Logistics, Strategy and Tactics: Balancing the Art of War
Abstract
This paper contends that the three primal constituents of the military art — strategy, tactics and logistics — must be united within the Australian Army’s future concepts. If history is any guide, this will be a significant challenge for the Army’s modernisation and planning. Yet the marriage of these components is not new. Indeed, Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini emphasised the inseparable nature of logistics, strategy and tactics in his classic work The Art of War. Other authors also argue that logistics cannot be considered in isolation; any attempt to separate it from strategy and tactics would render each of the three ideas equally meaningless.
This article describes a number of factors which have conspired to dislocate strategy, tactics and logistics, and others that have simply reduced logistics to the point of banality. The article further argues that the propensity of the Australian Army to regard logistics as an ancillary science or a secondary concern dislocated from the greater theories of war has a detrimental effect on the development of its operational concepts. This has only been exacerbated by the introduction of logistic ideas inimical to the true nature of war and which view logistics as a burden to be reduced rather than a function that enables combat potential. As the Australian Army reconciles its modernisation programs with its thinking on future war, it is critical that its operational concepts restore the inviolable ‘triptych’ of strategy, tactics and logistics. Without this, the Army risks failure in war — failure that is entirely preventable.
Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act, logistics brings troops to this point.
- Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini Precis de l’ Art de la Guerre, 18381
In predicting the character of future wars, it is sufficiently challenging to determine the way in which an army must fight without the added burden of considering the logistic support required to sustain it. Yet it is impossible to consider war without addressing all its aspects and influences. Martin van Creveld’s opening to Supplying War, a seminal text that has attracted considerable academic debate, drew on the work of renowned Napoleonic-era theorist Antoine-Henri Jomini to highlight the importance of logistics to warfare. Supplying War confirmed that military logistics was not simply the administration of forces. Instead, logistics was described as fundamentally concerned with resolving questions of strategy and tactics and an inherently necessary — indeed a principal element — of the art of war.
During the considerable period that has passed since Jomini wrote The Art of War, the role of logistics within the theory of war espoused by Western militaries, including the Australian Army, has been diluted. As noted by Martin van Creveld when he returned to preface Supplying War some 30 years after its first edition, logistics has been conflated to the point of consuming everything from procurement to planning to war production.2 Furthermore, and with special relevance to the Australian Army’s future war debate, logistics has moved from being considered central to the theory of war to occupying the role of an ancillary science. As the Australian Army seeks to determine how it will fight the next war, it is critical for logistics to regain its fundamental importance so that it may properly underpin the way in which the Army fights in the future.
This article contends that, as the Army considers the potential wars of the future, the concepts derived from its analysis must reflect the equivalency of strategy, tactics and logistics. The approach taken is purposefully theoretical in nature and necessarily focuses on the land domain. Furthermore, given the extensive literature available, it does not seek to describe either strategy or tactics.3 It is from theories that our foundational understanding of war is derived, and the theory examined here describes war from the perspective of armies. Therefore, this article first examines the ideas of those few key writers who have sought to coherently explain the relationship of logistics to strategy and tactics. Second, it seeks to contextualise these issues with particular reference to the Australian Army. Due to limitations of space, however, this discussion can only provide a cursory examination of these issues and is therefore largely diagnostic rather than prescriptive in its approach. Nonetheless, in seeking balance between strategy, tactics and logistics in the art of war, this article aims to stimulate debate so as to further develop the concepts that will determine how the Army will fight in the future.
Logistics and the triptych
Logistics has always been vital to successful military operations, and many campaigns have been fought, won or lost because of it. Most commanders understand that, without the required resources, vehicles, personnel and other essentials, armies simply cease to be combat effective and plans are rendered worthless. Most would also agree that the most important role of the logistician in war is overcoming a ‘seemingly endless series of difficulties’ to prevent this outcome.4 However, it is often only through failure that commanders realise that strategy, tactics and logistics cannot be considered in isolation from one another. For example, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, having lost his campaign in Africa, famously confirmed in a postscript that ‘the battle is won and fought by the quartermasters before the shooting begins’, a revelation that would have served him better at the outset of the campaign rather than at its conclusion.5 That he embarked on his campaign without realising the importance of North African ports to the provisioning of his force, all the while deriding the Italians for their defence of their supply lines, presents clear evidence of the over-valuation of the tactical compared to the strategic or logistic.6 Yet Rommel was hardly alone in diminishing the role that logistics plays in war before proceeding on an ill-fated campaign.
