Introduction
Logistics is a crucial part of military operations; it always has been and will always be. This paper examines both historical and future trends in logistics.
We begin with the major transformation of supply systems: the replacement of living off the land with the “bring your own supply” system used since the time of Napoleon. By the time of World War II, horse-drawn wagons were insufficient and needed to be replaced by motorized transportation, and examples of the types of vehicles that made horses obsolete will be considered. Specialized cargo transport vessels from WWII will also be examined.
Next, future trends in logistics will be investigated, focusing on data-driven analytics and the insights that can be derived from total asset visibility. Predictive logistics and other applications of the data stored in these digitized supply chains will be considered along with the benefits these applications should bring.
We conclude by attempting to answer some questions about data-driven logistics – does embracing supply chain visibility result in more effective combat equipment? What advantages do digitized supply chains bring to joint operations?
Overview of Historical Trends
From the times of the Roman Empire to the 17th Century, militaries were supplied by local resources – they lived off the land (LOTL). As an army moved into a geographic area, troops had to procure local resources by foraging, raiding farms, and looting homes. The effect on the local population was predictable: LOTL inculcated fear and created enemies. This was the inevitable response to any large influx of troops.
There were military disadvantages to LOTL as well: an army would have to wait until the next growing season before travelling through the same geographic area, otherwise there would be nothing to loot. Further, the presence of large uninhabited areas of Central Europe made foraging impossible and thus dictated the path of advancing armies.
This situation began to change in the late 16th and early 17th Century with the “magazine” system of Tellier and Louvois1. Magazines were prepositioned supply caches containing enough supplies to sustain an army while it either passed through a town or remained stationary, sometimes for as long as six months. Other innovative solutions used by military commanders included purchasing agents that would reimburse townsfolk for their supplies, as well travelling along routes that would delay the convergence of troops until they were outside their country of origin.
The greatest historical change to military supply was the transition from LOTL to “bring your own supplies" (BYOS). With BYOS, not only was the stress on the friendly local populace greatly reduced, but it also permitted the local population to become part of the economy created by the arrival of the troops. In addition, troop movement necessitated the construction of infrastructure that could be open to use by the locals. These factors raised their standard of living and constituted an early approach to “winning hearts and minds."
Foreign locals were not the only beneficiaries of military supply systems: in modern-day times, various domestic bases established by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) have certainly contributed to local economies. Take for example the DLA's presence in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. The DLA maintains a CONUS Distribution Center and a Document Services center there as well as in nearby Mechanicsburg and New Cumberland. The DLA is the major employer in that area.
Advances of Transportation Logistics from World War II
BYOS required improved means of transportation, as existing cargo vessels and horse-drawn wagons were insufficient for the scale of America’s involvement in World War II. Two of the many advances in transportation logistics from that era were the Liberty ships, the 2½-ton 6×6 trucks, and the ¼-ton Jeeps.
Historical Trend I: Special-Purpose Cargo Vessels
Delivering supplies by sea to all theaters of WWII required a new class of cargo ships. In response, the United States developed the Liberty ships2, with the goal of operating them as “seatrains for Army use”3. These ships had a length of 441.5 ft, a beam of approximately 56.75 ft, and a draft of approximately 27.75 ft. The oil-fired boilers allowed for a speed of 11 - 11.5 knots.
A total of 2,710 of these ships were mass produced by 18 different American shipyards. Each ship required 39 days to build, but the large number of shipyards combined to produce approximately 1.5 ships per day. One of the ways the construction time was minimized was to replace riveting by welding wherever possible.
Most of the Liberty ships were tasked with carrying supplies - they had a carrying capacity of 10,800 deadweight tons - but 225 were converted for use as troop transports.
To replace Liberty ships lost due to U-boat attacks, the United States constructed a new class of cargo ship, the Victory ship4. Victory ships were slightly larger than the Liberty ships and had a similar carrying capacity. The primary improvement over the Liberty ships was the speed: Victory ships travelled at a speed of anywhere from 15 to 17 knots.
The Liberty and Victory ships demonstrated a trend of rapidly building special purpose ocean vehicles. These vehicles served the war effort well, but the rapid construction entailed a shortened lifetime: the Liberty ships were expected to last only five years, and even though more than 2,700 were constructed, only about six remain as museum ships.
Historical Trend II: Mass-Produced Land Vehicles
Perhaps the most useful small vehicle of World War II was the ¼-ton Jeep. Jeeps replaced horses for transport and reconnaissance. Indeed,
In the United States, the Army was interested in a vehicle that could replace both the horse and the motorcycle in the scout, reconnaissance, communication, and liaison roles as well as a vehicle large enough to carry the heavy weapons and ammunition required by infantry companies5.
The Jeep was a staple of WWII land transportation with over 647,000 of them manufactured during the war. It was a four-wheel drive car that could travel 300 miles on 15 gallons of gasoline with a top speed of 65 mph. It’s main strength was its versatility: it could operate both on-road and off-road, be configured with armaments mounted between seats, tow anti-tank guns, etc.
- U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1941.
