Campaigning to Win: DLA Exercises to Sustain the Joint & Combined Force

Introduction

We are all witness to the evolution of the character of war, including the increasing pace and lethality of high-end military operations, combined with the proliferation of low-cost short and long-range strike capabilities, cyber and cross-domain threats. In this environment, operational pace is dictated by logistics competence, and global logistics prowess remains a critical pillar of US military power projection. Unlike previous post-Cold War conflicts, however, some of our potential adversaries can credibly contest global sustainment. Specifically, a near-peer adversary could seek to sap the strength of the Joint Force by blunting Joint Logistics. Amid this strategic landscape, the Defense Logistics Agency is not standing still. Training to achieve mission success through the threats posed by our most capable strategic competitors and testing that training in realistic exercises integrated with Joint and Service headquarters is key to Agency readiness. By transforming through exercise campaigning, DLA is building the culture and capabilities to sustain a war-winning Joint force during large scale combat operations.

Understanding the Threat

The Joint Logistics Enterprise (JLEnt) faces a multi-domain threat designed to disrupt, degrade, and destroy its ability to support the warfighter. Potential adversaries have studied the American way of war and understand today’s complex global supply chains. Observations from ongoing combat in Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia provide key insights into the threats logistics forces and capabilities face on the modern battlefield, as well as their criticality to mission success.

The rapid proliferation of creative unmanned systems, such as the grenade-armed small first-person-view drones used in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, of which 2-4 million are now produced annually by both sides at very low cost per item, are an evolving lethal threat.³ Tactical use of these small “drones” at scale, or covert infiltration to attack high value targets in the rear, can achieve cumulative strategic effects. Therefore, DLA and the broader logistics enterprise must act with agility to learn from ongoing combat operations and build resilience against the unmanned systems threat, from small quadcopters to loitering munitions such as the Russian Lancet, and to larger Geran or Shahed-type aerial systems capable of delivering heavier warheads at longer ranges.

Deliberate targeting of US and allied logistics capabilities in Southwest Asia in March and April of 2026 exhibited asymmetric weapons, including missiles and one-way attack unmanned aerial systems (UAS). While enemy regime forces lacked the capabilities to strategically degrade the US Joint Logistics Enterprise, commercially available technologies have lowered the cost of entry for precision strike capabilities. The threat in Southwest Asia offers further evidence of the need for US logistics units and nodes to be prepared for all domain threats. These threats range from low, slow, small, or swarming UAS, to larger long-range low-cost UAS, to cruise missile and ballistic missile threats, to determined targeted cyberattacks. Further, the JLEnt must be resilient against a more capable opposing force in other theaters.

China poses a particularly significant and multifaceted challenge. Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine discusses targeting logistics as part of a broader approach of “systems destruction warfare”.⁴ In a crisis or conflict with China, the PLA’s offensive cyber-attacks could target “U.S. military C4ISR and logistics nodes, as well as critical infrastructure” globally to “disrupt US military operations and mobilization”.⁵ The fact that China is the world’s leading producer of small commercial drones should not go unnoticed. Furthermore, the “speed, scale, and quality” of the increase in Chinese PLA surface, maritime, and air launched ballistic and cruise missile capabilities pose a direct threat to friendly logistics nodes in theater. ⁶ The US Intelligence Community assesses that “China is the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.”⁷ Chinese government and military-sponsored cyber actor groups include volt typhoon, focused on critical infrastructure in the US power grid, flax typhoon, known for compromising internet-of-things devices, and salt typhoon, which is focused on US telecommunications networks.⁸

Returning to recent and ongoing conflicts, the persistent focus on disrupting military logistics, supply chains, and supporting critical infrastructure reflects the centrality of logistics to any nation’s ability to sustain combat over a protracted conflict.

Logistics Underpins Global Deterrence and Power Projection

The United States military possesses unmatched global logistics prowess. This logistics power is drawn from the dynamic US economy, the defense industrial base, and the remarkable expertise within the military and civilian workforce of the Joint Logistics Enterprise. The JLEnt is “a cooperative coalition of key global logistics providers within and beyond the Department of War.”¹⁰ Internal to the Department of War, the JLEnt consists of the military service’s logistics forces including their organic depots, the combatant command, Joint Staff, and Department of War logistics staffs, and combat support agencies. It takes capability from across the JLEnt to sustain any combatant command during combat operations. US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) plays a critical role regarding the deployment and distribution of forces, and DLA plays a central role regarding the strategic supply of the Joint Force. Supply and distribution are equally important variables in the equation that sustains Joint Force combat power generation.

DLA’s strategic management of nine supply chains, including aviation repair parts, land & maritime repair parts, petroleum products, subsistence, clothing & textiles, construction & engineering materiel, medical supplies, and strategic materials, connects the national industrial base military depots and tactical units consuming parts and material through USTRANSCOM distribution. Logistics excellence is the prerequisite for America’s global power projection.

