A Logistical Identity Crisis: Looking to the Past to Structure for the Future

Abstract

In an effort to identify the key factors that should influence the way the Marine Corps organizes its logistics forces for the next conflict, this paper examines key structural changes to logistics forces over the past 100 years and the factors that influenced those changes. First, this paper demonstrates how logistical failures at the outset of World War II led the Marine Corps to transfer logistics capabilities away from the Marine Division to absolve combat units of the burden for logistics planning while ensuring that essential logistics actions were not neglected. Second, outlines how the drove the Marine Corps to establish a logistics regiment independent of Division as the Logistics Combat Element (LCE) to support the newly conceived Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) following the Korean War.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 22, 2019
Accession Number
AD1177352

Entities

People

  • Tara E Patton

Organizations

  • Marine Corps University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Biomedical
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Additive Manufacturing
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Department Of Defense
  • Deployment
  • Employment
  • Fabrication
  • Health Services
  • Iraqi-War
  • Lessons Learned
  • Logistics
  • Maintenance
  • Manufacturing
  • Munitions
  • National Security
  • Second World War
  • Therapy
  • Three Dimensional
  • United States
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies