Through nearly 12 years of constant combat operations, valuable lessons were learned. Our sustainment formations have evolved on the way to support operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere world wide. This evolution produced sustainers and sustainment organizations which are battle-tested, confident of their abilities, and mission-focused with an all-embracing want to support the Soldier.
As we transition from a military at war to a military of preparation, it will be important that we refocus our thinking with a mindset fixed on what we would should do rather than what we’ve done. We must continue to research, adapt, and develop our Soldiers, Army civilians, and capabilities for a better fight.
A DOCUMENT FOR CHANGE
As the Army’s premier sustainment think tank, the Combined Arms Support Command considered these challenges and opportunities intimately and developed a white paper that critically looks to the long run. This paper identifies a variety of plans to assist shape and get ready a globally responsive sustainment force for a higher fight.
The Globally Responsive Sustainment white paper is a key document for change within the sustainment community and discusses both the revision of the military Functional Concept for Sustainment and the wider force modernization process. It leverages the worldwide Logistics 2020 effort by the military Materiel Command and appears on the contemporary issues driving change and the form of the sustainment community one day.
The white paper also provides a broader, integrated view of national strategic issues, the commercial base, the generating force, and the operating force it’s liable for executing sustainment activities in support of the warfighter. We can’t afford to take a myopic view of sustainment someday. Thus, the paper considers broader issues consisting of fiscal austerity and support from the yankee industrial base and our strategic partners.
GLOBALLY RESPONSIVE SUSTAINMENT
The white paper proposes an approach called globally responsive sustainment. It’s an approach that seeks to provide a sustainment system it is optimized, integrated, synchronized, affordable, and relevant to support unified land operations and the joint warfighter while minimizing redundancy. This is often the point for our work and should focus our thinking in shaping the long run sustainment force.
Globally responsive sustainment seeks to provide a future sustainment capability end state that’s associated with various strategic guidance, comparable to joint and military capstone concepts that come with strategic land power. This end state will incorporate right here attributes: agile and versatile, integrated, protected, trained and prepared, and precise and responsive. Both the generating and operating forces require these attributes which will meet the purposes of the longer term Army.
BIG IDEAS
The white paper also identifies a number of “big ideas” and capability focus areas a good way to enable our future efforts. These ideas and focus areas are derived from quite a number events inside the sustainment community, including the worldwide Logistics 2020 Decisive Action concept rehearsal held at Fort Lee, Va., earlier this year.
These big ideas should help us realize globally responsive sustainment:
- Creative and adaptive leaders and Soldiers.
- Enabled mission command and coaching for sustainment forces.
- Institutional Army, operating force, and strategic partner integration.
- Special operations forces and traditional forces integration.
- Effective integration of the Ready Reserve.
- Maintenance of a viable industrial base capability and capacity.
- Integration of the military into joint logistics capabilities.
- Maintenance of a globally deployable expeditionary Army.
- Enabled rapid global response through pre-positioned stocks, smarter positioning of assets, and the event of rapid expeditionary basing.
- Further development of a sustainment information system.
- Exploitation of sustainment capabilities to support shaping operations.
- Improved sustainment precision during the exploitation of technology.
The white paper will shape our ideas and sharpen our thinking as we evolve right into a globally responsive sustainment force. Much of this work is already in progress, but there’s still more to do. As we work through these big ideas and future capability focus areas, there are guaranteed to be other challenges and opportunities. We even have with the intention that we quickly adapt and keep pace with the strategic land power concept.
These areas are just our first step; our success lies in our ability to consider and discuss the guidelines on this paper and determine other opportunities for further exploration. We’d like help from you and each member of the sustainment community to investigate this document, take into account the long run, and help shape our future force.
I want to thank all of our partners who’ve helped with this, especially the military Materiel Command, the Forces Command, and the Headquarters Department of the military G-4. The white paper are available at www.cascom.army.mil. Please search for future articles that may provide updates as we move forward. i glance forward to reading your comments.
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