While unmatched, Joint logistics prowess is not unchallenged. DLA’s exercise campaign prepares DLA’s workforce to meet the challenge and succeed.

The DLA Exercise Campaign

The DLA exercise campaign is building contested logistics excellence in DLA and across the Joint Logistics Enterprise. DLA’s exercise campaign is designed to build competence through a series of exercises that progressively build in terms of realism, complexity, and integration.

The overarching objectives of the exercise campaign include 1) building DLA’s organizational resilience to sustain Joint Force success through the most likely and most dangerous contested scenarios, 2) improving the Joint campaign of exercises beyond DLA by increasing logistics realism while lowering the level of logistics abstraction, and 3) leveraging Joint exercises to optimize global logistics posture for resilience in a risk-informed manner.

Lastly, while DLA is not a warfighting organization, an important outcome of the DLA exercise campaign is to ensure DLA headquarters and subordinate command staff are prepared to operate like a warfighting headquarters to ensure integration with supported commands at the pace of relevance. This represents a break from past practices, and requires substantive transformations in training, procedures, information flow, and organizational culture.

The exercise campaign focuses effort on DLA participation in key Joint exercises each fiscal year. This allows DLA to stress-test sustainment of operations across the globe through a range of prioritized and challenging scenarios. This year’s exercise campaign includes practicing defense support for US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), and broad integration with USTRANSCOM during multiple exercises.¹¹ Additionally, DLA’s Regional Commands participate in numerous exercises with their supported combatant command, specifically US European Command (USEUCOM) and US Central Command (USCENTCOM).

It is useful to examine the exercise campaign through the lens of the transformational imperatives identified in DLA’s strategic plan: people, posture, precision, and partnerships. These imperatives illustrate the holistic dimensions addressed by DLA’s exercise campaign, as well as how the exercises further DLA’s overall transformational aims.

People

DLA’s ability to achieve mission success in a contested environment will always be the product of the determination and ingenuity of the civilian and military workforce. After studying the rapidly evolving threats and tactics, DLA leaders collaborate across the Joint Force to learn the most effective countermeasures, train personnel on effective techniques and procedures, and incorporate those actions into DLA exercises. Operating through contestation must be anchored in DLA’s culture, as part of how the Agency does business, because it is central to DLA’s mission as a Combat Support Agency.

For example, DLA organizations must be prepared to act effectively through communication disruptions and cyber-attacks, as noted during the threats section. Exercise events are the time to stress test communications primary-alternate-contingency-emergency (PACE) communications plans, continuity of operations plans, and alternate business practices. Cybersecurity is of paramount importance, given the fact that DLA’s information operations team defends against cyber-infiltration attempts daily. Each employee with a dla.mil account helps protect the domain by protecting their credentials and avoiding social engineering traps that could introduce malicious code. Integrating realistic cyberattacks at scale into the DLA exercise campaign is a must to put cyber-protection teams to the test, to familiarize the workforce with threat tactics, and to ensure operations will continue through alternate means should cyber effects degrade routine system access. Overcoming cyber threats is as much a training and knowledge building effort as a technical effort, therefore DLA’s people are the key.

Posture

Credible military options are predicated on a capable logistics posture, specifically in terms of time-relevance. In recognition of this fact, the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act created a new governance structure for contested logistics integrated posture management led by the Deputy Secretary of War, the Vice Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commander of US Transportation Command. Major combatant command and Joint Force exercises offer unique opportunities to validate Joint logistics posture in support of combatant command operations and Service concepts of operation in contested environments. Agile, dispersed operations necessarily make achieving sufficient operational resilience in contested environments more complicated. Planners for DLA-managed supply chains will use exercise campaign events to test integration with joint logistics processes and identify opportunities to improve DLA or Joint logistics posture. Internal to DLA, the exercise campaign will inform DLA’s stock positioning plans and force posture to ensure the Agency’s global posture is optimized for affordable resilience as prioritized by strategic guidance.

Beyond considering logistics posture in terms of geographic array and disposition of forces and prepositioned supplies, joint exercises and/or wargames that focus on protracted conflict can examine the preparedness of the organic industrial base and defense industrial base to work effectively in combination to meet the production and sustainment demands of the Joint Force over months or years of Large Scale Combat Operations (LCSO). For example, exercises or excursions should seek to understand the risks associated with primary, secondary, and tertiary global supply chain disruptions while the national industrial base seeks to surge to meet the demands of national mobilization.

Precision

The exercise campaign supports building decision support and mission command excellence among DLA leaders and staff. This includes establishing critical information flows and the optimal structure of boards, bureaus, cells, centers, and working groups (B2C2WG) to rapidly recommend the best options and facilitate decisions by senior leaders. The structure of B2C2WG will enhance the accuracy and speed of decisions by leveraging cross-organizational expertise through a regular battle rhythm, not constrain DLA commanders with bureaucracy.

