States Army Combined Arms Support Command
“The Army and more broadly the joint sustainment environment, as we see it in the future, is complex, contested, and multifaceted. The Army is responsible for an expanded logistics requirement in support of the joint force, particularly in a maritime environment,” said MG Mark T. Simerly, USA, Commanding General of the Combined Arms Support Command, during his keynote address at the Surface Force Projection Conference (SFPC).
“Our concept of logistics provides a framework for projecting supporting and sustaining the joint force in an environment that’s contested across all domains, from the homeland to the combined or joint operations area.”
That emerging logistics concept takes into account the pacing threat of China in the Pacific maritime environment, as well as the acute threat of Russian aggression in Europe in the land domain.
It also relies on a concept of convergence of assets and capabilities to deploy globally and sustain the joint force from the strategic support area—the homeland—to positions of advantage and support of national objectives. This includes setting the theater in order to establish a forward presence and close cooperation with defense industrial base partners, and joint and multinational allies and partners. These partnerships help to establish a global posture that offers both positional advantage and access to resources for the Army and the joint force.
A Complex Threat Environment
“Since Operation Desert Storm, China and Russia have studied the American conduct of war and have designated concepts and capabilities to counter our strengths and exploit our weaknesses, particularly in force projection. The joint force can no longer assume that the homeland is a sanctuary or consider the global commons uncontested,” warned Simerly.
“Joint force deployment will be contested from fort to port to foxhole, eroding our ability to project combat power. The Army and the joint force must consider how to mobilize, project, and sustain combat power to provide Combatant Commanders with the required forces and equipment. In competition and conflict, joint operations will also experience continuous disruption of Command and Control [C2] from the electromagnetic spectrum, space, and cyber domains,” said Simerly adding that lack of effective joint C2 would isolate distributed units and risk defeat in crisis and conflict.
“Our adversaries will present new capabilities that offset or even outpace joint force capabilities. These capabilities will emerge through the advent and democratization of dual use disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, material science, and biotechnology. As our adversaries integrate 21st century military capabilities, the joint force must offset these capabilities or risk a decreased deterrent effect on adversary behavior and increase battlefield risk in combat.”
Building and Modernizing the Groundwork for Theater Sustainment
“Given the contested complex environment it’s vital that we build and modernize the groundwork for theater sustainment now, prior to crisis and conflict. Sustainment of the Army and joint force will be persistently contested across multiple domains and the Army must develop the resilient theater architecture—consisting of multiple supplemental turnkey nodes that house command-and-control network infrastructure, pre-positioned stocks, and sustainment caches—to rapidly project and sustain combat power from fort to port to foxhole. These facilities, hosted by willing partners and allies, will allow the joint force to surge and remain resilient inside enemy anti-access denial areas,” said Simerly.
To achieve this, the Army is pursuing five efforts to extend operational reach, endurance, and freedom of action, which Simerly commented require healthy and robust partnership with the American industrial base. The five efforts2 are:
Resilient and integrated sustainment mission command – achieve logistics decision advantage, require refined authorities and command relationships, provide access to protected logistics information, facilitate operating effectively in a disconnected and distributed environment, and develop predictive and pushed logistics.
Rapid power projection – project strategic deployments, provide rapid availability of the joint force, facilitate deployment from the contested homeland to the point of employment, demonstrate agile and resilient lines of communication, enhance global force posture, and maximize inter to intra-theater transition capabilities.
Set theaters – calibrated force posture, modernization of army pre-positioned stocks, building of partner capacity, and increased interoperability across the human procedural and technical dimensions.
Industrial base modernization – a modernized and linked industrial base with responsive advanced manufacturing, expansion of US contractors and suppliers to meet wartime requirements, and reduction of US contractor dependence on foreign resources and supply chain security.
Sustainment for distributed operations – establishing and sustaining a dynamic forward presence in concert with partners, reducing demand, augmenting mobility with small platforms for distributed operations including autonomous systems, protecting lines of communication, and rapidly recovering and moving.
Deployment Challenges
Simerly described several challenges facing American deployment agility, including inadequate infrastructure at home and abroad, development and retention of workforce members, internal deployment policies and procedures, the space to rapidly reconfigure forces to meet changing dynamic conditions in theater, and synchronizing the ability to project from the continental US to theater operations.
In addition, as the Army modernizes and reorganizes for the future fight, the transition from the brigade combat team as a unit of action to a division or higher headquarters as a unit of action will create its own challenges. This will mean that a division commander will be able to mass effects at the division level and those capabilities will be taken away from the brigade combat team.
“As we optimize for success on the forward edge of the battlefield, there are sustainment and there are certainly deployment and force projection implications for that change that we see taking place between now and 2030,” said Simerly.
Data Exchange: Critical for Success
The distribution and force projection actions discussed by Simerly will occur within a contested environment at home and abroad, and during a time of unprecedented access to data. Therefore, the data exchange between industry partners and the military will be critical for successful operations.
“Logistics and force projection has always been a data-rich environment for many years, but even in the past, Army leaders have struggled with the skills to expertly access and leverage data to quickly inform operations. Today’s technology environment data becomes exponentially more available every day and the use of data analytics will become crucial within the sustainment enterprise,” said Simerly.
“As data becomes quite clearly the most decisive commodity that logisticians and sustainers are going to manage on the future battlefield—not munitions, not fuel, not distribution platforms, but data—we must consider how are we producing skilled data users to be out at the field at echelon to advance decision making?”
“Sustainers must have the descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive data competencies to enable data-driven decision-making to maximize combat readiness and lethality,” said Simerly. “We also have to have pre-established interoperability with our industry partners and academia. This has to include the human technical and procedural aspects of interoperability, so that we can effectively leverage the data that’s available and also protect that data from our adversaries in this contested joint environment.”
The Department of Defense data strategy describes seven tenets to enable a data-centric force:
- Visibility – consumers can locate the needed data
- Accessibility – consumers can retrieve the data
- Understandable – consumers can recognize the content, context, and applicability
- Linked – consumers can exploit data elements through innate relationships
- Trustworthy – consumers can be confident in all aspects of data for decision-making
- Interoperable – consumers have a common representation and comprehension of data
- Security – consumers know that data is protected from unauthorized use, manipulation, and corruption
To build these competencies the services, including the Army, are looking at embedding data literacy and foundational skills into professional military and civilian education programs. Simerly expected this to require a greater level of partnership with academia as the military incorporates academic best practices for data literacy.
He also expected to see the same increase in partnership with industry as the military looks at industry’s methodology to produce certifications that enable talent management.
Simerly concluded that, “the future changes and the character of war demand full and continuous integration of national instruments of war power influence, which creates creative approaches to sustainment, highly effective coordination across services and with partners, and a deeper understanding of the implications of disruptive and contested logistics environments.”
About the SFPC: The Surface Force Projection Conference (SFPC) is an annual event co-hosted by NDTA and Christopher Newport University’s Center for American Studies (CNU CAS), in cooperation with the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), the Maritime Administration (MARAD), and the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC). The 2022 conference took place May 17-19 on the CNU campus.
Each year the event brings together US government and industry logistics and transportation experts, and members of the Joint Logistics Enterprise (JLE), to examine a wide range of challenges associated with operating in and through the contested environment to provide US capability at the point of need. For more information, visit: www.ndtahq.com/events/ports-conference/
By Sharon Lo, Managing Editor, DTJ & The Source