In Search of Focused Logistics
Abstract
Designed as an operational template to guide the Armed Forces, Joint Vision 2010 has four major tenets: dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full dimensional protection, and focused logistics. A judicious application of technological innovation and information superiority is billed as the critical enablers of this process. Any initiative of this breadth is bound to be controversial. Critics have raised various points: that maneuver, strike, protection, and logistics are hardly new operational concepts and that technology is stressed over the human element. But our objectives remain fundamentally the same. What will change is how they will be achieved. Soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen fight and win wars, not technology. All the technological sophistication in the world is of little value without high quality and trained people. However, technology enables the warfighter to accomplish the mission with increased precision, lethality, and at a human, political, and economic cost we can afford. Technology goes a long way toward improving the quality of life of warfighters by accomplishing tasks more effectively and efficiently, thus allowing them to "work smarter not harder." Focused logistics, a full partner in JV 2010, takes a basic issue and seeks the best way to provide combat support to the warfighter. The most often quoted reasons for developing focused logistics are downsizing, changing threat environment, technology, and political and fiscal realities. Attracting little attention is the fact that logisticians in all services are dissatisfied with the level of support provided to warfighters. They know they can be more effective and efficient. They have the opportunity and high caliber people to make a genuinely evolutionary change in how they do business.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA527757
Entities
People
- Donald C. Pipp
- John J. Cusick
Organizations
- National Defense University