Logistics has never been regarded by commanders as the most attractive aspect of warfare in which they should invest their time. The derivation provided by the ancient Greeks — logistes or ‘those skilled in calculating’ — provides ample evidence that logistics can be portrayed as a highly uninteresting topic.7 At the very least, such uninspiring views of logistics often prompt commanders to neglect to include it in the theories of war. Yet logistics cannot be related to warfare; in an unbreakable union with strategy and tactics, logistics is warfare. Having evaluated 170 years of US Army logistics, James Huston described this relationship eloquently, writing that military logistics delivers ‘adequate potential or actual firepower or shock’ to critical places and at critical times ‘for achieving tactical and strategic aims’.8 As a component of the military art, Huston regarded the primary aim of logistics as ‘asking the right questions’ to identify locations, times, objectives and threat situations relevant to the provision of material effort.9 In analysing the ‘generalship’ of Alexander the Great, Major General J.F.C. Fuller went so far as to declare that supply was the basis of strategy and tactics.10 However, neither Fuller nor Huston was the first to clearly enunciate the equivalency of strategy, tactics and logistics.
Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, in The Art of War, examined logistics (albeit frustratingly briefly) at a time of transition in which logistics, strategy and tactics underwent considerable change. For Jomini, as a member of Napoleon’s staff and an active participant in his wars, contemporary war revealed considerable logistic challenges that had to be overcome by commanders. At the risk of oversimplifying the circumstances, the scale of the conflict and, most importantly, the projection of military power over continental distances, brought to the fore issues of ‘marches and camps, and of quartering, supplying troops’.11 Prior to Napoleon’s campaigns, the smaller scale and size of pre-industrial armies often allowed them to sustain themselves directly off the land, plundering or purchasing local resources and other supplies.12 Jomini regarded his commander as possessing a virtually impeccable record of reorganisation to meet the new strategic, tactical and logistic needs of his enormous army.13 However, as demonstrated in the ill-fated Russian campaign, the temptation to acquire a continental empire outweighed Napoleon’s customary caution in recognising the limits of his logistics and lines of communication, and his ambitions were undone.14
As armies of the time developed logistic structures, formations and methods to support themselves, strategy and tactics were not ‘liberated’ from logistics but bound even closer.15 Armies became larger, as did logistic requirements. As Jomini recounted, the changing characteristics of war, and the increasing mobility of armies required new approaches to logistic problems.16 Chiefs of staff and their subordinates became consumed with the supply and movements of armies, responding to plans that were often prepared by the commander in isolation.17 Indeed the development of modern concepts of military logistics occurred virtually simultaneously with the emergence of what is now known as the ‘operational art’, a mental framework for decision-making which was — among other factors — shaped by the planning requirements to sustain large armies. Both logistics and the conception of the operational level of war therefore became instrumental factors in the establishment of military staff systems and hierarchies designed to organise modern armies.
