Modernizing Defense Logistics: Converging Kill Chains and Supply Chains

Navy ADM. E. J. King, fleet admiral during World War II, alluded to a truth that generations of successful military leaders have understood; logistics is key to winning wars.¹ Since World War II, the United States has focused on establishing robust systems to ensure warfighter readiness. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), founded in 1961, serves as the Nation’s Logistics Combat Support Agency (CSA) by managing nine critical supply chains, operating a global storage and distribution network, and leveraging the defense industrial base to fortify national security.² Today, as the global defense landscape evolves, DLA is adapting to the emerging challenge of the Contested Logistics environment, ensuring effective and risk-mitigated worldwide supply chain support for Military Services, Combatant Commands (CCMDs), and allied nations.³ As ADM King understood, you cannot be lethal without logistics, and in the Department of Defense, you cannot get logistics without DLA.

Success in logistics requires being both predictive and responsive, with a linkage between maintaining resiliency and recovering from disruptions. Logisticians must think holistically and rely on state of the art tools for forecasting and planning to optimize supply chains and prevent disruptions before they occur. The Army-developed concept of “Sensor to Shooter to Sustainer” outlines an operational sustainment capability loop that enables decision-making at echelon in contested environments.⁴ This approach aims to achieve decision advantage at the speed of relevance through automated data flows for consumption and replenishment actions. This concept also affords the opportunity to highlight the pivotal role of the Defense Industrial Base in enhancing decision dominance through predictive logistics. DLA sees the addition of a fourth link – “Supplier” – to create a comprehensive “4S” framework: “Sensor to Shooter to Sustainer to Supplier.” (Fig.1) As a principal interlocutor between the Joint Force and the industrial bases, DLA has an inherent responsibility to lead in the development of this concept.

Wartime dynamics demand that the 4S linkages be precise, fast, and adaptive. On the battlefield, U.S. warfighters rely on the highly optimized “kill chain,” rapidly and precisely executing steps from locating, to engaging, and terminating enemy targets through a network of battle systems.⁵ Yet, our supply chains, although long established, fall short in terms of resilience and agility. It begs the question: given logistics’ importance in winning wars, why aren’t supply chains as well developed as kill chains?

A gap exists between the defense supply chain and the tactical kill chain, challenging the Joint Force’s ability to sustain operations in highly contested environments. DLA, as the Nation’s Logistics CSA, is positioned to bridge this gap and ensure uninterrupted support to warfighters. Converging the kill chain into the supply chain enhances speed of decision-making, improves demand forecasting, and provides actionable information to industry. Additionally, utilizing and integrating battlefield intelligence and operations data into sustainment operations will provide the integration necessary to better anticipate consumption, maintenance, and disruptions on the battlefield. With these benefits, the Joint Logistics Enterprise (JLEnt) can enhance demand forecasting and prediction capabilities, leading to optimized supply chains and more efficient factory operations – essentially connecting foxholes to factories.

In order to do so, the JLEnt must harness new technologies, rely on real-time data sensors, and integrate data-driven systems to create a digitally interoperable network.⁶ A digitally interoperable Joint Force proactively shares data, has systems that “talk” to each other, and uses next-generation tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to enhance the speed and precision of demand forecasting to enhance the resiliency and adaptability of the supply chain.

For example, if an aircraft’s flightpath to the nearest refueling site is blocked by adversarial threats, a digitally interoperable system of sensors can redirect the aircraft to an alternate refueling site that avoids the acute threat. The site’s system will signal to DLA a need to reposition and increase fuel supplies to the alternate site. While a simple example, it demonstrates how intel-operations sustainment integration allows the Joint Force to deftly correct course and allow our supply chains to rapidly and precisely shift effective support in contested environments. Leveraging these new technologies and adopting kill chain qualities, like acting at the speed of relevance and precision, will not only revolutionize supply chains, it will also make supply chains perform like kill chains to better sustain warfighter needs.

Current efforts within the Joint Force to consolidate and modernize processes include a key initiative, Combined Joint All Domain Command & Control (CJADC2). This features interconnecting sensors and systems across the Joint Force, partners, and allies to enable decision advantage at the speed of relevance.⁷ Sustainment is the backbone throughout this initiative; it is the critical enabler of CJADC2, ensuring all facets of warfighting capacity meet warfighters’ needs. DLA can serve as a critical partner, by acting as the connective tissue to the “supplier” within the 4S framework. CJADC2 and other programs’ success requires all stakeholders to share data, AI/ML, and automation systems to create a digitally interoperable Joint Force.

Adopting AI/ML tools into the defense logistics enterprise is not a magic solution to achieve decision advantage; rather, there are specific types of AI and advanced tools that can modernize the enterprise. For example, data-bots automate many administrative and data collection tasks, making previously tedious and possibly error-ridden processes more streamlined and efficient. Digital twins, virtual replicas of physical sensors and systems, have the potential to map complex supply chain systems for planning, warehouse management, and transportation management.⁸ ML algorithms easily process large data sets and improve systems over time. Additionally, in a short period of time generative AI has been adopted into the average person’s everyday life with AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants.

Future capabilities, such as Agentic AI, hold the potential to revolutionize defense logistics capabilities. Unlike task-specific AI, Agentic AI can function autonomously within predefined parameters like “AI agents,” making decisions and performing complex operations without constant human intervention.⁹ By deploying AI agents, organizations will be able to modernize inventory management, enabling real-time decision-making to achieve decision advantage. In addition, AI agents will use real-time pricing data to inform analysis and enhance pricing decisions, maximizing the use of tax-payer dollars. Even warehouse operations can benefit from advanced AI systems to streamline workflows, enhance accuracy, and reduce operational costs. These advanced capabilities will empower DLA to adapt dynamically to shifting logistics challenges, particularly in Contested Logistics environments where speed and accuracy are paramount.

Integrating AI/ML and enhancing digital interoperability across the JLEnt is not just an aspirational goal — it is a strategic imperative. As with any new development, there are challenges and limitations. AI/ ML are tools for the defense logistics enterprise to utilize and cannot replace human reasoning, thought, and ingenuity. However, for the U.S. to maintain and advance its defense logistics capabilities in a rapidly evolving global environment, bold steps toward the future are essential. The power of understanding and harnessing these advanced tools that are software-oriented and data enabled to create “human-machine teams” will be key to winning in the future.

DLA must be at the forefront of these advancements, implementing logistics systems that are robust, adaptable, and future-ready. Progress is already underway, but DLA cannot achieve this transformation alone. This mission demands a unified effort. Government entities, military services, industry leaders, and partner nations must collaborate, innovate, and create digitally interoperable systems together. By employing the transformative power of advanced technologies to better predict and forecast warfighter needs, we can build resilient, efficient supply chains that are smarter, faster, better connected, and better protected— ensuring readiness and lethality in any operational environment.