The concepts and capabilities that have enabled the Defense Logistics Agency to sustain the nation’s warfighters must be adapted to ensure continued success, agency leaders say in a new white paper.
The 16-page document, titled “The Defense Logistics Agency’s Role in Overcoming the Challenges of Contested Logistics,” is written by DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly and Air Force Col. Wes Adams, director of DLA’s Strategic Plans and Futures Division.
Simerly and Adams begin with the premise that ensuring warfighters have access to all supplies, everywhere, all the time is a flawed theory of success as adversaries continually threaten the joint force’s ability to project power.
Contested logistics is an environment in which the armed forces engage in a conflict with an adversary that presents challenges in all domains and directly targets logistics operations, facilities, and activities in the U.S., abroad, or in transit from one location to another, according to U.S. Code, Title 10.
The leaders write that contested logistics poses several conditions on DLA’s efforts to adapt sustainment models. To start, the U.S. is no longer a sanctuary. The effects of an attack in one time zone or hemisphere will likely flow into others as well. Modern-day adversaries are also more capable, more lethal and can wreak even more havoc on logistics sustainment than they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And threats already exist and continue to grow in cyberspace.
“Consequences on our space-based assets have absolute effect on land – if you can see the effect, it’s already too late,” they write, adding that DLA’s dependence on cyberspace to perform its mission is hard to overstate.
Transforming DLA to face contested logistics challenges must also take into account the likelihood of a conflict spanning vast time, space and distance.
The paper describes how the agency contributes to integrated deterrence goals outlined in the National Defense Strategy by working with the defense industrial base. DLA has helped the military reap the benefits of technology advancements and innovation while achieving the best prices and efficiency. Efforts must shift to effectiveness, however.
"We now need to transition from a cost-centric model of efficiency and create a cost-aware, cost-responsible model focused on effectiveness and resilience," the paper says.
The agency will transform to meet new contested logistics challenges by focusing on people, precision, posture and partnerships. Under people, employees must be conditioned to accept change and learn to apply data from multiple sources to drive decisions.
Precision in demand forecasting and in-transit visibility is also critical to meeting the needs of a widely dispersed force, especially as DLA avoids the everything-everywhere-all the time model. Breaking free of past methods, the agency will use artificial intelligence to merge supply chain data from multiple domains and business environments. It will then create data-informed algorithms that present a real-time view of supply availability vs warfighter needs.
“Ony through precision will mass be achievable and affordable,” Simerly and Adams write.
The next war will also require a long view of logistics, they say, adding that where DLA postures supplies, logistics capabilities, and people will help inform decisions, manage access, and ensure warfighters’ needs are met on time. And since future wars won’t be fought and won alone, DLA must continue strengthening partnerships with the joint force, allies and industry.
Simerly and Adams conclude that thinking, acting and operating differently as a warfighting team will require employees to maintain a winning mindset.
“Every one of us needs to think like a warfighter, understand the conditions on the battlefield, understand contested logistics and why it’s driving us to do things differently – more effectively, efficiently and with greater resilience,” they write.