Seven hours after the Navy got the word to go, the first wave of Marines from the Sixth Fleet went ashore at Beirut, Lebanon (1958).
Three thousand American citizens were evacuated by the Sixth Fleet from the Suez fighting zone (1956) during the brief conflict between Israel and Egypt.
Three hundred thousand people were taken out of North Viet-Nam by the Seventh Fleet and moved to South Viet-Nam during the “Passage to Freedom” (1954).
Each one of these was a tactical operation and a logistical operation, and particularly the latter in the 1954 and 1956 evacuations. These three operations are typical of the need for logistical readiness in the Fleet and throughout the Naval Establishment.
The suddenly expanding logistic requirements of emergency operations very definitely orient the naval logistician to the sound belief that effectiveness and readiness in the Naval Establishment should take precedence over economy, when that economy adversely affects required effectiveness and readiness to meet an emergency situation such as Suez or Lebanon. This sound military principle is not often challenged openly, but not always truly supported when it collides head on with a way or a desire to save dollars.
But it is the sudden call for logistical support in such operations as Suez or Lebanon or Quemoy which make the combat officer realize that “Logistics provides the means which makes the conduct of military operations possible.” Requirements for current logistic support in time of peace are fairly specific and reasonably calculable. Requirements for logistic support in time of crisis or war are approximations and almost always not budgeted for.
The cost to the Naval Establishment of the naval operations in connection with the Quemoy and Lebanon crisis, over and above those of the normal cold war operations, was $83,000,000. This extra cost had to be sought from the Congress in order not to throw other features of budgeted naval programs out of kilter.
The problem of logistics readiness facing the military services is to be completely ready to carry out such operations as these in every aspect, except the balancing of the dollar ledgers.
New weapons and concepts of warfare dictate that the logistician act quickly and firmly.
There are those who believe that the next large war will last in days only what previous large wars have lasted in years. If the assumption were to be true, then all operational logistical planning except that having to do with the D-Day period of military effort would be wasted.
Similar, although not quite as drastic, predictions of very short wars were made prior to World War I and World War II and proved to be completely inaccurate. The third time the prediction might turn out to be true, or even more false.
Without entering into a discussion of the validity of a mutually overwhelming destructive type of warfare as the proper main basis for our future logistic planning, the logistic planner can be sure that there will be marked scarcities of men and materiel during any future general non-nuclear war, or after a nuclear war is over and won.
Nuclear war dictates decentralization and dispersal.
Dollar economy dictates concentration and consolidation.
Massive destruction of our mobilization base is recognized as a possibility, or even a probability, in case of general war. Pre-stocking with emphasis on means of survival after a nuclear attack is elementary to continued operations by surviving elements.
Each new weapon and its technology requires more (quantity) and better (quality) logistic support. Many new weapons require greater logistic lead time than their immediate predecessor. Progress is so rapid that stockpiling obsolescence is a constant danger and a too-frequent occurrence.
In a non-nuclear general war, the great task is moving from a mobilization base to full-scale production. A large stockpiling program to fill in gaps in the natural resources of this nation is essential. Ample materials required for running a large undamaged economy at full-scale production are a major asset in national logistic readiness.
In a nuclear war with a large percentage of the working population dead and a large percentage of the munitions industry destroyed, stockpile requirements for full-scale production of the remainder are very difficult to determine accurately. There are no experienced veterans to tell us just what are the needs of a bombed-out economy.
Effect of Inflation on Logistics
There are experienced veterans, however, to tell us the effects of inflation on the logistician’s problem.
The annual dollar since World II, on the average, has brought 2½% less than its predecessor. This is one factor which has kept the annual defense budget inching upward.
Besides inflation, the increasing complexity of weapons and weapons systems has raised cost steeply. The AD Skyraider and the F4U Corsair, both of which were used to fight the Korean War, cost $300,000 and $100,000 respectively. More recent models, the A4D Skyhawk and the F8U Crusader, cost $500,000 and $1,000,000 respectively.
A nuclear powered submarine costs a minimum of $40,000,000 versus $6,000,000 for a World War I submarine. A $4,000,000 World War II destroyer now costs over $30,000,000.
