Compass Points - Forget Logistics?
Exercise Valiant Shield
Compass Points - Forget Logistics?
Exercise Valiant Shield
July 11, 2024
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When a person leaves their house on a business trip or on vacation, sometimes, just after they leave, they begin to have a nagging feeling that something has been forgotten. "Did I turn off the stove?" or "Did I lock the back door?" Little questions, but sometimes they persist.
Back in 2019 that must have been what happened to some senior Marine leaders as they first introduced their new idea, Force Design 2030. Even as they lauded their own plan, something must have kept gnawing at them. They began to feel they had forgotten something. They began to think they might have forgotten something important.
What was forgotten? Logistics!
Now, five years later, USNI news is reporting that the Marine Corps is experimenting with how to support the new Marine missile units, the so-called, Stand-in-Forces (SIF) from the new Marine Littoral Regiments (MLR). Theoretically, these small missiles units would be scattered across the Pacific on isolated islands.
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How to meet the logistics needs of Marines and sailors in an Indo-Pacific conflict is a major question in how the U.S. could fight in the region and one that seasoned logistical leaders within I Marine Expeditionary Force began to tackle during last month’s Valiant Shield exercise.
-- USNI News
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It is a wonderful development that the Marine Corps in 2024 "began to tackle" how to "meet the logistics needs of Marines and sailors in an Indo-Pacific conflict."
The exercise even provided Marines with "some clarity on the logistical needs to support the joint force."
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With events stretching across the Pacific, the exercise provided some clarity on the logistical needs to support the joint force. “We’re starting to get into actual application for … the small dispersed locations spread throughout the key terrain in a maritime environment,” Mulvey said. “I think there’s more growth potential for things like this to spread out and then do it in an even greater fashion for future Valiant Shields.”
I MEF (Forward)’s ground command element brought its logistics combat battalion, which he said “provided all the sustainment that they needed.”
-- USNI News
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While a Marine logistics battalion would no doubt provide all the logistical support they could, substantially more logistical support would be needed in a peer-to-peer fight in the Pacific. For example, at just one World War II battle, the Battle of Okinawa, the Marines needed extraordinary logistics support. Several sources, including Samuel Eliot Morison in his comprehensive book, Victory in the Pacific 1945, have detailed the incredible levels of logistics.
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Logistics Support Group Fifth Fleet (Task Group 50.8)
Rear Admiral Donald B. Beary in light cruiser Detroit
-- Support escort carriers
-- CVE Plane Transport Unit
Logistics and Support Vessels including:
- 49 oilers
- 16 ammunition ships
- 9 cargo ships
- 8 hospital ships
- 6 reefers (store ships)
- 2 survey ships
- 2 stores-issue ships
- 9 gasoline tankers
- 6 station tankers
- 10 repair ships
- 6 floating drydocks
- 12 fleet tugs
- 4 ocean tugs and 3 rescue ocean tugs
- Screening vessels for the Logistics Group were assigned to TG 50.8 units as needed from a pool of 11 destroyers and 24 destroyer escorts.
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The powerful logistics of World War II are gone now. How big is the logistics shortfall today for Force Design? Enormous.
Of the many Marines who have sounded the alarm about logistics shortfalls are Christopher Owens and Daniel Katzman.
In his powerful article, Major General (ret) Christopher Owens takes a hard look at the issue of logistics, "The Radical Redesign and Restructuring of the United States Marine Corps." General Owens makes clear that logistics cannot be ignored:
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When Marines go ashore, they require maneuver, fire support, and sustainment. This creates the operational reach dilemma: No matter how you plan to support distributed forces, you require more assets to solve the problem, not fewer.
As an example of the challenges of operational reach, the stand-in forces in the Asia Pacific would have to maneuver to islands in and around the Philippines or Japan. To do this they must account for average distances of between 300 and 800 miles for insertion and sustainment. The logistics, casualty evacuation, and maneuver space in the Philippines alone encompasses over 1,000 miles from north to south. A cursory look at inserting a battalion of 800 Marines in one wave from Okinawa with the basic sustainment capabilities would take four MV-22 tilt rotor squadrons (40 aircraft) and 6-8 KC-130 cargo aircraft at those distances. To insert additional capabilities, such as rocket and missile launchers and munitions, would take another two squadrons of tiltrotor and heavy lift helicopters with the same number of KC-130s.