It is unsurprising that Jomini’s impressions of Napoleonic-era warfare led him to generate a number of ideas on what precisely comprised logistics — from the ‘art of moving armies’ to a more generalised role in the execution of ‘strategic and tactical enterprises’.18 Jomini was apparently perplexed as to where logistics belonged even within his own theory of war, opening Chapter 6 with:
Is logistics simply a science of detail? Or, in the contrary, is it a general science, forming one of the most essential parts of war? Or is it but a term, consecrated by long use, intended to designate collectively the difference branches of staff duty — that is to say, the different means of carrying out in practice the theoretical combinations of the art?19
Jomini’s questions may prompt the response that he was confusing the connection between strategy, tactics and logistics with effective staff work. This is certainly the argument of Falklands veteran and historian Major General Julian Thompson, who notes that the military staff of the time were so consumed by sustainment issues that any distinction between operational planning and logistics was barely noticeable.20 Certainly Jomini’s contemporary, the much venerated theorist Carl von Clausewitz, regarded logistics as nothing more than a ‘subservient’ function, despite begrudgingly accepting it as useful, if not necessary.21 With logistics so vital to the planning of operations, it is impossible to argue that it is anything but central to the subsequent conduct of warfare. Nonetheless, in emulation of Clausewitz’s view, and contrary to Jomini’s conclusions, modern Western armies have long since viewed logistics as one of a number of enabling sciences that informs choices rather than as an inherent, inseparable function of the choice itself.
With the increasing complexity of warfare since Jomini’s time, militaries have sought to specialise nominally ‘subservient’ functions such as logistics. However, this process has also perpetuated the disjunction of logistics from its formerly intimate relationship with strategy and tactics. In the vernacular of Colonel George Thorpe’s minor classic, Pure Logistics, ‘applied’ logistics attracts more interest than any reflection of the theoretical ‘pure’ form bound intimately into the art and theory of war.22 Most modern Western militaries now regard military logistics as an ancillary applied science, among these the Australian Army, which describes logistics as the ‘science of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of forces’.23 In this mindset, logistics becomes less about victory and more about technocracy — a rational, logical, process-driven and calculated system of resource management. Without strategy, operations or tactics to constrain it, a scientific approach to logistics becomes an exercise in numbers, yet at times risks becoming completely devoid of context.
War is a remorseless teacher and, time and again, has proven to be no home for accountants.24 Logistics is more than a science or method for calculating an idealistic path to victory. In reflecting on his time as senior coalition logistician during the Gulf War of 1991, retired Lieutenant General William Pagonis defined logistics as an ‘action on reality’.25 Beyond a simple reference for logisticians to apply judgement, intuition and experience to observable problems, Pagonis amplified the point that logistics is relative to context. Logistics, he argued, only possessed meaning in reference to the strategy and tactics being applied, and vice versa. While predicting ‘movement’ and ‘maintenance’ requirements for a force might be important logistic business, logistics is invariably a product of factors known only once the fighting begins. Yet paradoxically, as part of the ‘theoretical combinations of the [military] art’ and the choices of commanders, logistics itself influences the way in which a war might be fought, and therefore must be a determinant of the strategy and tactics used to achieve victory.26
These factors suggest that logistics is not only vital to any theory of war, but completely inseparable from its conceptual and theoretical understanding. Or, as Jomini wrote, as one of the principal elements of the art of war, logistics is essential for the ‘formation and handling of a great Army’.27 The relationship of logistics to tactics and strategy is thus highly intimate, this vital ‘triptych’ so critical that each element would be rendered equally meaningless if not considered alongside the others.28 This means that the way in which an army fights, and the strategy it exists to serve, must be determined by logistic considerations, with appropriate attention paid by commanders, planners and logisticians to the fundamental character of the sustainment required. It is therefore self-evident that, as the Australian Army engages in a debate over the way future wars may be fought, it will be insufficient to assume that logistics is simply ancillary to the desired end.
‘Qu’on ne me parle pas des vivres’29
All this will indicate the general influence that questions of supply can exert on the form and direction of operations, as well as the choice of a theatre of war and the line of communication. How far their influence will extend, and how much weight should be in the final analysis attached to the ease or difficulty of supply — those are questions that will naturally depend on how the war is to be conducted.