Similar percentagewise increases affect the equipment of ships and aircraft.
Logistic Readiness in Forces Afloat
In case of a nuclear war and large-scale destruction of supply support stockpoints, it would be essential that the Forces Afloat be able to achieve maximum endurance with stocks already loaded on each ship and those loaded in the mobile logistic support ships.
It is for this reason, if no other, that the combat officer has a vital interest in the maintenance of an adequate allowance of spare parts for the equipment in his ship at all times. Insistence on overstocking, however, is not the answer. It is not what the combat commander can insist on having logistically, it is what is really needed and that depends on realistic usage rate data and realistic combat endurance stocks.
When an emergency such as Suez or Lebanon arises, the tendency is for Fleet, Force, or Task Group Commanders to order ships to load to capacity of fuel, provisions, stores, and war allowance of ammunition. “Capacity” is always a greater amount than “allowance,” and these extra amounts overload and clog the supply system at a time when the primary objective should be to ensure that every ship has its “allowance.” This allowance is adequate for far-ranging deployment. When ships indulge in scarce requisitioning and loading, one of the primary objectives— early logistic readiness—is not obtainable.
Logistics Personnel
One of the great problems of military logistics, in time of war, is proper personnel.
Every echelon of command, every activity desires the cream of the crop in personnel. The amount of cream to be spread around is always markedly less than that amount needed.
Since it is a great deal more apparent when correct and effective decisions are made in battle than when correct and effective decisions are made in logistics by a rear area staff, senior commanders all insist that the fighting units receive a larger share of the cream-of-the-crop personnel than rear area logistic units. They believe strongly that it is folly to waste lives using mediocre talent.
Logistical organizations have expanded more rapidly than combat organizations in past wars. In a nuclear war, it is obvious that this practice will accelerate. As the organization expands there will be a lower and lower ratio of the cream of the crop. It will take more and more personnel to accomplish the same tasks—or else, with a steady number of personnel the standards of planning and administration will drop.
Every logistic unit must seek the best personnel that it can obtain. If there is one quality which pays off in a logistical officer, it is flexibility. In war, everything changes all the time. If an officer is disturbed by changes in plans, then as a logistician, he will be disturbed all the time. Not only must a good logistician impose changes in what he is planning or doing to meet the variations of the situation, but he must cheerfully accept changes from above.
Each logistic unit must do the best it can with the personnel it has—and every senior must ensure that the best is being done. Such an achievement can be accomplished in a number of ways. One way is pointed out by Field Marshal Rommel:
“The best thing is for the Commander himself to have a clear picture of the real potentialities of his supply organization and to base all his demands on his own estimates. This will force the supply staffs to develop their initiative, and though they grumble, they will, as a result, produce many times what they would have done if left to themselves.”1
A U. S. Army Corps Commander in Korea said:
“Every commander must jump into supply discipline with speed, vigor and persistent follow-through.”2
It must be stressed that when a Commander has jumped into logistics, the logisticians must be able to provide him with simplified and accurate data that he can use to accomplish the logistic objectives of the command. The Commander can many times put the bee on subordinate commands or fend with senior commands which will remedy logistical deficiencies, if the resources are in the area.
On the other hand, it cannot be stressed too strongly that the answer to command attention in the logistic field is not a generous amount of over-planning or over-support. A Commander should be as much interested in reducing the amount of his logistic support to just what he actually needs as ensuring that he has what he actually needs. Men that are handling unnecessary logistic support are not on the firing line. They cannot man a new aircraft or a new missile battery or a new submarine.
A Commander should be so aware of the provisions for his logistic support that he has confidence in them. He should talk about them to his seniors and his subordinates. He personally should inspect the logistic aspects of his command. They should not be over-planned or under-planned, any more than the combat part of the operation.
Military logisticians have a responsibility to their Commanders to avoid both these excesses.
On the other hand, military Commanders have a responsibility to accord logistics its proper importance. There must be high prestige attached to ability in this field of endeavor, and when the battle is over and won, the logistician must not be lost sight of in the rush to clasp the hand of the combat officer.