Clarity in decision authority and focus on time relevance is paramount. Cascading decisions down to the lowest appropriate echelon is the default as we build mission command competence in DLA.

During exercises, DLA practices with and improves new decision support tools that leverage a resilient data fabric. Leaders will use exercise events as milestones for leveraging emerging information systems to provide echelon-specific, decision-quality data. DLA must accelerate innovative integration of AI capabilities into planning, business processes, risk management, and demand forecasting to be sufficiently predictive to sustain the pace of operations necessary for Joint Force victory. The acquisition and production lead times for readiness-driving parts and supplies highlight the importance of anticipatory planning across defense supply chains. The tyrannies of distance and water in the Pacific theater exacerbate sustainment challenges, while hostile action could induce further friction into Joint Sustainment. DLA will leverage the exercise campaign events to develop and refine anticipatory sustainment planning tools and skills to ensure logistics is a key operational enabler, not critical constraint. An important nuance is to leverage AI to accelerate, expand, and augment action, rather than to outsource critical thought to AI capabilities. Partnering with industry and allies will be important as we better understand risk and enhance decisions through data.

Partnerships

Practicing sustaining decisive combat power generation in collaboration with Allies & Partners is key to dealing with the problem of simultaneity of demand across the enterprise, thereby effectively deterring or denying coordinated or opportunistic large-scale aggression in multiple theaters.¹² Exercising sustainment integration identifies existing gaps and enables leaders to focus on critical areas to focus effort, such as progress on logistics data sharing and demand forecasting with Allies. To put this practice into action, DLA will incorporate opportunities to practice co-sustainment activities into summative exercise events as part of the fiscal year 2026 and 2027 exercise campaigns. During the exercises, DLA will capture any obstacles to the rapid integration that will enhance sustainment of the Joint and Combined force, then develop policy, procedural, or technical solutions to address the obstacles.

As DLA completes the exercise campaign for fiscal year 2026 and looks forward to 2027, a key objective will be to increase the breadth and depth of detailed planning and integration with Combatant Commands and the Military Services. This includes exercise planning to enhance the realism of expected service sustainment demands, greater depth of understanding regarding Service operational and logistics support concepts, and deliberate Agency-level integration during exercises. To improve integration at echelon and enhance logistics realism during Combatant Command exercises, DLA’s Regional Commands will seek to partner in greater depth with Service Components. The military services comprise a large majority of Joint Logistics Enterprise, therefore increasing exercise integration will drive anticipatory precision through the supply chains.

“Supercharge the Defense Industrial Base (DIB)” is Line of Effort 4 in the National Defense Strategy, which directs the department to “bolster our organic sustainment capabilities, grow nontraditional vendors, and partner with traditional DIB vendors…to reinvigorate and mobilize our great nation’s unrivaled creativity and ingenuity, re-spark our innovative spirit, and restore our industrial capacity.”14 Incorporating key partners from the National Industrial Base into the DLA exercise campaign is critical to understanding plausible industry actions and obstacles to production surge. The insight from private sector leaders within key defense suppliers from the large, medium and small cap categories serves to enhance the government’s understanding of policy, contract, or commodity constraints facing suppliers. The interaction is mutually beneficial, as industry leaders garner enhanced understanding of the operational problems facing the JLEnt, which catalyzes creative solution development within the industrial base to close military gaps and mitigate risks.

Learning Lessons & Mitigating Risk

Ultimately, the value of DLA exercises is determined by the internal readiness improvements garnered across our workforce and processes, by improving interoperability and integration across the JLEnt, and by informing integrated risk management for contested logistics posture across the Joint Force. The DLA exercise campaign provides an appropriate sense of urgency ahead of potential conflict, simulating the contested conditions that enable the Agency -- and the broader JLEnt -- to learn harsh lessons in a training environment. As such, the exercise campaign supports DLA’s strategic priorities to set the globe, set the agency, and set the supply chains. The value of the exercise campaign was clear during DLA support to recent major combat operations in Southwest Asia, as DLA military and civilian leaders applied the skills learned during recent exercise events. At echelon, operations center staff were more practiced, teams better integrated, working groups were built, and integration with supported commands was more prepared. While much work remains to achieve the desired level of readiness, the lessons learned in exercises are already paying dividends on the battlefield.

By campaigning through exercises, DLA is operationalizing the War Department’s strategic approach of "Peace through Strength" by effecting transformational cultural change across the Agency. The exercise campaign reinforces DLA’s unique and critical role as a Combat Support Agency for all employees, while preparing DLA and Major Supporting Command HQ staff to function as a combat support headquarters. DLA leaders at all echelons must embrace the charge of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and through our exercise campaign, practice with our teams until we cannot get it wrong.