- Clausewitz30
It is erroneous to suggest that the Australian Army has not considered logistics in its conceptual development. Certainly there would be no commander who did not already appreciate that proposed changes to manoeuvre formations will have profound implications for their sustainment, as will the ideas that determine their concepts of employment.31 And so, in moving from being an ‘army at war’ to an ‘army of preparation’, the Australian Army has sought to determine whether its plans and concepts are sustainable. Over the last two years Headquarters Forces Command, in implementing the Army’s Plan Beersheba, has developed a combat service support concept of operations for the combat brigade (CSS CONOPS) which is virtually unique in that it seeks to balance the tactics of the combat brigade with the reality of actual force structure and logistic limitations.32 However, in the broad scope of the Army’s conceptual development, such a construct represents the exception rather than the rule. There is little evidence to suggest that the influence of logistics on strategy and tactics has been a topic of more than passing interest.
The Army has not always effectively balanced strategy, tactics and logistics within its concepts, and there are a number of key reasons for this. It is easy to argue that, because logistics lacks the appeal of strategy and tactics, it has been afforded less attention than it rightfully deserves.33 The fact that examining logistics tends to reveal weaknesses rather than strengths is also a powerful disincentive for analysis, a problem almost certainly linked to the absence of detailed testing and evaluation of logistics during major Army exercises. However, this is not simply a problem of the skewed perspective of the combat arms. Very few logisticians write on logistics without being compelled to do so, let alone engage in debate concerning the future of warfare. Fewer still choose to comment on combat tactics or strategy, given the perception that this is outside their traditional area of expertise. Thus, it is unsurprising that debate on the relevance of logistics to the development of new strategies, operational concepts or tactics has stultified.
To some extent the limited interest in understanding the nature of logistics has been a consequence of the Army’s good fortune. Operational logistics has been relatively uncomplicated for the modern Australian Army. The Army of the post- Vietnam era has been fortunate that its logistic capabilities and capacities have not been stressed to a state of collapse by virtue of strategy and tactics although, admittedly, it has been close on occasion. As historian Bob Breen writes, in East Timor the Army flirted with disaster given its tenuous ability to sustain the force, its logistic capacity barely adequate to support what the operation demanded.34 Preceding years of budget cuts and the outsourcing of logistic capabilities to the private sector or joint agencies produced a hollowness that belied the Army’s logistic capacity to support the projection of military power from Australian shores.35 Yet, as Thompson writes, when ‘the experience of war recedes … logistics tends to take a back seat to the more glamorous tactics and strategy.’36 A decade of wars of choice, in which the forces deployed have been scrupulously designed and structured to suit the capacity — or lack thereof — of the logistic elements sustaining them, has also contributed to the supplanting of valuable lessons within the corporate memory. Moreover, the Australian Army’s historical preference for integration into coalition forces and their extensive support networks has meant that its weaknesses in logistics have remained obscured.37
Future wars may mean that the Army cannot absorb logistic risk into its force generation cycle, and current choices will resonate in the outcomes of the future. As the Army seeks to redirect its attention to ‘high-intensity’ conventional warfighting and operations within the urban-littoral, where logistic problems become particularly acute, reconciling strategy, tactics and logistics will only increase in importance. Vital documents such as an updated Future Land Operating Concept, due for release in 2015 by strategic planners and critical to the future shape and modernisation of the Army, will only be relevant if logistic capabilities can support its ideas. Given the current significant limitations on logistic capacity within the Army, questions of supply will undoubtedly shape the form and direction of the way such concepts are expressed, perhaps even to the extent that the Army’s very conceptions of battle will be tested.38 As demonstrated in the experimental Exercise Headline 2014, while the future armoured cavalry regiment might be a potent tactical advancement, it was regarded as virtually unsupportable without substantial revision of the existing methods for its supply and support.39 This is one of the reasons that controversial concepts such as the CSS CONOPS are so important — they attempt to better align the proposed tactics of the combat brigade with the logistic capability and capacity available to support it.40