Special Types of Logistic Support Operations
The military services in addition to being prepared to carry out emergency logistical support of such operations as Suez or Lebanon and their wartime missions for the various types of combat operations must also be prepared to provide logistic support for a variety of special types of operations. These vary from year to year. In recent years they have included Operations Deepfreeze and Hardtack.
The Department of Defense was assigned the task, by the Congress, of giving logistic support to the U. S. International Geophysical Year program in the Antarctic. The military part of this operation was known as Deepfreeze. All three of the military services contributed to this logistical support operation, but it was logically a task in which the major load fell to the Navy.
The logistical tasks involved were:
(a) Locating and constructing the observation stations in the defined areas (along the continental boundaries of Antarctica and at the South Pole).
(b) Transporting large quantities of supplies, equipment, and personnel thereto.
(c) Furnishing housekeeping and support personnel for the scientific personnel who were to conduct the major part of the observations.
Logistical tasks occurring during polar operations not only include all the normal naval ones in any climate but such special problems as unloading on to ice platforms, either the land-fast ice or the seawater ice shelf.
In addition to the special Antarctic Operations, logistic support of defense and scientific outposts in the Arctic is a yearly logistic operation of considerable proportions. During the 1958 logistic support operations for the U. S. outer defense activities in northern Canada and Greenland, ships of the Military Sea Transportation Service delivered the very considerable amount of 233,656 tons of cargo and 2,844,000 barrels of petroleum products. This particular operation involved 52 ships in 1958 and fifty ships in 1959. And there was additional logistic support provided by the Military Air Transportation Service.
Just as it is obvious that Arctic and Antarctic logistic sea support operations are facilitated when cargo ships are specially fitted with reinforced bows and hulls to operate more effectively in ice-filled waters, so it is obvious that the whole operation is facilitated by personnel specially skilled in this most difficult type of logistic support.
Operation Hardtack was a joint Atomic Energy Commission-Department of Defense weapon testing operation at the Eniwetok Proving Grounds in the west central Pacific Ocean area. Joint Task Force Seven provided cross-servicing of common supplies and services. Army cooks provided messing services to the scientific and military personnel on the islands. Joint logistic support was the watchword, with the Air Force providing inter-island air transportation and the Navy providing inter-island surface transportation.
Performance Standards
One of the standards by which logistic support performance can be judged is the size of the “Logistical Snowball.”
The phrase ‘‘ Logistic Snowball” came out of World War II. It was based on the experience, in all theaters of war, that logistic support activities, although generally of initial modest size, tended to snowball rapidly and to roll down the easiest path gathering momentum and size, and that once rolling, they tended to be quite inflexible.
This experience with the inflexibility of the logistical support operations had its origin in the very nature of logistics, and the major effect that lead-time exerts when a change in the ingredients of logistic support are desired. Because of the inflexibility of certain elements of lead-time, logistical support could not be tempered to what was learned in the forward areas in combat operations nearly so rapidly as the combat operations of planes, ships, and men could be tempered.
An illustration of a Logistic Snowball in the Pacific campaign of World War II was the very large U. S. Naval Base built at Seadler Harbor, Manus Island, in the Admiralty Islands in the Southwest Pacific. Manus is about 300 miles north of Lae, New Guinea and about 1,000 miles south of Saipan and Guam in the Marianas.
Manus Base, judged by the amount of money it cost, was the third largest naval base in the Western Pacific. Only Guam and Leyte-Samar exceeded its cost. Airfields, seaplane base, hospital, POL tank farm, and a supply depot were built, along with a water system capable of producing 4,000,000 gallons of fresh water daily. A 90,000-ton floating drydock was but one of four floating drydocks in Seadler Harbor.
Started in the spring of 1944, just as the Navy commenced fast carrier task force attacks on Truk and the Marianas, this base was built up rapidly. Following the successful combat operations in the Western Carolines, the Marianas and the Philippines during the next six months, the war left Manus.
Despite a general acceptance of the principle that logistic support had to move forward with the combat operations, the Logistic Snowball rolled on and on at Manus long after Manus had become a rear base 800 miles south of Ulithi and 1,500 miles southeast from Leyte—the two bases which the fast carrier task forces used during the last nine months of the Pacific War and which were well in the rear of the combat areas.
