FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
This agency is a strategic and critical enabler in the pursuit of setting the theater to deter and posture military forces to prevail, the Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics told Defense Logistics Agency employees March 28.
“The Defense Logistics Agency uses the ‘knowns’ of the strategic environment and the wisdom that has been built from the collective experience and education from forums such as this to identify how to better define and optimize our forces in responsibility to protect our nation,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Stephen Sklenka said.
Sklenka spoke at DLA’s second Warfighter Talk, part of the agency’s overarching Campaign of Learning to foster understanding and collaboration among joint logisticians as they support forces encountering new threats in the competition for world power.
Highlighting aspects of DLA’s history and roles in World War II and the Vietnam War, Sklenka described the agency’s employees as “strategic doers” to help centralize logistics and stimulate the industrial base.
“You guys have established yourselves as the key linkage to modernize and mobilize our national industrial base – to make our forces stronger and to get them the materials needed to accomplish the mission when called upon,” Sklenka said.
He added that this is essential to helping the major subordinate and combatant commanders sleep well at night.
Sklenka said the foundation of the DLA and USMC partnership is based on optimizing warfighting effectiveness and capabilities of combatant commands. He shared strategic insights and opportunities to improve the partnership between the two entities while setting the theater in the region.
The general highlighted past threats of Russia, Iran and North Korea, but said those threats may always remain interests our nation in their own respective ways.
“None of them looms even close to the threat of the People’s Republic of China,” Sklenka said. “Over the past couple of decades, the Chinese military and their overall industrial base, those capabilities have grown at an unprecedented rate – faster than any other nation since World War II.”
The Chinese have a desire to surpass the United States as a global leader and secure world dominance, he continued. Watching from a front row seat, they are on a wartime footing right now – they are producing weapons, ships, satellites and all manner of capabilities at scale.
The general described how a Chinese senior leader has galvanized this whole-of-society commitment by the Chinese Communist Party with a singular pursuit of reestablishing the Chinese as the dominant force in the globe by setting the rules for everyone else and creating a world that he calls “socialist with Chinese characteristics.”
Sklenka noted that the Chinese are determined to challenge the U.S. in every domain:
The Chinese combination of ships and anti-ship missiles, along with their unmanned and manned capabilities, are designed to give them sole access while controlling the access in global conflict.
The Chinese are attacking U.S. networks routinely.
The Chinese have launched hundreds of satellites in last couple of years. This is more than any other nation, with the intent of dominating space and denying others the same freedom of movement.
The Chinese developed fifth-generation aircraft and on the cusp of fielding their own, sixth-generation capabilities with high-end manned and unmanned air defense.
The Chinese continue to expand their field armies and accelerate the evolution of their rocket force along with the mass expansion of their nuclear capabilities. By the end of this decade, they may double their current nuclear weapons inventory.
“This is the greatest military threat since the Soviet Union,” Sklenka said.
The old Soviet Union was clearly confined to the military domain; they only came close to maybe 40% of the U.S. economy on their best day, Sklenka added. The Chinese pose a far more significant threat, harnessing substantial power across all the elements of national influence to include diplomatic, information, military and economic.
“In comparison, in WWII, our nation out-produced, manufactured and out-delivered the rest of the world combined, but it’s a different story today,” he said. “Over the last decade we watched the Chinese grow and out-produce us, which is a monumentally different challenge from the WWII era, because their industries produce more cement, steel and ships that the rest of the world combined.”
Since 2001, the Chinese economy has grown by 1200%, and the U.S. industrial base by 154%, Sklenka noted. The Chinese economy has grown by $16 trillion dollars, which is the grease that lubes the Chinese engine of war that enables military growth and the rise and scale of their capability to have both quality and quality.
Sklenka said this threat is like nothing any person wearing the uniform has experienced. In terms of logistics and distributions for the U.S. military, it takes days and weeks for military to move things around, but for the Chinese it can happen in hours.
The general described the U.S. military as being contested not just in logistics but in all warfighting capabilities, having had unfettered access to the world since WWII, without real threats to strategic and operational movements. The Chinese are going to contest U.S. infrastructure and networks.
“We need to do all we can to deter, prevent, this fight from happening by setting the theater now,” Sklenka said. “We must work together to ensure goods and services are supplied further forward on the battlefield, advance and standardize logistics information technology infrastructure and advocate for advanced manufacturing with industry to overcome inventory management and distribution challenges.”
DLA employees who would like to watch a recording of the event will be able to do so shortly on the Campaign of Learning page (a DLA Common Access Card is required).