The Jeeps of WWII demonstrated another trend: the mass production of very versatile land vehicles. Their versatility was described above. They could be modified to act as field ambulances, but their primary purpose was general ground transportation. In terms of logistics, Jeeps served the exact same role as horses: they allowed for “last mile” delivery of relatively small amounts of supplies, carrying smaller pieces of artillery, and the delivery of wounded soldiers to nearby field hospitals.
Other, larger, vehicles such as the 2½-ton 6×6 truck were also mass produced. Over 560,000 of these “deuce and a half” trucks were built during WWII and were used in a wide variety of environments. Like the Jeeps, and unlike the Liberty ships, the deuce and half trucks were durable enough to be used into the Korean and Vietnam Wars and were even in use during Desert Storm. They were slowly replaced with 5-, 7-, and 10-ton 8×8 HEMTTs (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks) which remain in service to this day.
These two historical trends demonstrate how military operations and transportation logistics co-evolved: the vehicles allowed for faster and deeper advancement of the front lines, while the vehicles’ fuel and service requirements required fuel depots, standard part inventories, and the creation and enforcement of periodic maintenance schedules.
Introduction to Future Trends
When examining the available literature on the future of military logistics, one cannot help but be impressed at the range and ingenuity of ideas that the U.S. military are considering. For example, additive manufacturing (e.g. 3-D printing) is being evaluated for building construction. For this idea to be practiced, traditional construction material would be augmented or replaced by whatever is used to print buildings, e.g., the amount of lumber and steel would be reduced and replaced by concrete, say. With this change, the methods for delivering the new material would have to adapt.
Another possible change in military logistics is the use of pick-and-place robots inside supply depots. Such robots are commonly used in commercial distribution centers like those operated by Amazon, and their adoption by the military would augment or possibly replace manual labor in those supply depots.
For the remainder of this section, some of the future trends that involve data-driven analytics will be examined. These trends all require significant IT infrastructure and will partially replace some logistic personnel.
Future Trend I: Total Asset Visibility
Fundamental to data-driven analytics in military logistics is the process of building a digital model of inventory and storage depots. Once this model is created and reliably updated, statistical analysis can be performed on the data. The result is total asset visibility.
Total asset visibility (TAV) – also called supply chain visibility (SCV) - is the ability to track items in a supply chain, from procurement to delivery at the final customer, and to make that data available to appropriate parties6. Implementing this involves asset tracking technology, procedural changes, IT integration, and certain follow-on changes.
Asset tracking technologies can be anything from barcodes to RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. A problem that must be addresses is the desired tracking resolution: for example, should missiles be tracked individually or by the case?
Procedural changes would at the very least involve scanning the asset as it moves through the supply chain - it is necessary to scan the asset’s bar code or RFID tag as it is procured, stored, issued, etc. One advantage of RFID tags is that there are bulk tag readers that can read multiple RFID tags simultaneously, which would speed asset scanning. Automated RFID scanning is also available, is used in the commercial transportation sector, and would be adopted for military applications.
The tracked items and their location must be stored in some way, which would require an IT system that not only allows the modification of the time and place an asset was scanned, but also to be able to retrieve this information and present it to relevant personnel in the form of dashboards and reports. The asset’s arrival time can be predicted, and this would also allow loss detection. Various metrics can also be calculated, such as average delivery time, current inventory at a given supply depot, etc.
Because of the level of IT integration used in TAV systems, the computer systems involved would be high value targets for the enemy, as well as for friendly competitors. The overall system must be defended both in the physical and IT security sense, starting with the RFID tags. Attacks by hackers must also be anticipated and prevented.
Future Trend II: Predictive Maintenance
Predictive analytics – the use of statistical modeling techniques to predict future events or quantities based on historical and current data – is being implemented in military logistics for forecasting maintenance requirements and lifespans of various types of equipment.
The goal of predictive maintenance is to estimate when equipment is likely to fail, and then schedule preventative maintenance before failures occur. It is expected that this will extend the lifespan of equipment, improve availability, and reduce cost of maintenance7. This is implemented by placing sensors on and in vehicles and other forms of equipment; the real-time data these sensors collect is sent to a central repository where it is collected and combined with records of preventative maintenance checks and services (PMCS). The data will then be analyzed using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict when equipment will fail. The results will be presented to appropriate individuals as dashboards, allowing them to act upon that data, such as scheduling maintenance or ordering replacements.
Predictive maintenance builds upon TAV’s IT infrastructure, with maintenance information stored along with location-date-status information. Additional dashboards and report generating software would be needed above and beyond what is required for TAV.
Future Trend III: Predictive Logistics
The goal of predictive logistics is to anticipate the military’s materiel needs, so that either supplies are located when and where they are needed, or supplies can be most quickly transported where they are needed8. This is accomplished through two approaches: forecasting demand and correctly pre-positioning materiel.Demand forecasting starts with current and historical consumption rates and applies AI/ML to predict the supply needs of ongoing or future military operations9 . There will of course be unexpected changes in demand caused by sudden troop surges, unexpected enemy attacks, etc., but periodic changes caused by seasonal fighting patterns can be predicted. This, together with logistic lead-time, will ensure that the proper types and amounts of supplies will be made available at the right time.