The problems identified in experimentation or future planning may cause considerable discomfort, as may the solutions, but it is only through taking such a disciplined, planned approach that the Australian Army can prepare effectively for the future. The only alternative to this process resides in guesswork or the misapplication of ideas from other sources — ideas that are seductive yet fundamentally divorced from the theory of war. Unfortunately, the Army (and the Australian Defence Force more broadly) has been particularly adept at taking these easier steps. Already there have been successive logistic concepts introduced, reinforced by ideas emerging from civilian business schools, which tend to mesh poorly with proposed strategy and tactics, if not with combat more broadly. The most deficient use the ratio of logistic troops to combat forces as a measure of military efficiency, while proponents express their certainty that logistic requirements can be met by lower levels of manpower and ‘efficient’ systems irrespective of the context of war or strategy and tactics. Popular concepts such as ‘distribution-based logistics’ and ‘lean logistics’ adopted from supply-chain theory have captured the imagination of many military professionals compelled to achieve more with less.41
However, where these ideas tend to falter is in combat. In misapplying ideas developed specifically for the commercial sector, military concepts actually suborn the important role logistics plays in delivering combat power. What really matters in logistics is not whether the ‘tooth to tail’ ratio can be kept to a minimum, but how much firepower can ultimately be used on the enemy.42 Logistics is not a burden to be mitigated, but rather is that capability that endows a combat force with its potential to fight — to paraphrase the title of academic John Lynn’s book, ‘Mars must be fed’.43 With this in mind, ‘solving’ logistic problems without understanding how the force applies strategy and tactics in a particular situation is spectacularly and obviously flawed. At its worst, logistics operating beyond the strategy and tactics of war produces hollowness, a vulnerability that only reveals itself when the viability of a force is tested in battle. Although he was consumed with the operational and moral rather than material aspects of war, Clausewitz warned that:
Ability to endure privation is one of the soldier’s finest qualities; without it an army cannot be filled with genuine military spirit. But privation must be temporary; it must be imposed by circumstances and not by an inefficient system or a niggardly abstract calculation of the smallest ration that will keep a man alive. In the latter case it is bound to sap the physical and moral strength of every man.44
In considering Clausewitz’s words, the Army must not forget that war is not about obscure arrangements based on the fine detail of military science or arguments over semantics. While logisticians may now describe logistics using terms such as ‘efficient’ or ‘effective’, such false dichotomies do not serve the soldier well. What is more important is that, when tactical and strategic methods are designed, they are complemented by an economic logistic plan that reflects, respects and adapts to the characteristics of the war that will be fought.
Nonetheless, it is important to avoid overly venerating the artistry required to balance strategy, tactics and logistics at the expense of what Jomini called the ‘science of detail’. Without appropriate concern for detail, art is hollow and vacuous. However there comes a point at which the Army must align its sustainment methodology with the characteristics of how it is to fight, rather than basing its methods on abstract ideas. Solutions predicated on what can be achieved efficiently in barracks, such as the business solutions described earlier, are unlikely to be equally applicable to military operations. Analysing spreadsheets of calculations and volumes of data in the interests of seeking scientific efficiency, while being immensely useful to planning, will never guarantee success on the battlefield. On the other hand, logistic concepts created in full cognisance of tactics and strategy, and vice versa, just might.
It would therefore be an understatement to suggest that the Army’s current planners face a considerable challenge in realigning logistics to strategy and tactics in the concepts currently being developed. As war is subjective, determined by an incalculable variety of factors and influences, it will be difficult for concept writers to properly understand how a force should be sustained until it has been constituted or commences operations.45 Given that they are relative to time, place and circumstance, logistic requirements will always be determined by situations within the broader military campaign.46 But so too will strategy and tactics, ideas that are themselves variable yet are defined by logistic systems, structures and behaviour at a fundamental level. Support for a priority or diversion of a commander’s attention to another main effort will inevitably have implications for the sustainment, and by extension the rate of effort, of other elements of the force. That scenario-based experimentation in Exercise Headline 2013 revealed that three evenly weighted battlegroups within a combat brigade could not be sustained concurrently is an unsurprising testament to this truism.47 Noting this, history is replete with reminders that an army’s logistic formations and frameworks may never be employed as conceived, thereby making it difficult to fully understand how a logistic plan might shape strategy or tactics.48 However, by properly unifying strategy, tactics and logistics in the Army’s operational concepts, it is possible to, at the very least, prepare forces for the inevitable friction of war.