Out of this experience grew a naval belief that logistic support activities could come to overbalance the combat activities which they supported, unless the Logistic Snowball was broken up in its early stages.
A second standard by which logistic support operations can be judged is how nearly the consumers’ standard is met.
The consumers’ standard of logistic support operations is generally based on how quickly he gets what he wants in first-rate condition. This is a comparatively simple standard and in the past had led to the building up of a huge variety and quantity of items close at hand to the combat zones. If, however, the item was not available, it frequently took months to obtain it. This delay was because of time consuming communications, processing, and transportation.
The military logistician must strive to meet the consumers’ high standard of adequate logistic support. His problem today is to do this, not from huge forward area stocks with multitudinous personnel, but with the minimum amount of forward area stock, and the minimum personnel to handle it. Only by better communications, faster and more accurate processing throughout the organization, and faster transportation can he meet the new standards at an acceptably high level.
Logistic Discipline
Logistic discipline is: “the application of the principles of military discipline to the logistics aspects of war.”3
Successful combat commanders have found that the best disciplined men fight best—poorly disciplined men fight poorly. For this reason the highest order of military discipline is required, demanded, and obtained in the combat areas. As one gets further and further from the combat areas, all too frequently the standards of military discipline in war are far from first-rate. The logistic support agencies operate widely in this rear area of modest military disciplinary standards.
This lack of a high order of military disciplinary standards leads to frequent violations in the broad field of logistic discipline as well as in the narrower field of supply discipline.
Violations of logistic discipline involve:
(a) Diversion or commandeering
(b) Pilferage
(c) Theft
When logistic discipline is at a low ebb, then plans for logistic support go awry. This is because there is an ultimate effect as well as an immediate effect of these violations.
In every time of logistic support crisis, there are instances of official commandeering of material by responsible Commanders. An incident of such commandeering, news of which reached the public in a widespread manner, was the commandeering of gasoline for use by tanks in the drive by the Third U. S. Army for the Rhine River in the fall of 1944. This violation of logistic discipline even reached the absurdity of commandeering the extra gasoline the trucks carried for their return trip to the base areas to pick up another load of gasoline. This soon brought the tank corps to a full stop.
Constant surveillance and the highest standards of personal responsibility are essential to prevent pilferage by friendly forces or theft by the indigent population living at subsistence levels.
Violations of supply discipline involve:
(a) Specifying an unwarranted priority.
(b) Maintaining or requisitioning excess stocks.
(c) Sending unnecessary follow-up communications.
“Unneeded materiel or resources clog the distribution of needed resources. Unneeded dispatches block the flow of needed dispatches.”4
Logistic discipline can be as essential to victory as combat discipline. In a nuclear war, with a great scarcity of resources, logistic discipline will be essential, and the military logistician must be in the forefront of the ranks of those demanding and enforcing it.
Logistic Training
Training of personnel by the study of the broader aspects of logistics is an essential step in war readiness, so that both enlisted man and officer may be able to take his wartime accelerated promotions and broadened duties in stride. A very narrowly trained individual is apt to become a fish out of water as he moves up to command or flag rank.
A certain minimum amount of training in logistic support is inherent in the normal overseas deployment of the Operating Forces of the Naval Establishment. This is all to the good. Unfortunately for logistical training, few peacetime air or ship training exercises test the logistical aspects of the Naval Establishment in the same hard way that tactical exercises test the operational training. For logistic support based on high expenditure rates due to large combat use of bombs, shells, aircraft, and POL is difficult to simulate and generally expensive in dollars, if realistic. However, training of the team in combat is not enough. The logistic personnel must have their day on the range—preferably alongside the combat team.
Special logistical training exercises are essential to adequate logistical readiness.
Logistic Support of Nuclear Task Forces
Naval task forces, composed exclusively of nuclear-powered units are some years away, except for submarine task forces. But it is not too soon to mention some of the effects which nuclear-powered units will have on logistic support.
Nuclear-powered task forces will have considerably increased mobility due to their independence of fuel oil needed for propulsion purposes. This increased mobility will be found in extended operating ranges at higher average speeds. No longer will the surface task force have to rendezvous with black oil tankers and be slowed to fuel every three or four days.
