This is the first part of a presentation given at the Australian – New Zealand Defence Logistics Conference during June 2023. This conference convened to discuss supply chain resilience at a time of strategic competition.

By David Beaumont.

There is little doubt that the topics of logistics and supply-chain resilience court conversations beyond that of military logistics communities. COVID-19 pandemic-related supply-chain disruptions brought the topic of global logistics and supply chains to the fore, with the consequences of scarcity affecting individuals at a personal level. The pandemic revealed the fragility of the global economic order upon which our wealth and security depends for some, yet others saw the economic bounce-back as a reflection of the overall resilience of globalised approaches to logistics. Optimism may have faltered in early 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine exacerbated impacted the worlds logistics struggles while revealing the state of the defence industrial and technology base as being unprepared for anything other than small-scale operations and ‘business as usual’. Military planners, already considering the ‘so what’s’ of a perilous logistics milieu defined by scarcity, also saw that they had to account for attrition in war – despite decades in which their operational concepts rarely treated supply, transportation, maintenance and health care as anything other than second-order issues amid the glitz and glamour of combined arms manoeuvre, blue-water naval power, long-range ‘strike’, integrated air and missile defence and warfare in the cyber and space domains.

For us in the southern hemisphere of this dangerous world, conflict in Europe nor the aftereffects of the pandemic are but the start of our military logistics problems. The potential for more serious conflicts in the Pacific region is being considered at a time where de-globalisation is underway. Strategic competition has economic and commercial overtones, with sanctions and trade restrictions used as tools of coercion or – as with China’s Belt and Road initiative – a way to form tight strategic and geoeconomic relationships in the region. The securitisation of global logistics has proceeded at a rapid pace, and we now see Western nations try to decouple their technology and industrial base from a dependence on less-friendly nations (or outright strategic competitors) while creating new arrangements to share knowledge and capacity.

We, as military logisticians and a small proportion of larger discussions about national security in our own nations, are concerned with where things are made and by whom. A litany of problems leap out at us as the trend of the securitisation, if not militarisation, of supply-chains gains momentum.   Munitions production and markets have shown to be operating well below the capacity desired, and their resupply attaining Government-level interest in a way unseen in years. Naval power has become a virtual adjunct to maritime and supply-chain security as the commerce which gives our nations life demands the protection of fleets of ships that themselves are the product globalised industrial capacity. Concern about the movement of fuels through potential conflict zones, or the production of ‘rare-earth’ minerals and microchips, proliferates in the media and popular discussion, as if it is the only problem we’ve discovered in a post-pandemic reflection. But there’s more to be concerned about. The complex supply chains of repair parts are being unpicked by analysis which shows the very equipment we depend upon is linked to the factories of strategic competitors in a web of logistics transactions that the best of us barely understand.

Robust international partnerships to spread industrial risks and induce alliance-based resilience are now being sought. Australia’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter capability is emlematic of how consortia-based approaches to production and sustainment now tie capability development with global supply-chains in a characteristically new way. Western nations are at a point where next-generation technology is at an expense beyond even the wealthiest to produce alone. Complexities in this approach, however, conspire with other supply chain risks to create vulnerabilities which might compromise the materiel, force posture and preparedness decisions of militaries in turn. On one hard shared production allows us to realise military capability, but shared production diversifies supply-chain risks to the point further fragility emerges.

We worry about potential conflicts and the prospect of battles to be fought over lines of communication or to secure new routes, and we now look at access to distant regions of the world for national vitality, supply chain security, or lines of communication for potential enemies on the move. More importantly, we worry about how our militaries will respond at a time of crisis, and at a time where these militaries have not had the luxury of time to predict exactly what it needs and when.

These worries are shared in Defence establishments around the world. In Australia, we now look at the recently published National Defence: Defence Strategic Review to see logistics as an issue that has interested Government enough to direct significant actions in Defence to occur. Although the requirement to create a guided weapons enterprise has captured the limelight, the publicised alignment of preparedness with ADF logistics capacity is more important in terms of overall narratives. I’ll provide a few thoughts on the implications of the DSR for ADF logistics in later parts of this presentation.

The idea of capability sustainment is moving beyond the management of a funding line over a whole-of-life use of a particular platform, to one which more comprehensively considers supply and stockholdings.  Awareness about substantial logistics shortfalls is growing, as we increasingly recognise that we’ve been deploying forces on the basis of what we can sustain at a time where choice is possible.  Not only is there a conversation about the resilience of defence forces facing the potential of conflict just years ahead, but resilience in the context of the various factors that influence the capability and the capacity of these forces to go to war is a topic of mainstream debate.

It is already evident to the audience that well-prepared and resilient defence forces depend upon a range of logistics factors. A logistically prepared force requires appropriate resourcing and force structure, logistics concepts and plans to be developed, the identification of the right accountable officers and management artefacts, quality materiel held in the right scale, and a military organisation that is well-practiced in the logistics conditions and requirements of portended conflicts. Logistics preparedness is not only about having the right ‘stuff’, but the organisations, processes and behaviours which allow us to efficiently and effectively resource war.

If we want to disassemble logistics into constituent parts we can talk about supply-chains we can describe capabilities including control networks and information systems, nodes, industrial support, transportation and production and the way they ensure military units can do what they are meant to do. We can talk about supply depots, where they are positioned, ‘mounting bases’ and ‘cargo consolidation points’ as well as a myriad of other issues that determine what goes where and in what condition.

Perhaps, soon, logistics will be seen as more than a collection of jumbled-together pieces of kit, a tapestry of installations, and groups of people. It is a system of connections that define military power more profoundly than any other, for even the most powerful weapon is little more than a monument to vainglory absent that which brings it to life. Supply-chains are the ‘lifeblood of war’ to paraphrase Falklands Islands veteran Major General Julian Thompson; they are arteries through which materiel moves, at a pace which determines strategic tempo or assures availability and preparedness. If we view supply-chains as part of a logistics framework around how militaries overcome the dual tyrannies of time and space, positioning that which is needed where and when, we can see how important supply-chains – if not logistics more broadly – really is.

Part two will be published shortly.