There are many other problems and concerns that will influence the development of the Army’s future concepts, not least of these the implementation of current concepts such as the concept of employment for the reinforced combat brigade. Issues such as the great disparity of opinion within the Army logistic community have not been explored in this article, but will also undoubtedly shape the way that logisticians contribute practically to achieving this outcome. However, it is worth dwelling on one final point: it is unlikely, despite the pleadings of many within the organisation, that the Army will be able to afford (both figuratively and literally) to address the considerable hollowness present within its logistic capabilities. In the current fiscal environment, understanding how to be economical with logistics will be essential if the Army is to be successful in war. Imaginative solutions to any perceived logistic weakness must appear in future concepts, and this can only occur if logisticians and others properly understand the nature of the strategy and tactics they support. With this in mind, it is no longer sufficient for logisticians to merely ‘direct little, influence everything’.49 They must be involved in, if not lead, the development of sensible solutions to emerging challenges in war rather than simply critique from the periphery of the debate. This way, logistic plans will not only confirm what might be desirable, but what is actually possible.50
Of course, the challenge for the combat arms is no less significant and they must devote their own time to the study of all aspects of the triptych. This goes beyond forming close working relationships with logisticians, or simply interacting through formal training and during various courses as is often the case. This is because, as van Creveld writes, logistics ‘is complex in the sense of making prolonged (and expensive) study essential’.51 It is a problem exacerbated by the introduction of new technologies and operational requirements. It is striking, albeit perhaps unsurprising on reflection, that many of the most prominent writers on modern logistics have not been logisticians, but members of the combat arms whose views have been shaped by personal experience.52 They reached the realisation that war will not tolerate the uninformed when it comes to logistics. Despite this, there are very few principles or theoretical insights on the nature of war to guide future learning and, despite the enormous volume of literature on military history and theory, logistics often remains ignored or treated in fragmented fashion.53
If Jomini’s thesis on logistics — that logistics is a principal component of the military art — holds true in the modern age, now is the time to address the Army’s understanding of this crucial topic. Education, particularly of the Army’s officers and leaders, will be critical in overcoming existing vulnerabilities. The union of strategy, tactics and logistics must be nurtured through realistic training in collective activities such as Exercise Hamel, and exemplified in human behaviour.54 A logistic narrative that explains how logistics contributes to modern land power in the Australian context would be equally valuable in structuring future debate within the Army.
But it may be that the solution will not simply be found in improving interaction between training schools, developing new approaches in general career courses and organisations or introducing new ways of thinking about logistics. There are quite clearly cultural overtones to this discussion on strategy, tactics and logistics. Even Jomini, in revising his original edition of The Art of War, spoke of ‘prejudices consecrated by time’ that had initially limited his own conclusions on logistics.55 Commanders will therefore play a vital role in achieving a balance between strategy, tactics and logistics as they prepare their forces for future wars. When implementing the concepts of the future, they will need to understand how logistics determines the way forces fight as Fuller did through understanding Alexander the Great’s successes, and Rommel did in addressing his own failures.56 If not, as history confirms, when it comes to actual warfare, they will be given little choice.
Conclusion
This paper has described logistics in terms of the theory of war in an attempt to influence the development of the Army’s future concepts. Through discussion of Jomini’s The Art of War and other histories, it has argued that logistics is absolutely inseparable from strategy and tactics, supported by Huston in his concept of the ‘triptych’. This might be an uncomfortable idea, particularly for those who subscribe to the theories of eminent thinkers such as Clausewitz who cast logistics as merely a subservient constituent of the theory of war. Yet logistics cannot be subservient or a mere enabler to a plan; recent trials and experimentation have repeatedly confirmed that logistics exerts a fundamental influence on the way that forces actually fight as described by strategy and tactics. While some may dismiss this article as largely diagnostic, lacking prescriptive solutions to the problems identified, the proper analysis of logistics and its incontrovertible link with strategy and tactics requires a paper of far greater stature and scope. If this article simply acts to prompt discussion or criticism, the Army will be richer for it. Whatever the case, the Army must address the challenges identified as it examines the conduct of future warfare, for to avoid doing so will come at considerable cost in the future.