To quickly deliver supplies to where they’re needed, those supplies can be pre-positioned – so instead of leaving supplies at strategic facilities and depots, they can be moved forward, closer to the battlefield. Hamilton and Woo10 call this “dynamic forward positioning,” and by doing this, material can be moved more rapidly to where it is needed. As the battle evolves, materiel can also be moved about (redistributed or rebalanced) without returning the materiel to the main supply depot.
Dynamic forward positioning can be extended beyond the location of materiel at forward depots. For example, Kress11 gives various models of depots, storage capacities, transportation connections, and transportation capacities, and each of these arrangements can satisfy various desired qualities such as wide vs narrow deployment, flexible vs non-flexible deployment, survivability, etc. Of course, his models are theoretical and do not consider the terrain that these depots and transportation routes would occupy.
As with predictive maintenance, effective predictive logistics requires that TAV be at least partially implemented. Highly specific software is needed to choose the correct configuration of Kress’ logistic model.
Conclusion
As discussed above, military operations and logistics have spurred each other on – transportation logistics allowed for long-distance military operations, and the demands of military operations required the creation of supply and fuel depots to support the various new means of transportation. In this sense, transportation logistics and military operations co-evolved: they were mutually beneficial, and an improvement of one entailed an improvement of the other.
Anticipated advancements in logistics are substantially different from this co-evolution: rather than military operations and logistics benefiting each other, future logistics trends revolve around the collection and analysis of data relevant to supply chain efficiency. Instead of operations and logistics spurring each other on, military operations become just another application of data-driven logistics, not substantially different from commercial applications. Indeed, data-driven logistics has long been practiced in civilian settings, even before the advent of e-commerce.
This is not necessarily a good thing.
By digitizing the supply chain, military logistics can be optimized in the same way that commercial logistics are optimized. Supply chains are made more efficient not only to advance operational success but also to minimize costs. The costs of operating a military are lowered, but cost cutting can result in lower-quality equipment, unreasonable operational timelines, etc.
An advantage to digitized supply chains is that TAV gives participants in joint operations complete insight into the regional availability of military resources. This not only allows partner nations to share the cost of military operations but can significantly reduce the arrival time of a military asset into a theater of operations12.
Footnotes
- Van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton
- Larson, H. The Army’s Cargo Fleet in World War II. P.14 - 19.
- Ibid. pp. 58 - 62.
- Ibid. pp. 19-20
- Duddy, “The Jeep at 70: A Defense Acquisition Success Story.”
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness, Strategy for Improving DoD Asset Visibility.
- Moyer, “Predictive Logistics Initiative Revolutionizes Equipment Management.”
- Dilanian & Howard. “Mastering the Deployment Basics”
- Schwartz, et. al. “How Data Analytics Will Improve Logistics Planning.”
- Hamilton & Woo. “The Road to Predictive Logistics: Perspectives from the 8th Theater Sustainment Command.”
- Kress, M. Operational Logistics.
- Lyons, “Sustaining Military Operations in the Emerging Joint Operating Environment.”
Bibliography
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness. Strategy for Improving DoD Asset Visibility 3rd Ed. August 2017. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://www.acq.osd.mil/log/LOG_SD/.policy_vault.html/Strategy_for_Improving_DoD_AV.pdf
Dilanian, A. & Howard, M. “Mastering the Deployment Basics: An Interview with Retired Lt. Gen. Patricia McQuistion.” Army Sustainment. March-April 2018. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://alu.army.mil/alog/2018/MARAPR18/PDF/MARAPR2018.pdf
Duddy, B. “The Jeep at 70: A Defense Acquisition Success Story.” Defense ARJ 19 (No. 4), October 2012. Retrieved 14 August 2024 from https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA582717.pdf
Hamilton, C. & Woo, E. “The Road to Predictive Logistics: Perspectives from the 8th Theater Sustainment Command.” U.S. Army. 4 November 2019. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://www.army.mil/article/227933/the_road_to_predictive_logistics_perspectives_from_the_8th_theater_sustainment_command
Kress, M. Operational Logistics: The Art and Science of Sustaining Military Operations (2nd ed.). Springer, 2016.
Larson, H. The Army’s Cargo Fleet in World War II. Army Center of Military History, May 1945. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA438107.pdf
Lyons, S. “Sustaining Military Operations in the Emerging Joint Operating Environment.” Army Sustainment. July-August 2017. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://alu.army.mil/alog/2017/JULAUG17/pdf/JULAUG2017.pdf
Moyer, B. “Predictive Logistics Initiative Revolutionizes Equipment Management.” U.S. Army. 2 May 2023. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://www.army.mil/article/265899/predictive_logistics_initiative_revolutionizes_equipment_management
Schwartz, B., McConnell, B. & Parlier, G. “How Data Analytics Will Improve Logistics Planning.” U.S. Army. 4 November 2019. Retrieved 13 August 2024 from https://www.army.mil/article/223842/how_data_analytics_will_improve_logistics_planning
Van Creveld, M. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, 2nd Edition. Cambridge, 2004.
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