Expeditionary Army Logistics and Sustainment: A Perspective

Against the backdrop of the CSA's imperatives to Sustain, Prepare, Reset, and Transform, any logistics and sustainment initiative now must be viewed within the context of the evolving Core Enterprises:  Readiness, Human Capital, Services and Infrastructure, and Materiel.  Further, thinking about logistics and sustainment must now be viewed in three dimensions not two.  The Army has rightly emphasized holistic and Enterprise-wide perspectives.  To these two dimensions must be added a third:  "whole of government."  Stakeholders extend beyond the DoD.  The obvious example is the Department of Agriculture's impact on retrograde from Iraq.  The Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and Department of State, among others, should be viewed as stakeholders because their actions potentially have a bearing on Army logistics and sustainment.  Logistics and sustainment planning must be anticipatory -- seeking to incorporate early on these stakeholder interests.

Today, it is important to think as well about how logistics and sustainment guidance, processes, initiaitves and programs can help enable striking a balance between meeting current commitments and ensuring Full Spectrum Readiness and Strategic Flexibility.  The distribution system, for example, that is working well today in Iraq and Afghanistan is not readily adaptable to a Somalia or Korea.  Planning for logistics and sustainment elsewhere on the globe -- over and above that needed for the 124,200 soldiers deployed in nearly 80 countries in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan -- is easily overwhelmed by the press of current events.  The challenge for FYDP planning (and beyond) is to identify pragmatic logistics and sustainment actions that will enable Full Spectrum Readiness and Strategic Flexibility and continue to meet rapidly changing current demands in a fluid policy and constrained budgetary environment.

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