The current discourse on future war within the Army provides scant acknowledgement of the importance of logistics as a principle art of war — even by the Army’s logisticians. This is not to say that the Army’s logisticians do not understand the nature of war, or that the combat arms do not appreciate the importance of logistics in their own success. Rather, it seems that the fundamental importance of logistics to the art of war remains ambiguous. While Jomini’s work has formed the basis of this paper he, like many writers, provides only the briefest glimpse of this component of the art of war in a way that is explicitly useful to the modern Army planner. Therefore the Army, if not Defence more broadly, must devote time to examining the theory of war in terms of its own unique requirements. Valuable histories and other works can assist in the Army’s ongoing modernisation and in aligning the triptych of strategy, tactics and logistics in future concepts. With the likelihood that logistics will attract greater focus in the future, the need for disciplined study of its basic principles is evident. This must be supported by experimentation and planning that seeks equivalence between strategy, tactics and logistics, just as the CSS CONOPS has sought to achieve. To implement this now, in a time of preparation and reconstitution for the Army, is an opportunity that cannot be missed.
Endnotes
1 A.H. Jomini, The Art of War, translated from French by G. Mendell and W. Craighill, US Military Academy, 1862, p. 69.
2 M. van Creveld, Supplying War (2nd edn), Cambridge University Press, UK, 2004, p. 241.
3 This article uses the concepts of strategy and tactics defined by Clausewitz. See C. Clausewitz,
On War, translated by M. Howard and P. Paret, Princeton University Press, USA, 1989,
p. 128: ‘tactics teaches us the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war’. This article considers the combination of strategy, tactics and logistics as forming a military operation.
4 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 231.
5 Ibid., p. 200.
6 Ibid.
7 W. Kaegi, ‘Byzantine logistics: problems and perspectives’ in J. Lynn (ed), Feeding Mars – Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present, Westview Press, USA, p. 39. Jomini actually regarded the term ‘logistics’ as corresponding to the French term ‘marechal- general des logis’ (‘logis’ meaning ‘quarters’ or ‘lodging’) as described by Falk in his preface to the e-publication of Thorpe’s Pure Logistics, republished by the US National Defense University (p. xvii). Jomini cited the German translation of this term as quartiermeister, one responsible for the siting of camps and coordinating ‘marches’. See Jomini, The Art of War, p. 182.
8 J. Huston, The sinews of war: Army logistics 1775-1953, Office of the Chief of Military History, US Army, 1966, p. 655.
9 Ibid., p. 656.
10 J.F.C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1958,
p. 52, cited in D. Engels, Alexander the Great and the logistics of the Macedonian Army, University of California Press, 1978, p. 2.
11 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 69.
12 Lynn, Feeding Mars – Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present, pp. 10–11.
13 J. Thompson, The Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Conflict, Brasseys, UK, 1994, p. 3.
14 G. Thorpe, Pure Logistics, National Defense University, USA (1917), 1986, pp. 18–20. Thorpe regarded Napoleon’s most significant failure as the improper use of his staff to control and coordinate logistics in the context of the unfolding strategic and tactical campaign.
15 Lynn, Feeding Mars, p. ix.
16 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 182.
17 Thompson, The Lifeblood of War, p. 6. As Thompson notes, this relationship persisted well into the twentieth century. For example, Ludendorff’s title as Chief of Staff to Hindenburg was First Quartermaster General. In Germany, the evolved position of Quartermaster General was as Director of Military Operations.
18 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 69.
19 Ibid., p. 252.
20 Thompson, The Lifeblood of War, p. 6.
21 Thorpe, Pure Logistics, p. 10.
22 Ibid., pp. 5, 10.
23 Australian Army, Combat Service Support (Developing Doctrine), Land Warfare Development Centre, Puckapunyal, 2009, p. 1-1. As the Australian Defence Glossary notes, this definition is consistent with joint doctrine, single service doctrine and the NATO glossary.