— Christopher Owens
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In addition, Major Daniel Katzman in his article, "Sustaining Stand-in Forces -- Evaluating the logistical supportability for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations" has provided a detailed and authoritative analysis of the lack of logistical supportability.
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In a modern, high-end conflict, EABO is not logistically supportable given the need to persist and operate within the enemy’s weapons engagement zone at a significant distance from friendly support bases. EABs used for fires in support of sea control or forward arming and refueling points (FARP) provide the required sustainment scope to appreciate the logistics dilemma. When these EABs operate simultaneously to realize operations at scale, a logistics distribution challenge arises that is greater than the Marine Corps or joint force can support.
. . . When scaled to the Lombok Strait and surrounding passages, the associated set of EABs would require a total of 63 shooting platforms, 84 supply vehicles, 63 security vehicles, and 630 personnel. For sustainment, the fires EAB vignette requires 37,800 pounds per day of subsistence, 69,673 pounds per day of fuel, and 7,048 pounds of ordnance per salvo or more likely 21,144 pounds per engagement with a 3-ship surface action group. Assuming one engagement per day, this vignette requires approximately 65 short tons per day of sustainment delivered to the 7 geographically separated sites.
. . . When you combine the support to Marine Corps and Navy aircraft, the subsistence requirement remains the same at 88,700 pounds per day, assuming supported aircraft crews require no subsistence. On a daily basis, the fuel requirement aggregates to 1,014,213 pounds while the total ordnance requirement is approximately 623,096 pounds. Therefore, the complete daily support for FARP EABs would be 863 tons.
-- Daniel Katzman
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Compass Points salutes the hard-working Marines involved in this year's Valiant Shield exercise. Compass Points agrees that "How to meet the logistics needs of Marines and sailors in an Indo-Pacific conflict is a major question in how the U.S. could fight in the region. . ."
If the logistics planning for Force Design had been completed long before a single Marine capability was divested, the Marine Corps would be stronger today. Now, the Marine Corps has lost proven capabilities without any substantial gain. Logistics should never be forgotten. Logistics should never be left until later. Victory is built on robust logistics.
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USNI News - 07/10/2024
Marines Experiment with Next-Generation Logistics During ‘Valiant Shield’
By Gidget Fuentes
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Compass Points - Lacking Logistics
Marines need logistics.
January 11, 2024
https://marinecorpscompasspoints.substack.com/p/compass-points-lacking-logistics
After five years of bragging about the game-changing potential of the Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) and Stand-in Forces (SIFs), the Marines still do not have an inkling of how they will position, reposition, evacuate, or logistically support these small, isolated, and vulnerable forces in a shooting war with China. The only hope (and as we all know, hope is not a course of action) HQMC and MCCDC have yet articulated is the Landing Ship Medium, a slow, relatively unarmed vessel that is touted to sail inside contested areas where Navy surface combatants (carriers, cruisers, destroyers) dare not tread. When pressed about how the LSM can survive inside these areas during hostilities, the senior leadership can only resort to flights of fantasy, stating the ships will blend in with commercial vessels or will go to ground and hide when the shooting starts. The truth is the Marines have no concept for logistically supporting the MLRs/SIFs today or in the future. Without a proven concept, it’s impossible to develop the capabilities and requirements needed. The current Commandant would do well to heed the words of a previous Commandant, General Robert Barrow who knew: “amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” All those who continue to advocate the full and quick implementation of Force Design need to tell us exactly how the Marines are going to logistically (which includes lifesaving emergency medical care and evacuation) support Marines who are isolated, vulnerable, and inside China’s kill zone. But they won’t because they can’t.
Tankers and artillerists always ask for the refueling point, even when roadmarching between CLNC and Bragg or from CamPen to 29 Stumps. And we have our own refuelers!
Japanese forces in the Aleutians lost resupply and withered.
A Russian attempt to kill the CEO of a German company making 155 shells was foiled recently—-they think resupply is important!
So should we!