But the mobility will not be absolute. In fast carrier task forces, aviation gasoline will take over as the limiting logistic factor. And even after the nuclear-powered aircraft arrives on the deck of the aircraft carrier, food and technical spare parts will still impose endurance limitations, and require underway logistic support operations even in time of peace, when there is no expenditure of weapons which require rearming.
In the years ahead, logistic readiness for emergencies will be improved, since nuclear-powered task forces can deploy on shorter notice than those which must fuel to standard loading before departing. It is also believed that there will be some slight increase in that very high degree of reliability which has always been characteristic of the modern propulsion plants of our Navy.
The tail of the combatant kite gradually should grow smaller as there will be fewer and fewer tankers in the underway logistic support groups and in the pipeline support groups, during the long transition period away from black oil and aviation gasoline. But the tail of the combatant kite will not disappear unless electronic equipment suddenly starts to acquire a far greater reliability and durability than it has currently. For no large surface naval task force can operate well beyond the air logistic support range for long periods of time in these days of electronic spare part dependency.
Guided Missiles
Guided missiles have introduced special problems in logistic support. A visit on an Armed Forces Day to any of the naval activities where the guided missiles are displayed makes self-evident that these new missiles are considerably larger and heavier than the pre-guided missile weapon, the gun shell and the rocket.
The stowage space for replacement missiles on combatant ships is of limited size and so the number of guided missiles which can be carried is all too few. The weapon stowage space on the ammunition replenishment ship is also limited. On the favorable side of the ledger is that the newer weapons require fewer shots per hit.
Missiles have characteristics which take them out of the pattern of ordinary transportation and handling. Such things as shock sensitivity, temperature sensitivity, and outsize dimensions, all impose very serious problems, not only in the initial supply, but in replenishment of missiles and their components.
On balance, however, if the combatant ship is to carry out sustained guided missile combat with conventional warheads, replenishment of guided missile weapons will be required more frequently than replenishment of the gun weapon in either World War II or the Korean War. Indications point to rearming as being the crux of the logistic support problem in a conventional war of the next decade, rather than fueling, which has carried the burden so long.
Nuclear Weapons
Conventional weapons and warheads must be carried in our ships as long as there is a probability that the United States may become involved in a limited war fought with conventional weapons. These conventional weapons compete for space with the nuclear weapons, and because of the limited stowage space now assigned them, there will be more frequent resupply required, than in previous wars, for the same usage rates.
Nuclear weapons require special logistic support systems. This is inherent in the legal requirements established by the Congress for handling the weapon and its custody, as well as by the special nature, size, and characteristics of the weapon.
The number of nuclear weapons required to accomplish a definite amount of damage to an enemy target system is comparatively small, when related to the number of conventional weapons used in conventional war.
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) is the national agency exercising control. Final authority rests personally with the President of the United States. The AEC performs all depot-type functions, including determining the types of storage facilities, how the weapons are stored, and the inspection thereof. Actual logistic movement is performed by the Military Services. There are appropriate delivery systems in the Navy for the various types of weapons—bombs, missiles, depth bombs, etc.
In the military concept of finite deterrence, it is assumed that, with X number of nuclear weapons, any given country, its armed forces, its target systems, and its people can be destroyed. No duplication of targeting or multiple deliveries on the same target complex generally is considered necessary.
This concept of future war further assumes that this result can be obtained with that strength which the United States has left after absorbing the first enemy nuclear blow. It is obvious that this concept, if accepted, reduces the weapon logistic support problem to zero, after the X number of nuclear weapons has been dropped, or fired off as Polaris or other missiles.
It is also obvious that with a country desolated, the logistic weapon problem may have been eased, but all other logistic problems will have been multiplied ten times ten.
Balanced Combat-Logistic Forces
As weaponry advances, logistic support must make similar advances.
Using basically the same type ships and procedures as were used in World War II, the Navy has made marked improvements in the techniques of mobile logistic support in the fifteen-year period since World War II ended. To mention a few of the new or improved techniques:
(a) Mechanized re-ordering systems for the resupply of the mobile logistic support ships has been introduced.
(b) Power-operated trucks, adapted to below deck and on deck use have been introduced on replenishment ships.