24 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 202.
25 W. Pagonis, Moving Mountains, Harvard Business School Press, USA, 1992, p. 204.
26 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 252.
27 Jomini assessed the five components as: strategy, grand tactics (analogous to operations), logistics, tactics of the different arms, and the ‘Art of the Engineer’ which referred primarily to siege craft. See The Art of War, p. 66.
28 Huston, The sinews of war, p. 656.
29 ‘Let no-one speak to me of provisions’, Napoleon, speaking to his staff, cited in Thompson,
The Lifeblood of War, p. 3.
30 Clausewitz, On War, p. 330. Clausewitz considered logistics ‘subservient’ to strategy and tactics.
31 Colonel R. Hatcher, J. Martin and Lieutenant Colonel K. Burgdorf, ‘Sustainment for the Army of 2020’, Sustainment, May–June 2014, US Army, Army Logistics University, http://www.alu.army. mil/alog/2014/MayJun14/PDF/125006.pdf, accessed 1 July 2014, p. 27.
32 Headquarters Forces Command, Concept of Operations for Combat Service Support for the Reinforced Combat Brigade, Australia, 2014 (classified, available on the Defence Protected Network).
33 J.C. Moreman, A triumph of improvisation: Australian Army operational logistics and the campaign in Papua, July 1942 to January 1943, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, Australia, 2000, p. 19.
34 B. Breen, Struggling for self-reliance: four case studies of Australian regional force projection in the late 1980s and the 1990s, ANU e-press, Australia, 2008, pp. 162–63.
35 Ibid., p. 163.
36 Thompson, The Lifeblood of War, p. 3.
37 Moreman, A triumph of improvisation, p. 24.
38 Clausewitz, On War, p. 330.
39 Exercise Headline 2014 Quicklook report (classified). The experiment demonstrated that realisation of the proposed armoured cavalry regiment capability would be inhibited by the inability to divide sub-units. ‘Disaggregated manoeuvre’ was rendered impossible by the absence of sufficient logistic force elements.
40 Concept of Operations for Combat Service Support for the Reinforced Combat Brigade, Australia, 2014.
41 These ideas are integral to achieving effective business processes in Defence, particularly at the strategic level. Papers such as Australian Defence Logistics: the need to enable and
equip logistic transformation by G. Waters and J. Blackburn, Kokoda Paper No. 19, Kokoda Foundation, 2014, at: http://kokodafoundation.org/Resources/Documents/KP19%20 LogisticsPaperWebFINAL.pdf (accessed 3 July 2014) contain useful practical guidance on the employment of these processes. However, they rarely dwell on the implications of these ideas for combat, or for their use outside the peacetime setting.
42 Huston, The sinews of war, p. 674.
43 Lynn, Feeding Mars, p. i.
44 Clausewitz, On War, p. 331.
45 Lynn, Feeding Mars, p. 23.
46 Huston, The sinews of war, p. 667.
47 Exercise Headline 2013, post-activity report (classified).
48 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 236.
49 Hatcher et al., ‘Sustainment for the Army of 2020’, p. 27.
50 Thorpe, Pure Logistics, p. 74.
51 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 260.
52 Examples, as cited in this paper, include Napoleonic -era staff officers Clausewitz and Jomini, USMC Colonel Thorpe, UK Army Major General Fuller, and UK Marine Major General Thompson. All other sources used, bar one (US Army Lieutenant General Pagonis), were the work of academics. Major papers and writings on logisticians and logisticians infrequently appear beyond internal journals, or as the product of coursework.
53 E. Luttwak in Lynn, Feeding Mars, p. 3.
54 Exercise Hamel is the annual certification exercise for the Army’s combat brigade prior to its being declared ‘ready’ for possible operational deployment.
55 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 182.
56 Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great, p. 52.
