CSS Transformation: Does The Emperor Have Clothes?
Abstract
The United States military has been increasingly tasked to project its forces faster and leaner into combat areas. The Army has taken a lead into transformation. Part of this effort is to downsize its logistics tail in order to meet deployment timelines and to reduce costs. These force structure cuts have been top driven and have led to new logistic strategies such as Distribution Based Logistics (DEL) and Spartan Support. The leveraging of technology, such as information dominance, has led to these misguided new strategies. The current direction of the Army transformation efforts presents numerous operational risks and venues for an enemy to pursue to exploit. Operating in a non-contiguous environment, one of the centers of gravity for a Joint Task Force could be its logistic tail that is operating using a DBL or Spartan Support concept. To preclude a disaster, U.S. leadership needs to leverage technology to improve the efficiency of logistic operations and thus, naturally reduce both the logistics tail and associated costs. Specifically, demand reductions, better deployment equipment and forward positioning must be used to achieve the goals of the Army's Transformation effort. Additionally, the leadership must conduct a trade-off analysis between current transformation efforts and the risks that it imparts to our military forces. A bottom driven versus top driven approach for logistic force structure cuts is a better method to determine appropriate and logical solutions to the Army's Transformation goals.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 22, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA405615
Entities
People
- Kenneth G. Juergens
Organizations
- Naval War College