Joint logistics: a personal perspective.

• Author: Christianson, C.V.
• Position: VIEW POINT

The logistics capacity, of the U.S. military today is unmatched. However, a constantly changing operating environment and resource constraints demand we optimize joint logistics to enhance our capabilities for tomorrow. We have an opportunity to significantly advance our systems, processes and organizations to improve support for the joint force commander and we must seize it.

The necessity of joint logistics is widely accepted throughout the defense logistics community, but I believe current systems reflect many inefficiencies, unnecessary redundancies and process gaps that increase both risk and cost. Achieving harmony among service and agency systems, processes and programs will resolve today's inefficiencies, but poses a significant challenge.

Joint logistics is the deliberate or improvised sharing of service resources to enhance synergy and reduce both overlaps and costs. We need joint logistics because the services, by themselves, seldom have sufficient capability to independently support the joint commander, especially during expeditionary operations.

The global war on terror, other threats to our security, diverse global commitments, and complex interagency and multinational operations characterize the joint logistics environment. Future operations are likely to be distributed, and conducted rapidly and simultaneously across multiple areas within a single theater, or across boundaries of more than one geographic combatant command.

Within this environment, force projection operations give us the ability to close the gap between early entry and follow-on combat operations, and simultaneous stabilization and reconstruction operations. The requirement to integrate "sustainment" and force-projection operations in a complex environment presents the greatest joint logistics challenge. Effective integration of sustainment will help deliver freedom of action to the commander. Freedom of action enabled by sustained logistics readiness is what we should expect from joint logistics.

Effective joint logistics depends on the relationships between the global players in the logistics network. The services, by law, are responsible to raise, train, equip and maintain ready forces and form the foundation of this network. The services are responsible to deliver systems life cycle readiness.

The services and the Defense Logistics Agency share responsibilities as defense supply process owners, sharing roles as supporting organizations to the service...