(c) Transfer-at-sea gear has been given increased load-carrying capacities.
(d) The number of mobile technical service units has been expanded (mobile ordnance service units; mobile electronics service units).
(e) The Carrier On Board Delivery Aircraft System (COD) has been expanded and perfected.
(f) The use of helicopters for intra-force delivery has been greatly expanded.
However, there has been no breakthrough to a new type of ship or a new type of underway replenishment or mobile logistic support. If logistic support is to maintain its capacity to meet the needs of advanced weaponry, there must be marked advances in the near future. Naval logisticians must meet this challenge.
One of the ways to free the fast combat forces of the need for taking time out from their combat tasks to withdraw from combat areas to rendezvous with underway replenishment groups may be found in providing replenishment ship with adequate speed to cruise in company with the fast task forces. This would also reduce the risks from enemy action inherent in present replenishments that take place with a formation speed in the ten- to 14-knot speed range.
Besides increased speed, such underway replenishment group ships should have increased maneuverability, higher rate transfer-at-sea gear for POL, nuclear weapons, missiles, conventional ammunition, and repair parts and components.
General Summary
The primary objective of the Naval Establishment is for its fighting forces to have success in combat. This calls for a high degree of readiness for combat and for logistic support of combat. This readiness must be in both conventional and nuclear weapons. It must cover all types of special operations, including Arctic and Antarctic.
Just as a nation’s strategy is tempered by what is logistically required or feasible for the nation, the Navy’s strategy and operations in the future will be tempered by what logistic support of naval nuclear task forces is required or feasible. Logistic problems and logistic personnel must receive continuous command attention. Logistic discipline must be taut. The Logistic Snowball must be guided and kept to a reasonable size.
The criterion for measures which affect the control and co-ordination of logistics must be: (1) How will this affect sustained combat effectiveness? (2) How will this affect peacetime dollar-saving?
Too close an adherence to the principles of good management might mean that the Department of Defense was so well managed that not a man and not a dollar would be wasted. And yet, when the ultimate test came, if the Department permitted military defeat, this would be a major management failure. On the other hand, management which produces military victory is a success, even if it is necessary to spend a few extra dollars to keep the organization flexible and ready for expansion to an emergency basis. Organizations which must be prepared to double or quadruple certain aspects of their operations in as many months should have elements of this expansion on hand at all times.
The Forces Afloat must be able to operate through the initial period of a nuclear war within their own logistic resources, carrying out the prescribed retaliatory action.
Logistic training to be useful must simulate wartime conditions the same way as do combat teams. Training is necessary for both nuclear and conventional war combat conditions.
A strategic concept, a campaign plan, or a battle order without predetermined logistic implications and sound logistic feasibility is like a three-legged horse in an obstacle race.
If the next war is a nuclear war, logistical capabilities during the recovery period may be the factor that determines which combatant will win the final victory. If this is so, a high degree of logistical competence, as well as operational and administrative competence, will be required of the major commanders and of the staffs afloat and ashore serving these commanders.
In the next war, as in past wars, logistics must provide the means by which the fighting gets done. Except that in the next war, there may be no means to waste.
Vice Admiral Dyer is a retired line officer of forty years active duty and combatant service in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.
In 1943, as Chief of Staff to Admiral Richard L. Conolly, Captain Dyer was concerned with the logistical problems of establishing nine amphibious bases in North Africa, as well as the logistical support problems of amphibious landings in the Tunisian, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns. His initial billet as a flag officer in 1945 was Chief of Logistic Plans, Naval Operations, Navy Department.
In 1951-52 Admiral Dyer was Commander of the United Nations Blockade and Escort Force in the Korean War which handled the logistic problems of supporting the naval contingents from nine different countries which made up the command of 115 ships.
B. H. Liddell Hart, The Rommel Papers, page 97.
Lieutenant General W. B. Palmer, U. S. Army—in July-August, 1953, Quartermaster Review. Lieutenant General Palmer commanded the Tenth Corps in the Korean War.
Command Logistics by Rear Admiral Henry E. Eccles, USN (Ret.) Chapter 11, page 6.
Command Logistics by Rear Admiral Henry E. Eccles, USN (Ret.) Chapter 11, page 6.